CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI 1876-1957 A RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION - SIDNEY GEIST

Although Constantin Brancusi's name stands in pure splendor among those who have given form and meaning to modern art, his achievement reaches us ordinarily through single sculptures, while exhibitions of his work are rare.
Through their perfection, rarity, uniqueness, and through their value Brancusi's sculptures are, in the real sense of the word, treasures-treasures guarded in relative isolation from one another and seldom allowed to combine in even temporary interaction. To interrupt the remoteness of single works and to give a sense of Brancusi's total sculptural oeuvre is the purpose of this exhibition-an ambitious undertaking initiated by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in close cooperation with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago.
The task of developing the exhibition concept and preparing first an ideal, and eventually a possible, exhibition plan, devolved upon Sidney Geist, whose recent monograph, Brancusi (Grossman Publishers, New York, 1968), constituted an extraordinary qualification for such an assignment. Following his appointment as Guest Curator of the Exhibition in 1968, Mr. Geist, with the support of Dr. Louise Averill Svendsen, Curator of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and of her staff, worked to produce the current exhibition and the accompanying catalogue. The sponsoring museums are, therefore, much in his debt.
Brancusi's artistic legacy is concentrated in a relatively few collections. Museums owning a sizeable group of Brancusi's works are: the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, to whom the artist bequeathed the works found in his atelier upon his death; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which particularly through the Arensberg Collection has come to own a splendid assemblage of Brancusi's in all media; and, in New York City, the Museum of Modern Art and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum have each acquired important Brancusi collections. In addition to these, only the Rumanian Museums in Bucharest and in Craiova are in possession of more than a very few important works.
It has greatly aided the organization of this retrospective that almost all of these institutions have lent in significant numbers and that such loans were further enriched by museums with small Brancusi holdings, as well as through private loans obtained from sources throughout the world.
As a result of such participation the exhibition of 84 sculptures and 23 drawings, while still incomplete and inevitably