The Brooklyn Museum Expands Collection with Over 330 Acquisitions

Strengthening the Brooklyn Museum’s holdings across collections, this year’s acquisitions include over a hundred gifts commemorating the Museum’s 200th anniversary.

The Brooklyn Museum has acquired over 330 artworks this year, enriching its encyclopedic collection representing 6,000 years of creative excellence. These acquisitions strengthen institutional holdings across collection areas, including American Art, Arts of Africa, Asian Art, Contemporary Art, Feminist Art, Decorative Arts and Design, and Photography. 

Gifts in honor of the 200th anniversary

More than one hundred of the acquisitions are gifts of art given by the Museum’s valued donors in honor of its 200th anniversary. They will be displayed in the upcoming exhibition Breaking the Mold: Brooklyn Museum at 200, open February 28, 2025–February 22, 2026. In particular, the exhibition will showcase extraordinary gifts of contemporary art, including paintings, photographs, video, sculpture, and ceramics. Exemplary gifts of work by well-established artists such as Julie Mehretu, Robert Frank, Alex Katz, and Coco Fusco will be joined by contributions from influential artists working today, many of whom are based in Brooklyn. Breaking the Mold will rotate works halfway through its run, displaying additional major gifts the Museum has received in honor of its bicentennial (to be announced in 2025). Other gifts are currently on display throughout the Museum, including in the reinstalled American Art galleries and on the Iris Cantor Plaza.

“We are blown away by the tremendous support of our benefactors who stepped up to celebrate our 200th anniversary with historic gifts of art, greatly enhancing a collection that inspires awe, illuminates shared histories, and connects us to one another,” says Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director, Brooklyn Museum. “We cannot think of a more meaningful way to celebrate our bicentennial than by welcoming these exceptional and important pieces to our collection and sharing them with our community.”

The gifts come from a tremendous range of donors, some of which include Sasha and Edward P. Bass, Alan L. Beller, Rona and Jeffrey Citrin, John and Miyoko U. Davey, Beth Rudin DeWoody, J.A. Forde, Dennis Freedman, Amanda and Glenn Fuhrman, Steven and Kathy Guttman, Jane Hait and Justin Beal, Stephanie, and Tim Ingrassia, Michi and Charles Jigarjian, Elizabeth and William Kahane, Alex Katz and the Alex Katz Foundation, Karen Kiehl and Peter Labbat, Miyoung Lee and Neill Simpkins, Ryan E. Lee, Linda Macklowe, Tracey and Phillip Riese, Jonathan and Debbie Rosen, Rahul Sabhnani, Regina K. Scully, Carla Shen and Christopher Schott, Jon and Denine Sherman, Colleen and Graves Tompkins, Barbara and John Vogelstein, Amanda and John Waldron, the Brooklyn Museum Contemporary Art Council, and The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation. Together they reflect the Museum’s distinctive position as a premier cultural institution in Brooklyn, New York, and beyond.

Acquisitions by collection

All the works acquired this year have deepened the Museum’s commitment to representing generations of emerging and established artists in a wide range of disciplines. Noteworthy feminist works by Flora Yukhnovich, Judy Chicago, Myrtle Williams, Cheryl Riley, Rachel Martin, and Sonya Kelliher-Combs have supplemented the Museum’s Arts of the Americas, Contemporary Art, Decorative Arts and Design, and Feminist Art collections. The Arts of Africa collection has grown with acquisitions by contemporary artists including Billy Monk, Trevor Stuurman, and Penny Siopis, invigorating one of the oldest collections of its kind in the United States. Significant contributions continue to build the Museum’s Asian Art collection, including works by Kondō Takahiro and Mishima Kimiyo.

The Decorative Arts and Design collection has seen tremendous growth. A gift of thirty-five icons and prototypes, including twenty-five notable works of Italian Radical Design dating from approximately 1965 to 1989, from leading design collector and creative designer Dennis Freedman builds on the Museum’s superlative holdings of Italian design. The 200th anniversary has also been an opportunity to add works of contemporary design by Jorge Lizarazo of Hechizoo and Chris Schanck.

Important gifts of American art can be seen in Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art, the Museum’s critically acclaimed reinstallation of its American Art galleries, such as pieces by Kyōhei Inukai the Elder. Those works, as well as new additions by Kyōhei Inukai the Younger, bolster the trailblazing collection of art by Asian American artists within the American Art collection.

The Contemporary Art collection has seen particularly notable additions that broaden the histories, narratives, and perspectives therein. The Museum has gained its first paintings by a number of artists, including Derrick Adams, Peter Halley, Nicolas Party, and Winfred Rembert. Significant early sculptures by artists such as Joel Shapiro and Carl Andre and recent work by Antony Gormley and Kennedy Yanko have also joined the collection, as well as tour de forces by Mark di Suvero, Rashid Johnson, and Nicole Eisenman. Major time-based works by Carrie Mae Weems, Doug Aitken, Isaac Julien, and Coco Fusco have entered the collection as well.

The Photography collection has been augmented by twenty-six of Robert Frank’s 1958 photographs of Coney Island, a gift from the Robert Frank Foundation. A moving gift of photographs by Joel Sternfeld tells the tragic story of David Buckel in nearby Prospect Park, expanding the Museum’s collection of photography depicting Brooklyn. Multiple works by Jimmy DeSana have entered the collection as well, acquired from the artist’s first museum survey at the Brooklyn Museum in 2022–23. In addition, a historic gift of iconic works by Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and Bill Brandt from the estate of renowned photographer Hiro further establishes the Museum as a significant center for portrait photography.

View the Brooklyn Museum’s complete list of acquisitions in December 2023–October 2024. A selection of highlights is below, organized by collection.

American Art

Kyōhei Inukai the Elder. Dorothy, 1933. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of John and Miyoko U. Davey, in honor of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th Anniversary, 2024.1.4. © Kyōhei Inukai the Elder. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Dorothy is one of five paintings by Kyōhei Inukai the Elder (American, born Japan) given to the Museum by John and Miyoko U. Davey in honor of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th anniversary. Currently on view in the reinstalled American Art galleries, the striking portrait depicts Dorothy Hampton, Inukai’s lover and frequent model with whom he lived in Greenwich Village from approximately 1932 until the end of his life. The acquisition of these paintings comes at an important moment, when the careers of both Inukai and his artist son, Kyōhei Inukai the Younger (born Earle Goodenow), are receiving revived attention from scholars and institutions. It also bolsters the Museum’s growing collection of Japanese American works.

Asian Art

Kondō Takahiro. Large Conical Bowl, 2020. Glazed porcelain with metallic overglaze. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Alan Beller, in honor of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th Anniversary, 2024.38. (Photo: by Richard Goodbody, courtesy of Joan B Mirviss LTD. Photography)

One of the most arresting objects from Porcelains in the Mist: The Kondō Family of Ceramicists (December 2023–December 2024), this large bowl is both a crowd-pleaser and a technical tour de force. A masterful example of the “silver mist” glazing that Japanese artist Kondō Takahiro invented, this object perfectly embodies the artist’s stated goal of “creating water from fire.” Given by Alan L. Beller in honor of the 200th anniversary, this object is a significant addition to the Museum’s holdings of Japanese modern and contemporary ceramics.

Arts of Africa

Billy Monk. The Catacombs, 23 December 1967, 1967. Pigment ink on archival paper. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of J. A. Forde, 2024.32. © Billy Monk Collection. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

This gift is one of the most iconic images from Billy Monk’s oeuvre and the first of the South African artist’s works to enter the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, bolstering the holdings that depict queer realities. With a 35 mm Pentax camera, Monk photographed both friends and strangers in underground sanctuaries and nightclubs such as the Catacombs in Cape Town, South Africa. His close connection to many of the clubs’ patrons allowed him to capture intimate moments. This piece presents a rare glimpse into a moment within Cape Town’s history of apartheid, shedding light on the lived realities of partiers of all races, LGBTQIA+ identities, and economic backgrounds.

Arts of Americas

Hayden Haynes and Samantha Jacobs. New Beginnings, 2022. Fawn hide, brain-tanned buckskin, velvet, gunmetal hardware, mother-of-pearl, Czech and vintage German beads, moose and dyed deer hair, moose and whitetail antler. Brooklyn Museum, Marie Bernice Bitzer Fund, 2024.13a-c. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

New Beginnings powerfully blends historic artmaking practices with a contemporary aesthetic, breaking down the boundaries between decorative arts, craft, and design. The result of a multiyear collaboration between Seneca artists Hayden Haynes (Deer Clan) and Samantha Jacobs (Turtle Clan), the piece serves as a testament to the ways that Seneca people have maintained their culture. The form of New Beginnings is inspired by beaded Seneca purses made in the early 1800s and utilizes the classic Seneca colors of red and white. Through the creation of this bag, the artists honor the life of the fawn (killed in a traffic accident) whose hide is used. This is the Brooklyn Museum’s first acquisition of work by Haynes and Jacobs, and is a major addition to the Museum’s collection of Indigenous art from New York State.

Contemporary Art

Antony Gormley. Object II, 2019. Steel. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Barbara and John Vogelstein, in honor of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th Anniversary, 2023.56. © Antony Gormley. (Photo: © Stephen White & Co., Courtesy White Cube)

British artist Antony Gormley is acclaimed for his sculptures, installations, and public artworks that have for over 45 years used the human figure, often his own, to challenge notions of bodies in space. This life-size scaled steel sculpture is part of the artist’s Weave Work series, which engages the question, “How can you begin to describe the indoors of the body, or the body at rest?” Examining the body in terms of architectural space, Object II reduces the human form into a metal lattice that resembles a scaffolding: a grid of straight, square-section steel bars varying in spatial density occupies the body’s volume. This is the first work by the artist to enter the collection.

Carrie Mae Weems. Leave! Leave Now!, 2022. Single-channel digital video (color, sound) installation with mixed media. Brooklyn Museum, Purchased through the generosity of Agnes Gund, the Ford Foundation, Stephanie Ingrassia, Holly Peterson, and Miyoung Lee, 2023.64. © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. (Photo: Danny Perez)

Carrie Mae Weems. The North Star, 2022. Inkjet print. Brooklyn Museum, Purchased through the generosity of Miyoung Lee and Cary Davis with additional support from the William K. Jacobs Fund, 2023.71a-g. © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. (Photo: Danny Perez)

These two works by Carrie Mae Weems join the collection in commemoration of the Museum’s honoring of the American artist at the 2023 Brooklyn Artists Ball. For decades, Weems has been renowned for her photographic depictions of American experiences, especially those that sit at the intersection of race, gender, and class. Much of her work has examined the singular experiences and shared histories of African American communities, from intimate familial relationships to the generational impacts of political systems and power dynamics in the United States. In both these works, she tells the story of her grandfather Frank Weems, a member of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union who was subjected to retaliatory racial violence and believed to have been killed. He was later discovered in Chicago and is thought to have followed the North Star to safety.

Julie Mehretu. Treatises on the Executed (from Robin's Intimacy), 2022. Etching, aquatint. Brooklyn Museum, Purchase gift of Amanda and John Waldron in honor of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th anniversary, 2024.12a-j. © Julie Mehretu. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

American artist Julie Mehretu has achieved global acclaim for her resonant, gestural manner of translating contemporary social and political experiences onto canvas and paper. The artist produced Treatises on the Executed (from Robin's Intimacy) as part of her ongoing exploration of and experimentation with technical printing processes, here in collaboration with the Los Angeles–based printmaking workshop Gemini GEL. This etching joins another print by Mehretu in the Contemporary Art collection titled Entropia, further expanding the Museum’s holdings of works by twenty-first-century icons.

Nicolas Party. Portrait with a Donkey, 2023. Soft pastel on linen. Brooklyn Museum, Purchase gift of Amanda and John Waldron, in honor of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th Anniversary, 2024.16. © Nicolas Party. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. (Photo: Adam Reich)

A gift from Trustee Amanda Waldron and John Waldron in honor of the Museum’s 200th anniversary, Portrait with a Donkey by Brooklyn-based Swiss artist Nicolas Party grows the Museum’s holdings of significant new talent. Noted for his enigmatic figurative works inspired by Old Master paintings, Party bridges the past and the present in his practice, using techniques and mediums long established in the Western canon of art but reinterpreted for the twenty-first century. Party’s presentation of his subjects connects to contemporary use of selfies, filters, and AI, which can make created people seem real and allow real people to represent themselves in previously unimaginable ways. This is the first work by Party to enter the Museum’s collection.

Winfred Rembert. Looking for Rembert, 2012. Dye on carved tool leather. Brooklyn Museum, Purchase gift of Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia, in honor of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th Anniversary, 2024.25. © 2024 Estate of Winfred Rembert / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

A gift from Board of Trustees Vice Chair Stephanie Ingrassia and Tim Ingrassia in honor of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th anniversary, this scene is a quintessential example of American artist Winfred Rembert’s autobiographical images: tooled leather works depicting a memory from his incarceration. Though Rembert liked to draw throughout his life, his art career officially began in middle age when, while in prison, he started crafting small billfolds; later images in leather were achieved using hammers and dyes. Along with examining his own experiences, Rembert’s pieces look to the past, highlighting the immense labor prisoners had to endure in chain gangs or picking cotton. The first work of Rembert’s to enter the collection, Looking for Rembert demonstrates the skills of a non-formally trained artist, presents an alternative narrative of art production, and expands the American Art collection’s representation of Southern history and culture.

Coco Fusco. And Then the Sea Will Talk to You, 2012. Single-channel video (color, sound). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Contemporary Art Committee, in honor of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th Anniversary, 2024.44. © Coco Fusco. (Photo: Mendez Wood DM)

A major figure within contemporary art, Brooklyn-raised artist Coco Fusco has worked as an artist, scholar, professor, and curator discussing Cuban and Caribbean art for the past several decades. In And Then the Sea Will Talk to You, Fusco narrates her journey of taking her deceased mother’s ashes from New York back to Cuba. The film is a compelling and intensely personal meditation on messy, contradictory, and sentimental feelings about one’s ancestral homeland. This anniversary gift expands the Museum’s holdings of works by Caribbean and local artists.

Isaac Julien. Territories, 1984. Single-channel video (color, sound). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Contemporary Art Committee, in honor of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th Anniversary, 2024.45. © Isaac Julien. (Photo: Courtesy of the artist)

This anniversary gift examines Britain’s Black community in the 1980s through Carnival, a cultural touchstone with origins in Trinidad and other Caribbean island communities. British artist Isaac Julien’s films have cemented his status as a twenty-first-century icon, whose work has been exhibited throughout New York, the United States, and the world. In Territories, Julien incorporates historical footage, Caribbean musical forms, and audio recordings from the Notting Hill Carnival, demonstrating that this event in London is about cultural agency, freedom of expression, and equality.

Currently on view in the reinstalled American Art galleries, My Friend Will Be Me is the Museum’s first acquisition of American artist Sasha Gordon’s work. The artist depicts herself in the process of painting a self-portrait. Her skin is rendered in deep, shadowy blues, purples, greens, and oranges, and she stares out at the viewer smiling, nude except for a paint-splattered apron. Gordon’s approach to self-portraiture extracts and magnifies some of her rawest, deepest emotions through partly caricatured embodiments of her personality. Building layer upon layer of oil paint, she produces sumptuous, dreamlike compositions that invite both artist and audience to reflect on complex feelings about body image and cultural representation, among other internal psychological conflicts.

Susan Chen. Chinatown Block Watch, 2022. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Promised gift of Carla Shen and Christopher Schott, L2024.8.2. © Susan Chen. (Photo: Courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch)

Chinatown Block Watch by Susan Chen (American, born Hong Kong) leans into the nostalgia and familiarity of its titular neighborhood. Chen depicts a bustling scene in New York City’s Chinatown replete with familiar signage and sensations—dishes from Nom Wah Tea Parlor, the slogan “STOP CHINATOWN JAIL” sprayed onto the asphalt, overflowing cartons of oranges, and an almost claustrophobic density of pedestrians weaving past one another. This work builds upon the Museum’s collection of works depicting New York City, as well as its collection of works by Asian American artists.

José Parlá. La Habana Sunset, 2022. Acrylic paint, plaster, oil paint, and urethane on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Promised gift of Michi and Charles Jigarjian, in honor of the Brooklyn Museum's 200th Anniversary, L2024.9. © José Parlá. (Photo: Courtesy of the artist)

La Habana Sunset by José Parlá, currently on view in Brooklyn Abstraction: Four Artists, Four Walls in the Beaux-Arts Court, is a gift from Brooklyn Museum Trustee Michi Jigarjian and Charles Jigarjian in honor of the 200th anniversary. This abstract landscape is part of the series Ciclos: Blooms of Mold, Parlá’s most personal work to date. In these large-scale pieces, created after a life-and-death experience with COVID, the Cuban American artist explores themes of memory and movement. La Habana Sunset represents an act of meditative healing, as well as the chaotic beauty and infinite resilience of humanity. The Museum’s first acquisition of Parlá’s work, it builds the Museum’s collection of works by Brooklyn-based artists.

Decorative Arts and Design

Gae Aulenti. Pool Lounger, from the series Locus Solus, ca. 1965. Enameled tubular and sheet steel rubber, screenprinted canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dennis Freedman, in honor of the Brooklyn Museum's 200th Anniversary, 2023.76.1. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Italian architect and industrial, interior, and theatrical designer Gae Aulenti’s Pool Lounger is one of thirty-five gifts given by renowned collector Dennis Freedman to mark the Museum’s anniversary. Pool Lounger, while not breaking from tradition in form, incorporates colors and shapes derived from Pop Art. The work suggests the bold new visuals that would become even more innovative by the end of the 1960s and come to define Italian Radical Design. Aulenti was one of the few Italian women designers to gain popularity in the latter half of the twentieth century through her projects, which include the interior of the Musée d’Orsay in the 1980s and production designs for numerous manufacturers.

Freedman’s donation also includes furniture, lighting, ceramics, sculptural objects, and drawings made in Denmark, Japan, and the Netherlands by famed designers Ib Arberg, Mathias Bengtsson, Peter Karpf, Verner Panton, Gerrit Rietveld, and Mariyo Yagi. The gift showcases the Museum’s commitment to telling global narratives about contemporary design and new technology. Pool Lounger, along with a selection of other works from Freedman’s gift, is currently installed in the Museum’s fourth-floor Decorative Arts and Design galleries.

Feminist Art

Judy Chicago. Immolation, from the suite On Fire, printed 2013 and 2018. Archival pigment print on paper. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Regina K. Scully, 2023.72.7. © Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society, New York. (Photo: Courtesy of the artist)

The Brooklyn Museum’s holdings of work by iconic feminist artist Judy Chicago constitute one of its most important collections. The portfolio On Fire documents twelve of Chicago’s iconic Atmospheres works, a series she began in 1969. These works were made at an important crossroads in the artist’s career, as she increasingly turned her attention to feminist politics and a related exploration of feminist artmaking. In 1968, Chicago began working with fireworks and flares, creating site-specific interventions to invite viewers to see the landscape from a female perspective.

Sonya Kelliher-Combs. Natural Idiot Strings, 2023. Reindeer and sheep rawhide, steel wire, wool, beeswax, nylon thread. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Contemporary Art Committee, in honor of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th Anniversary, 2024.58. © Sonya Kelliher-Combs. (Photo: courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery)

With a poetic approach to space, this anniversary gift merges lived experience and art traditions of Alaska Native Peoples to create a three-dimensional, subtly moving installation. Each element carries two pouch-like shapes—references to walrus tusks and, therefore, to nature, nourishment, and kinship for Alaskan Natives. Created from reindeer and sheep rawhide, they are connected by viscera-like strands that reference traditions of hunting, gathering, and, in Sonya Kelliher-Combs’s life specifically, how mothers pass sewing and preservation skills on to their children. Like much of Kelliher-Combs’s body of work, Natural Idiot Strings reflects upon the enduring legacy of settler colonialism—particularly in regard to maintaining relationships with ancestral homelands. The piece diversifies the feminisms that are represented within the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

Photography

Photographing figures such as David Byrne and Debbie Harry, as well as working in zines, performance art, and experimental film, American artist Jimmy DeSana was a crucial member of New York City’s punk and No Wave scenes of the late 1970s and early 1980s. This photograph was featured in the first major museum survey of the artist’s work—Jimmy DeSana: Submission, held at the Brooklyn Museum in 2022–23—and is among the first of his photographs to enter the collection. The addition of DeSana’s work marks an important expansion of the Museum’s Photography collection.

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