Extraordinary!

Museum exhibits gifts of art to celebrate its 75th year

Steven Biller Arts & Entertainment

Palm Springs Art Museum’s new exhibition, Into the Future: New Gifts to Commemorate the Museum’s 75th Anniversary, features such works as Yves Klein’s Venus sculpture, the Harumaki chair by Fernando and Humberto Campana, and R.M. Schindler’s cantilever armchair.
Palm Springs Art Museum

The shimmering stainless steel sculpture at the entrance of Palm Springs Art Museum punctuates a new era for the institution. Artificial Rock No. 131, which artist Zhan Wang fashioned after a “scholar’s rock” found in traditional Chinese gardens, is part of Into the Future: New Gifts to Commemorate the Museum’s 75th Anniversary, opening Jan. 25.

The museum acquired the sculpture with funds provided by Donna MacMillan, whose name — with her late husband, Cargill — is connected to other pieces in the exhibition, including a bronze spider by Louise Bourgeois and the Harumaki chair by Fernando and Humberto Campana.

MacMillan joins many other donors, who contributed Native American, Western, Modern, and contemporary paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, studio glass, architectural drawings, and design objects.

Helene Galen, namesake of the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert, donated seven important works, including paintings by Tom Wesselmann, Keith Haring, and Lee Krasner, and photographs by Ansel Adams and Paul Strand.

Other standouts in the exhibition include works on paper by Ellsworth Kelly and Ed Ruscha, photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe and Jack Pierson, a classic Yves Klein Venus sculpture in the artist’s signature blue pigment, two architectural drawings by Donald Wexler, and two videos by Brian Bress.

The exhibition continues through May.

Palm Springs Art Museum, 101 Museum Dr., Palm Springs. 760-322-4800; www.psmuseum.org