During his leadership at several of the most prestigious museums in the United States, Thomas Armstrong's name became synonymous with American cultural institutions.Over the course of a career spanning nearly half a century, all while bearing his signature bowtie and wind-up toys, Armstrong indelibly shaped the tenor and texture of the art world as we know it today, from his directorship at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, to his time at Sotheby’s New York. As the director of the Whitney, Armstrong made extraordinary leaps in strengthening the museum’s identity by way of intrepid acquisitions. In 1977, he purchased Frank Stella’s Die Fahne Noch from 1959, followed three years later by Jasper Johns’ Three Flags. In 1982, he raised more than $1.25 million to add Alexander Calder's Circus, an intricate assemblage of more than 50 miniature figures and animals executed between 1926 and 1931, to the collection. These works now serve as cores of the Whitney’s collection and icons of twentieth century art. He went on to mount seminal mid-career retrospectives for artists such as Jasper Johns, Terry Winters, Mark di Suvero, David Salle, and Eric Fischl, and under his leadership, the Whitney Biennials became regarded as barometers of the nation’s creative pulse.
Untold Stories of American Abstraction | Thomas and "Bunty" Armstrong's Collection
NEW YORK | 20-21 NOVEMBER 2024
