In honor of the Neuberger Museum’s 40th anniversary, Roy R. Neuberger’s famed collection of American art will be freshly examined in a rotating exhibit…

In honor of the Neuberger Museum’s 40th anniversary, Roy R. Neuberger’s famed collection of American art will be freshly examined in a rotating exhibit, “When Modern Was Contemporary: The Roy R. Neuberger Collection,” which opened last month and runs until late December.

As a young man, Neuberger loved contemporary art — American, in particular — and he wanted to support living artists by purchasing their works. Most of the 800+ works in his collection are without provenance (no previous owners, no exhibition history) because Neuberger bought the works directly from the artists. Exhibit curator Tracy Fitzpatrick explains that, “The majority of the objects Neuberger acquired at the height of his collecting — in the 1940s and 1950s — were purchased within a month to a year of their execution date.” His acquisitions essentially chronicle the progression of modern art in America. The walls of the bright, spacious second-floor gallery are lined with important works by Romare Bearden, Jackson Pollock, Georgia O’Keefe, Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, and many others.

The museum’s first scholarly study of the most significant works in the Neuberger Collection will be published this month. It is worth noting that Roy R. Neuberger received the National Medal of Arts in 2007, three years before his death at the age of 107. His son Jim created a sweet short film chronicling his father’s extraordinary life; visit www.royrneuberger.com.