Murray and Isabella Rayburn Foundation

Considering the activity of the numerous foundations that contributed in spreading new expressive languages, today appears to be a fundamental operation in view of an interpretative widening of art history. Starting from this consideration, the publication - in two volumes - traces the path of the Murray and Isabella Rayburn Foundation, established in New York in 1982 with the aim of promoting Italian art in the United States. The first volume, through a rich chronology that runs from the second post-war period (“Before”) to the present day (“After”), documents both the activity of Isabella del Frate, one of the founders, and the history of the institution, which is contextualized in the moment of artistic and cultural exchange established between Rome and New York. The second volume proposes the anastatic reproduction of “Rome-New York 1948-1964”, originally conceived to accompany the homonymous exhibition curated by Germano Celant in 1993 at the Murray and Isabella Rayburn Foundation in New York. It focuses on the artistic and cultural interaction between the two cities after World War II and on the relationships between the protagonists of the moment, from Afro to Willem De Kooning, from Alberto Burri to Robert Rauschenberg, from Toti Scialoja to Cy Twombly.