(Artwork text from Ann Temkin's introductory essay to Barnett Newman Philadelphia Museum of Art 2002)

TEXT TRANSCRIPTION:

"In early 1951 the Museum of Modern Art organized a survey exhibition, Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, which did not include Newman. That same year Thomas Hess published a book titled Abstract Painting, also ignoring Newman. In 1952 the Museum of Modern Art presented Fifteen Americans, among whom were Pollock, Still, Rothko, and de Kooning, but not Newman. The Guggenheim Museum presented an overview called The New Art in 1954, and the Whitney followed the next year with The New Decade. Newman was not represented in either, nor was he included in any Whitney Annual from 1950 to 1958. This stream of events established the strong sense that a history was being written, a history that would not be unwritten soon, and one in which Newman was wholly absent."