Exhibitions
Through the collection of the O’Brien Art Foundation and its representation of The Marty O’Brien Collection of American Art, we lend works of art to qualified institutions for public exhibition.
New Vantages of American Art: An Introduction to the O’Brien Art Foundation. John Hermann Art Museum, Bellevue, PA, 2025.
Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946–1962. Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 2024.
A Model Workshop: Margaret Lowengrund and The Contemporaries. Print Center New York, 2023.
Alone Together: Encounters in American Realism. The Westmoreland Museum of American Art. Greensburg, PA. 2022.
John Hermann Art Museum
Bellevue, PA | January 10–February 23, 2025
On the occasion of the O’Brien Art Foundation’s public launch, New Vantages of American Art highlights under-examined artists and lesser-known narratives of 20th century American Art. The exhibition is organized around four sections that introduce a selection of collection’s strengths. It begins with a selection of works made by artists based or born in Pittsburgh, from cityscapes to images of labor made primarily in the 1930s as microcosm for looking at the impacts of the Great Depression on urban life. Additional groupings examine mid-century inventions in printmaking that took place at the Atelier 17 workshop in New York as well as recently acquired paintings focused on figuration and portraiture, then considered out of fashion in the shadow of Abstract Expressionism. An exploration of geometry in the 1960s and 70s through Op Art and Hard-edge abstraction rounds out the presentation. Organized by the O’Brien Art Foundation.
Frick Fine Arts Building, University Art Gallery
Pittsburgh, PA | October 2025–January 2026
In the mid-to-late twentieth century, artists working with geometrical abstraction often drew upon the standardized patterns and processes of industrial manufacturing. The four artists in this exhibition – Aaronel deRoy Gruber (1918-2011), Josefa Filkosky (1933-1999), Sue Fuller (1914-2006), and Jane Haskell (1923-2013) – were all connected to Pittsburgh’s modernist scene and turned to this region’s resources for inspiration and expertise. They made the forms of the factory their own. The bold compositions in this exhibition seem to swoop, swell, and radiate, propelled into space by a sense of dynamic motion and energy. This exhibition includes works from the UAG permanent collection and loans from the Irving and Aaronel deRoy Gruber Foundation, Seton Hall University, the O’Brien Art Foundation, the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art (SAMA), and local private collections.
Curated by Brittany Reilly, Executive Director of the Aaronel deRoy Gruber Foundation and Alex J. Taylor, Associate Professor, History of Art & Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. Presented by the University Art Gallery with generous support from the Marstine Family Foundation.
Featuring work from the Marty O’Brien Collection of American Art by Sue Fuller.
Institute for Contemporary Art at Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA | February–July 2024
The Generative Museum is an experimental project that invites audiences to explore the ICA Pittsburgh galleries in the virtual realm as construction continues on its new home in the Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences. A collaboration with the international nonprofit arts organization KADIST, with scenography by the artist-run virtual exhibition space EPOCH, The Generative Museum places ICA’s building in an imaginary landscape, where visitors can explore its surreal surroundings and enter its galleries. Once inside, visitors can curate exhibitions in real-time through AI prompts that source works from international and local collections of contemporary art, including those that aren’t otherwise visible to the public. The initiative also includes presentations of digital artworks co-curated by the ICA and KADIST.
Featuring work from The Marty O’Brien Collection of American Art by Clinton Adams, Dennis Beall, Jan Gelb, Herman Maril, Joe Overstreet, Mavis Pusey, Krishna Reddy, Thomas Sills, Marina Stern, Sam Tchakalian.
New York University’s Grey Art Gallery
New York, NY | February–July 2024
Addison Gallery of American Art
Andover, MA | September 2024–January 2025
The NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery
Abu Dhabi, UAE | February–June 2025
Americans in Paris explores a vibrant community of expatriates who lived in France for a year or more during the period from 1946 to 1962. Many were ex-soldiers who took advantage of a newly enacted GI Bill, which covered tuition and living expenses; others, including women, financed their own sojourns. While the U.S. art scene was dominated by the rise of Abstract Expressionism, Americans working in Paris experimented with a range of formal strategies and various approaches to both abstraction and figuration. And, as the esteemed writer James Baldwin—a longtime French resident—saliently observed, living in Paris afforded expats the opportunity to question what it meant to be an American artist at midcentury. Curated by Debra Bricker Balken and Lynn Gumpert.
Featuring work from the O’Brien Art Foundation by Harold Cousins.
Print Center New York
New York, NY | September 21–December 23, 2023
A Model Workshop: Margaret Lowengrund and The Contemporaries is the first exhibition and publication to explore the understudied work and impact of Margaret Lowengrund (1902-57), expanding histories of mid-century art in the United States, and specifically in New York City. The exhibition unfolds chronologically via three themes: Lowengrund’s own printmaking and writing practices; the activity at The Contemporaries; and the workshop-gallery’s merger with New York’s Pratt Institute and transition into the Pratt Graphic Art Center (PGAC). Curated by Christina Weyl and Lauren Rosenblum.
Featuring work from The Marty O’Brien Collection of American Art by Robert Florsheim, Seong Moy, and Misch Kohn.
Arcadia University
Cheltenham Township, PA | September 13–December 4, 2022
Proto-Feminism in the Print Studio centers primarily around the women artists who were members of Atelier 17, the avant-garde printmaking studio located in New York City between 1940 and 1955, and suggests how these artists made technical advances within the graphic arts while simultaneously contributing to the growth of feminist networks and practices of collective action and collaboration. Curated by Christina Weyl.
Featuring work from The Marty O’Brien Collection of American Art by Jean Francksen, Miriam Schapiro, and Doris Seidler.
New York Historical Society Museum & Library
New York, NY | July 1–October 9, 2022
An expert in the fields of painting, drawing, graphic design, interior design, and the decorative arts, Winold Reiss brought a European modernist sensibility to the American public via visual culture embedded in daily life. Nowhere was this impact clearer than in his adopted home, New York City, where he emigrated from Germany in 1913. The Art of Winold Reiss features 150 works, many never before exhibited. Highlights include his iconic portraits of Harlem Renaissance figures like Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Alain Locke as well as paintings of everyday individuals from the professional and working classes. Curated by Marilyn Satin Kushner and Debra Schmidt, with contributions from Wendy Nalani E. Ikemoto.
Featuring work from The Marty O’Brien Collection of American Art by Winold Reiss.
The Westmoreland Museum of American Art
Greensburg, PA. May 29–September 25, 2022
In the early-to-mid twentieth century, American realist painters produced evocative images of human connection and disconnection that processed the traumas of war, civil unrest, economic depression, and many other upheavals large and small. Their works pursue an experimental approach to realism that captures the uneasiness of a modern world in turmoil, of lonely crowds and isolating spaces, of intimate relationships that seem strangely distant. This exhibition brings together works separated by almost a century to consider how they are bound together by the shared experience of living and working in difficult times. Curated by Alex Taylor.
Featuring work from the The Marty O’Brien Collection of American Art by Richard Dempsey, Zoltan Sepeshy, and Pavel Tchelitchew.
