Writings on Art

Duncan Phillips was an art collector and philanthropist based in Washington, D.C., who in 1921 opened THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION, America's first museum of modern art in the United States. From the outset, the vision for the museum was "an intimate museum combined with an experiment station." As a collector, Phillips was noted for his willingness to deviate from the art museum standard of displaying works together based on shared nationality and geography, interpreting modernism as a dialogue between past and present. He collected the work of his contemporaries at a time when art that did not follow traditional, academic standards was not widely accepted as aesthetically and culturally valuable. This philosophy of taking risks allowed for Phillips to be the first to collect and exhibit artists who were not well known at the time, such as Milton Avery, Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Arthur Dove, Louis Eilshemius, Morris Graves, Jacob Lawrence, Grandma Moses, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Rufino Tamayo.