The William S. Paley Collection, courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New YorkPicasso’s 1905-6 painting “Boy Leading a HorseBy CAROL VOGEL
August 2, 2012, 2:57 PMThe staggering art collection put together by William S. Paley, the television impresario who founded the Columbia Broadcasting System, first went on view at the Museum of Modern Art in 1992. Paley, a longtime trustee at MoMA, had left his paintings, drawings and sculptures to the museum upon his death in 1990. After MoMA showed the collection it then traveled to museums in Indianapolis, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego and Baltimore.
One city that did not get the show was San Francisco. But on Sept. 15, “The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism,’’ will open the de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco before going to the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, the Fine Arts Museum of Quebec and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark.
On view will be highlights of the Paley holdings, including Picasso’s famous 1905-6 painting “Boy Leading a Horse,’’ Gauguin’s “Seed of the Areoi’’ (1892), from the artist’s first trip to Tahiti, and Degas’s 1905 large-scale pastel and charcoal “Two Dancers.’’ The exhibition will remain on view in San Francisco through Dec. 30.
