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A Gift to Glasgow from New York: The Phillip A. Bruno Collection
18 October 2019 – 12 January 2020
Hunterian Art Gallery
Admission free

A new exhibition at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, celebrates the gift of over 70 works from the collection of distinguished gallery director and art collector Phillip A. Bruno.

A Gift to Glasgow from New York: The Phillip A. Bruno Collection opens at the Hunterian Art Gallery in October and coincides with Bruno’s 90th birthday. The exhibition presents a selection of works including paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, formed in New York over a period of 70 years, and presented to The Hunterian, University of Glasgow in 2019.

Phillip Bruno spent the majority of his illustrious career as co-director of the Staempfli Gallery, and later Marlborough Gallery, both important venues for contemporary art. He was born in Paris and studied art history and architecture at Columbia. His career took off quickly with visits to see Matisse, Brancusi and Giacometti in Paris, and a stay with the Van Gogh family in Holland.

Bruno's lifelong career working with living artists included placing major paintings and sculptures by Avery, Brancusi, Bertoia, Chihuly, Christo, Delvaux, Gaudi, Katz, Morandi and George Rickey in important private collections. Manhattan is a truly international art centre, and while many of the artists Bruno dealt with were New Yorkers, he also had a special interest in European, primitive and oceanic art, as well as artists from the West Coast of the USA.

A Gift to Glasgow from New York totals over 70 works, featuring American artists such as William Dole, Lee Gatch, Red Grooms, David Levine, Leroy Lamis, Robert Andrew Parker and Tom Otterness, as well as international figures such as the Mexican painter José Luis Cuevas and the Japanese sculptor Masayuki Nagare.

This is the first part of the Bruno collection to go on display at The Hunterian. A second selection will be on show in early 2020.

Hunterian Director Steph Scholten said:

“Phillip A. Bruno played a pivotal role in the New York art world for 60 years 1950-2010, working with some of the most important artists, collectors and museum directors of the period. The collection provides a snapshot of the American scene in the crucial post-war period and it brings us many fine works of art, including sculptures, paintings and drawings, which we could not normally have hoped to acquire.”

Phillip A. Bruno said:

"I am so looking forward to seeing my gifts on a Scottish wall!"

A Gift to Glasgow from New York: The Phillip A. Bruno Collection is at the Hunterian Art Gallery from 18 October 2019 until 12 January 2020. Admission is free. 

Hunterian Art Gallery
University of Glasgow
82 Hillhead Street
Glasgow G12 8QQ

Open Tuesday – Saturday 10.00am – 5.00pm and Sunday 11.00am – 4.00pm
Admission free
glasgow.ac.uk/hunterian

^{Images: Leroy Lamis, Construction 108, c.1965, coloured Perspex © Leroy Lamis/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2019.
Masayuki Nagare, Nagare Bachi, 1974. © Nagare Foundation, Takamatsu City.}

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First published: 25 September 2019