CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/11/2024

Artbook @ MoMA PS1 presents the launch of 'Richard Nonas'

Monday, March 11, from 4–5:30 PM, Artbook @ MoMA PS1 Bookstore presents the launch of Richard Nonas. Please join us for a public discussion between Dieter Schwarz and Allyson Spellacy surveying the artist’s pioneering influence on the downtown New York art scene in the 1970s and his relevance to the founding of PS1 as an ambitious platform for radical vision and experimental action.

American Post-Minimalist sculptor Richard Nonas (1936–2021) was a pioneering figure in the downtown New York art scene of the 1960s and 70s. Influenced by his background in anthropological studies, he often incorporated natural and industrial materials such as wood, stone and steel into his work. After turning to sculpture in the mid-1960s, he exhibited alongside artists such as Richard Serra and Gordon Matta-Clark, and was included in the seminal 1971 exhibition Under the Brooklyn Bridge. His arrangements of found materials such as boulders, railroad ties and beams were constructed in public locations, both accessible and remote, around the globe. Their sparse settings, combined with the solid, monolithic quality of his materials, underscore Nonas’ interest in the emotional experience of an environment. This is the first comprehensive monograph on Nonas’ work and features a chronological survey bolstered by the artist’s own photographs of his sculptures.

Dieter Schwarz was born in Zurich in 1953. From 1990 to 2017 he was director of Kunstmuseum Winterthur and he is now an independent curator and the author of numerous exhibitions and publications on art from early modernity to the present day. Schwarz is a member of the Menil Drawing Institute Advisory Committee as well as of the Board of the Thomas Schütte Foundation. He is the author of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Gerhard Richter’s drawings and his most recent project is the show “Robert Ryman: 1961–1964” at David Zwirner in New York (November 2023). He is curating, in collaboration with Nicholas Serota, the retrospective exhibition “Gerhard Richter: 60 Years” which will open at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (October 2025).

Allyson Spellacy worked with Richard Nonas at Fergus McCaffrey (New York) from 2018 until the artist’s death in 2021, organizing the artist's memorial at MoMAPS1 in 2022. Currently she is a director at Nonaka-Hill Gallery (Los Angeles, Kyoto).

Artbook @ MoMA PS1 Bookstore
Richard Nonas discussion and book launch With Dieter Schwarz and Allyson Spellacy
Monday, March 11: 4 PM
22-25 Jackson Ave (at 46th Ave.)
Long Island City, NY 11101
(718) 433-1088