In the late 1980s, when museums of contemporary art began to be founded throughout the world, Gertrude Stein’s oft-quoted, yet perhaps apocryphal comment to MoMA founding director Alfred H. Barr Jr. – “You can be a museum, or you can be modern, but you can’t be both” – came back to haunt us. Read more…

Image: Gertrude Stein’s apartment at 27 Rue de Fleurus, Paris, 1920

Home at last! After traveling with The Steins Collect to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Grand Palais in Paris, our beloved Woman with a Hat and The Girl with Green Eyes are going back on view today! Welcome home, ladies :)

Our favorite family of expatriots has hit NYC! If you’re anywhere near the Met in the next few months, you MUST go see The Steins Collect!

(via The Steins’ Collection Of Parisian Avant-Garde Art Hits The Met (PHOTOS))

In her quote, “There is no there there,” Gertrude Stein is referring to her home town of Oakland. This article investigates the meaning of the often misinterpreted quote: Inside Google Books: Gertrude Stein puts the “there” back in Oakland

Happy Birthday to the one and only Gertrude Stein, born on this day in 1874!

Along with her brother Leo, Gertrude Stein was among the first Americans to respond with enthusiasm to the artistic revolution in Europe in the early years of the twentieth century. The weekly salons she held in her Paris apartment became a magnet for European and American artists and writers alike, and her support of Matisse, Braque, Gris, and Picasso was evident in her many acquisitions of their work. 

Pictured here: Picasso’s Gertrude Stein, 1905-6

(via The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

This 1878 Cezanne portrait was the first in Gertrude and Leo Stein’s collection. Cezanne has painted his wife’s right eye completely black.

(via For Gertrude Stein, Collecting Art Was A Family Affair : NPR)

For those of you who listen to NPR, you may have heard the Stein feature today on Morning Edition. With The Steins Collect now on view in Paris, Steinmania has spread across the globe! Listen to the full story here: For Gertrude Stein, Collecting Art Was A Family Affair : NPR

(On another note, how amazing is the above photo? It’s Matisse painting the infamous Portrait of Michael Stein, with Michael sitting in the background.)

Sad to see this piece get crated up and shipped off to the Grand Palais in Paris for the next installment of The Steins Collect.

artknowledge:

Henri Matisse - “Blue Nude”, 1907

roymtz:

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.