Laura Owens, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum - September 9th, 2024

In conjunction with her exhibition “Laura Owens: New Work at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,” which took place in Boston from May to September 2001, Owens designed the present catalog. “Laura Owens: New Work” contains drawings made exclusively for the publication, personal photographs, new paintings, and reproductions of several textile works from the Gardener's collection Owens found inspiring during her residency with the museum.

64 pages
17.15 x 24.77 cm
Hardcover
ISBN: 9788881583287
*Mint, rare

After gaining a critical following in the late 1990s, Owens spent the spring of 2000 as a resident at the Gardner Museum working and living in the Carriage House apartment on the far end of the museum grounds among the gardens and greenhouses. 

According to the museum, “[Owens] divided her time between reading, studying the collection, painting in a studio at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and bicycling around Boston. […] She was particularly drawn to the Museum’s collection of Japanese screens and textiles. These included several examples of cut velvet fabrics, embroideries, and a 19th-century Japanese silk kimono with a painting of a badger looking at the moon. Owens incorporated this scene into a large painting that was later shown in her 2001 exhibition ‘Laura Owens: New Work.’” 

“Laura Owens: New Work at The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum” is the first solo museum exhibition of works by Owens, one of the most celebrated painters of her generation credited with the rebirth of contemporary painting. 

The catalog features essays by curators Pieranna Cavalchini, Russell Ferguson, Jennifer Gross, and Anne Hawley, and it was published by Charta.