Robert Kushner: American Tapestry
and Recent Acquisitions

American Tapestry is a diptych by Robert Kushner. The panels display delicately drawn and lavishly painted tree leaves, native wildflowers, and garden flowers, including American elm, black-eyed Susan, coleus, euphorbia, flowering cherry, forget-me-not, geranium, iris, licorice plant, petunia, shepherd's purse, wild aster, and wild oats. Behind the tumbled flowers and scattered foliage, rectangles of gold leaf, mica, and oxidized copper give structure to the arrangement and stabilize the composition. An encompassing circle unites the panels and echoes the ring motif designed into the wrought-iron balustrade for the staircase below. Through American Tapestry, Kushner displays on a grand scale his aesthetic vision of the dramatic power and beauty of nature. For this exhibition, American Tapestry is accompanied by three other paintings by Kushner. The largest, Nelumbo et Nymphaea, is a six-panel work that features swirling patterns over numerous rectangles awash in dramatic color. The other two paintings--Gold Mirror 8 x 4 and Gold Mirror 7 x 4--are covered with brick-like squares of textured gold leaf, colorful mortar, and dancing floral sprays.

Kushner was born in Pasadena, California in 1949. He earned a degree in visual arts from the University of California at San Diego in 1971 and moved to New York City the following year. At that time, he found himself pondering a wide variety of decorative sources: architectural ornament, Kilim carpets, ikat silks, all of which happened to be at odds with the prevailing aesthetic of minimalism and conceptual art. Kushner travelled to Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey in 1974 to experience firsthand some of the sources of his artistic inspiration and to deepen his experience of decoration. The colorful tiled walls and tracery windows of Islamic Mosques were a validating source of his aesthetic position, that the decorative can be viewed on a par with “fine art.” As a founding member of the Pattern and Decoration movement, he found inspiration not only in Islamic art, but also in the decorative patterns of Henri Matisse, the glittering portraits of Gustav Klimt, the aesthetic sensibilities of Asian screens, and the intricate textiles of Uzbekistan. He has been exhibiting around the world since the 1970s and his paintings are in the collections of many major museums.

Recent Acquisitions features a selection of artworks acquired since 2007 by the Fine Arts Program at the Federal Reserve Board. Over one hundred works have been added to the permanent collection in the past two years in response to the Fine Arts Program’s mission to enhance the environment at the Board. All the artworks have been donated or purchased with funds given to the Fine Arts Program for the purpose of acquiring art. In 1975, former Board Chairman Arthur F. Burns initiated the Fine Arts Program, and it continues to be sustained through the extraordinarily generosity of private citizens. These gifts include works of art by Rita Blitt, William Christenberry, Earl Cunningham, Steve Cushner, Gene Davis, William Eggleston, Ron Ehrlich, Joseph Holston, Wolf Kahn, Robert Kushner, Jacob Lawrence, Amy Lin, Cynthia Littlefield, Whitfield Lovell, Lloyd Martin, Maggie Michael, Dan Namingha, Sophy Richett, Jenny Rydhagen, Sean Scully, Renée Stout, Charles Traub, Andrea Way, and Randy West. We are deeply grateful to the people who so generously made these acquisitions possible.