Elaine Dannheisser (Brooklyn 1923 - 2001 Manhattan) was an avid contemporary art collector and driving force behind the Werner and Elaine Dannheisser Art Collection. She was a onetime trustee of the

Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: Locations Americas * The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...

. Following an exhibition of her collection in 1997-98, she donated the largest ever cache of contemporary art to the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

Early activity

Early in her life, Elaine Dannheisser studied art at

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

. Werner Dannheisser (1909–1992) and Elaine married and initially collected

French painting French art consists of the visual and plastic arts (including French architecture, woodwork, textiles, and ceramics) originating from the geographical area of France. Modern France was the main centre for the European art of the Upper Paleolit ...

such as

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

Jean Dubuffet Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (31 July 1901 – 12 May 1985) was a French Painting, painter and sculpture, sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what ...

Maurice Utrillo Maurice Utrillo (), born Maurice Valadon; 26 December 1883 – 5 November 1955), was a French painter of the School of Paris who specialized in cityscapes. Born in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painte ...

and

Fernand Léger Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (; February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painting, painter, sculpture, sculptor, and film director, filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as "tubism") which he gradually ...

. In the 1980s the Dannheissers sold their French painting collection and began to purchase

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic com ...

from Soho and East Village galleries. Elaine became a passionate bridge player, frequently spending six hours a day at the Beverly Bridge Club, at

Lexington Avenue Lexington Avenue, often colloquially abbreviated as "Lex", is an avenue on the East Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City that carries southbound one-way traffic from East 131st Street to Gramercy Park at East 21st Street. Along it ...

and 57th Street.

Dannheisser Foundation

In 1982, the couple established the Dannheisser Foundation, which donated art works to museums and maintained a 9,000-square-foot space on Duane Street in lower Manhattan for art display and on-site

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

. There they held an extensive collection of contemporary art, including work by

Bruce Nauman Bruce Nauman (born December 6, 1941) is an American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives near Galisteo, New Mexico. Life and work ...

Brice Marden Brice Marden (born October 15, 1938) is an American artist generally described as Minimalist, although his work may be hard to categorize. He lives and works in New York City; Tivoli, New York; Hydra, Greece; and Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania. Life ...

and

Robert Gober Robert Gober (born September 12, 1954) is an American sculptor. His work is often related to domestic and familiar objects such as sinks, doors, and legs. Early life and education Gober was born in Wallingford, Connecticut and studied literat ...

. With The Dannheisser Foundation, the Dannheissers focused on a comparatively small number of key figures from the wide variety of new art produced during this period. Their taste ran to art of severe formality or startling graphic intensity, from the minimalist sculpture of

Carl Andre Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear and grid format sculptures and for the suspected murder of contemporary and wife, Ana Mendieta. His sculptures range from large public art ...

and

Richard Serra Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material quality and exploration o ...

, the austere paintings of

Robert Ryman Robert Ryman (May 30, 1930February 8, 2019) was an American painter identified with the movements of monochrome painting, minimalism, and conceptual art. He was best known for abstract, white-on-white paintings. He lived and worked in New York C ...

, and the

conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

projects of

Felix Gonzalez-Torres Felix may refer to: * Felix (name), people and fictional characters with the name Places * Arabia Felix is the ancient Latin name of Yemen * Felix, Spain, a municipality of the province Almería, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, ...

to the staged photographs of

Cindy Sherman Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Her breakthrough work is often co ...

. Other artists in the collection at one time or another included

Mark Innerst Mark Innerst (born 1957 in York, PA) is an American painter known for his luminous urban landscapes. Biography Innerst earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Kutztown State College, Kutztown, PA in 1980. He worked as a preparator at the newly for ...

Jeff Koons Jeffrey Lynn Koons (; born January 21, 1955) is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror- finish su ...

Matthew Barney Matthew Barney (born March 25, 1967) is an American contemporary artist and film director who works in the fields of sculpture, film, photography and drawing. His works explore connections among geography, biology, geology and mythology as well ...

Joseph Nechvatal Joseph Nechvatal (born January 15, 1951) is an American post-conceptual digital artist and Aesthetics, art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings and computer animations, often using custom-created computer viruses. Life and work ...

Bernd and Hilla Becher Bernhard "Bernd" Becher (; 20 August 1931 – 22 June 2007), and Hilla Becher, née Wobeser (2 September 1934 – 10 October 2015), were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their ...

Andreas Gursky Andreas Gursky (born 15 January 1955) is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. He is known for his Large format (photography), large format architecture and Landscape photography, landscape colour photogr ...

Thomas Struth Thomas Struth (born 11 October 1954) is a German photographer who is best known for his ''Museum Photographs'' series, family portraits and black and white photographs of the streets of Düsseldorf and New York taken in the 1970s. Struth lives ...

Gilbert & George Gilbert Prousch, sometimes referred to as Gilbert Proesch (born 17 September 1943 in San Martin de Tor, Italy), and George Passmore (born 8 January 1942 in Plymouth, United Kingdom), are two artists who work together as the collaborative art du ...

Dan Graham Daniel Graham (March 31, 1942 – February 19, 2022) was an American visual artist, writer, and curator in the writer-artist tradition. In addition to his visual works, he published a large array of critical and speculative writing that spanned ...

Tom Otterness Tom Otterness (born 1952) is an American sculptor best known as one of America's most prolific public artists. Otterness's works adorn parks, plazas, subway stations, libraries, courthouses and museums around the world, notably in New York City's ...

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art mov ...

Tony Cragg Sir Anthony Douglas Cragg (born Liverpool 9 April 1949) is an Anglo-German sculptor, resident in Wuppertal, Germany since 1977. Early life and training Tony Cragg was born in Liverpool."Tony Cragg." ''Contemporary Artists''. Farmington Hills, ...

Katharina Fritsch Katharina Fritsch (born 14 February 1956) is a German sculptor."Katharina Fritsch: Arti ...

Anselm Kiefer Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Peter Dreher and Horst Antes at the end of the 1960s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan hav ...

, and

Sigmar Polke Sigmar Polke (13 February 1941 – 10 June 2010) was a German painter and photographer. Polke experimented with a wide range of styles, subject matters and materials. In the 1970s, he concentrated on photography, returning to paint in the 1980s ...

. Much of this adventurous collection of contemporary artworks has been donated to The

,
On The Edge: Contemporary Art from the Werner and Elaine Dannheisser Collection: September 30, 1997–January 20, 1998 although MOMA turned down Dannheisser's 1996 offer to donate

Christopher Wool Christopher Wool (born 1955) is an American artist. Since the 1980s, Wool's art has incorporated issues surrounding post-conceptual ideas. He lives and works in New York City and Marfa, Texas, together with his wife and fellow painter Charline v ...

's celebrated 1988 word painting ''Apocalypse Now'', which would sell in 2013 for $26,485,000 at

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...

auction house. The Dannheisser Foundation at Duane Street closed in 2001 on the death of Elaine Dannheisser.

Footnotes

References

* Robert Storr, Werner Dannheisser,

Kirk Varnedoe John Kirk Train Varnedoe (January 18, 1946 – August 14, 2003) was an American art historian, the Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art from 1988 to 2001, Professor of the History of Art at the Institute for Advance ...

, Elaine Dannheisser, ''On the edge: contemporary art from the Werner and Elaine Dannheisser collection'', New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1998 {{DEFAULTSORT:Dannheisser, Elaine 1923 births 2001 deaths American art collectors Women art collectors