The Brooklyn Museum Expands Collection with Over 330 Acquisitions #art

New York. The Brooklyn Museum has acquired over 330 artworks this year, enriching its encyclopedic collection representing 6,000 years of creative excellence. These acquisitions strengthen institutional holdings across collection areas, including American Art, Arts of Africa, Asian Art, Contemporary Art, Feminist Art, Decorative Arts and Design, and Photography. 

Gifts in honor of the 200th anniversary

More than one hundred of the acquisitions are gifts of art given by the Museum’s valued donors in honor of its 200th anniversary. They will be displayed in the upcoming exhibition Breaking the Mold: Brooklyn Museum at 200, open February 28, 2025–February 22, 2026. In particular, the exhibition will showcase extraordinary gifts of contemporary art, including paintings, photographs, video, sculpture, and ceramics. Exemplary gifts of work by well-established artists such as Julie Mehretu, Robert Frank, Alex Katz, and Coco Fusco will be joined by contributions from influential artists working today, many of whom are based in Brooklyn. Breaking the Mold will rotate works halfway through its run, displaying additional major gifts the Museum has received in honor of its bicentennial (to be announced in 2025). Other gifts are currently on display throughout the Museum, including in the reinstalled American Art galleries and on the Iris Cantor Plaza.

The Decorative Arts and Design collection has seen tremendous growth. A gift of thirty-five icons and prototypes, including twenty-five notable works of Italian Radical Design dating from approximately 1965 to 1989, from leading design collector and creative designer Dennis Freedman builds on the Museum’s superlative holdings of Italian design. The 200th anniversary has also been an opportunity to add works of contemporary design by Jorge Lizarazo of Hechizoo and Chris Schanck.

Important gifts of American art can be seen in Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art, the Museum’s critically acclaimed reinstallation of its American Art galleries, such as pieces by Kyōhei Inukai the Elder. Those works, as well as new additions by Kyōhei Inukai the Younger, bolster the trailblazing collection of art by Asian American artists within the American Art collection.

Looking forward February 2025 to admire the Brooklyn Museum latest acquisitions!

@titinapenzini