Featuring Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen: The Music Room, an exhibition of recent sculptures of musical instruments from 2000-2005 and related charcoal and pastel works on paper. A full-color catalogue with an essay by art historian Richard Morphet and installation photography by Todd Eberle, in collaboration with the artists, will accompany the exhibition.

The Music Room features sewn canvas or cast aluminum sculptures of a viola, clarinet, lute, trumpet, French horn, and a Stradivarius, as well as a pair of metronomes and a music stand with falling sheet music, all ranging in height from 14 ½” to 11’ 4”. Resonances, after J.V (2000) will also be on view in The Music Room. The sculptural composition, a fictionalized companion piece to two 17th century music room paintings by Vermeer (A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal and A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal), was a catalyst for the artists’ newest work.

Claes Oldenburg (1929, Stockholm) and Coosje van Bruggen (1942, Groningen) have collaborated on artistic projects for over 25 years. Both American citizens, Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s work reflects a creative sensibility that is informed by their native countries of origin, their distinct educational and professional histories, and their individual personalities.

Oldenburg grew up in Chicago and attended Yale University (1946-50) before settling permanently in New York City in 1956. Influenced by his environs on the Lower East Side, he created a series of performances and installations such as The Street (1960) and The Store (1961) that established him as a leading figure in the Pop Art movement. Shifting his vision to The Home (1974), Oldenburg began a series of sewn and fabricated versions of ordinary household objects, later visualized in fantastic scale as “Proposed Colossal Monuments” for urban settings all over the world. In 1976, a 45-foot-tall sculpture in the form of a Clothespin was realized in downtown Philadelphia, the first such work in a ‘feasible’ scale.

Van Bruggen was born in the Netherlands and studied ballet as a youth. She received a master’s degree in art history with a minor in French literature from the University of Groningen prior to serving as a member of the curatorial staff in the Painting and Sculpture Department at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from 1961 until 1971. Van Bruggen was co-editor of the catalogue of Sonsbeek 71, a multi-sited exhibition of contemporary sculpture throughout the Netherlands. In 1976, Oldenburg and van Bruggen worked together for the first time on the reconstruction and relocation of the 41 foot tall Trowel I (1971-76)—originally shown at Sonsbeek 71—to the Kröller-Müller Museum grounds in Otterlo. In 1978 van Bruggen moved to New York where she continued to work with Oldenburg on creating site-specific, large-scale urban works, while also serving as an international independent curator and critic.