Getty Acquires Maren Hassinger’s Archive

Los Angeles’s Getty Research Institute will acquire the archive of Maren Hassinger, theArt Newspaperreports. Hassinger, best known for her wire-rope installations and collaborative performances, has only recently gained wide acclaim, despite being active from the 1960s onward. Her work in the past few years has been acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among other institutions; in 2021, her 1971 workUntitled (Sea Anemone)greeted visitors at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s modern wing, where it was displayed across from a sculpture by Brancusi. She is currently working on a public sculpture commission for LA arts nonprofit Destination Crenshaw; a long-term installation of her work will open at Dia Beacon in upstate New York this December.RelatedHELEN FRANKENTHALER FOUNDATION SUED FOR “DESTROYING” PAINTER’S LEGACYBMA CREATES PAID INTERNSHIPS HONORING VALERIE MAYNARD Trained as a dancer, the LA-born Hassinger shifted to sculpture while attending Bennington College in Vermont, incorporating dance into her practice. Having discovered bundles of wire rope in a junkyard while earning her master’s degree at UCLA, she made the metal cable a signature material.

Hassinger frequently deployed the rope in works that emulated plant life, where its industrial appearance stood in stark contrast to the organic forms into which she shaped it. This tension is embodied, for example, inTwelve Trees #2, 1979, a group of stiff wire ropes standing upright, their top ends pulled apart to resemble branches. The Getty is acquiring Hassinger’s archive under the aegis of its African American Art History Initiative, launched in 2018, through which it has preserved troves of material belonging to Betye Saar, Richard Hunt, and architect Paul Revere Williams in addition to smaller collections documenting the work of Ed Bereal, Mark Bradford, Melvin Edwards, Adrian Piper, Lorna Simpson, and Kara Walker. Apart from archives acquired under this initiative, the Getty also houses comprehensive bodies of information on artists including Jacques-Louis David, Diego Rivera, and Mark Rothko. Spanning two hundred linear feet and dating from between the 1960s to the 2010s, Hassinger’s archive includes sketches, preparatory drawings, photographs, correspondence, print media, handwritten notes, exhibition documentation and audio-visual material..