WKSU News: The Phillips Collection Brings European Masterworks to the Cleveland Museum of Art

Wednesday, February 23, 2005 The Phillips Collection Brings European Masterworks to the Cleveland Museum of Art by WKSU's VIVIAN GOODMAN	Reporter Vivian Goodman

Masterworks have come to Cleveland from America's first Museum to feature modern art. Almost 60 paintings by more than 30 artists are on loan to the Cleveland Museum of Art from the Phillips Collection of Washington D.C. The exhibition features not only European masterpieces from the Phillips Collection, but also treasures of Cleveland's permanent collection, shown in a new light.

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When it comes to modern art, the Phillips Collection has enjoyed a unique reputation since it opened in a mansion on Washington's Embassy Row in 1921. It was the family home of Duncan Phillips, heir to the Jones and Laughlin steel dynasty. Among the paintings from the Phillips Collection now on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art is a masterpiece that Duncan Phillips called "one of the greatest paintings in the world: Renoir's great masterpiece Luncheon of the Boating Party. But more than all the art of Renoir, Degas, Monet, Van Gogh , Picasso, Klee and Kandinsky, it's the pairings of works by the same artist from the permanent collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art that makes the exhibition greater than the sum of its parts Phillips began collecting in 1919 after the death of his father and brother. He opened his house to the public in 1921. But initially, attendance was disappointing. Phillips was frustrated that art lovers weren't lining up outside the door. That's when he purchased "The Boating Party." Gates was able to pry away "The Boating Party" and the other 58 works in the exhibition in 2002 because the Phillips Collection had to partially shut down for an expansion. This exhibition is facilitated, according to Gates, by the juxtaposition of works from Cleveland's own permanent collection. Next to the Phillips's 1881 Boating Party, Cleveland curator Tom Hinson has put another Renoir, It's the first painting her ever signed, the 1864 portrait of Romaine Lacaut, a young girl in a gray dress. Hinson made 18 such juxtapositions, most of which occurred to him as soon as he saw the Phillips Collections list. Masterworks of the Phillips Collection is on view at the Cleveland Museum of art until the end of May. Then it continues to Tokyo and Europe, ending in Paris in late fall.