Paintings by Hopper, Rothko and other leading American artists go on show next week for visitors to the US Ambassador's residence in Phoenix Park. Lucky visitors, writes Patsey Murphy
When the US Ambassador to Ireland, Mr Thomas C Foley - the third ambassador appointed during George W Bush's presidency - arrived at the residence in Phoenix Park in 2006, he brought with him a number of paintings from his private collection, including works by Matisse and Leger, to personalise the rather impersonal, if sumptuous, mansion. In no time he had arranged for the installation of this Sol LeWitt wall drawing in the entrance hall, in cooperation with the Addison Gallery of American Art and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. It lends a certain "modern spark" to the 18th-century house, says the ambassador.
LeWitt is regarded as one of the founders of both minimal and conceptual art. He began making wall drawings in 1968, using precise measured formats, such as grids and modules, and systematically developed variations. This one is a series of eight arcs and lines drawn in white crayon on a black grid of 12-inch squares; each line is selected at random from a paper cup. Irish Times photographer Alan Betson is responsible for choosing one of the arcs, which he plucked from the cup while photographing the installation-in-progress.
Ambassador Foley is an avid collector who serves on the board of the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts, where his son attends Phillips Academy. For his tenure in Dublin, he has tapped into the Art in Embassies programme, which borrows work from museums, galleries and private and corporate collections for exhibition in US diplomatic residences. He abandoned the search for a theme, and chose individual works instead, although he found it difficult. "Homer or Hopper? Stuart or Stella? Feininger or Frankenthaler? Ray or Rothko? Gorky or Gornick? These are intimidating choices that people outside of the curatorial world do not typically make," he says of his happy dilemma.
In the end he chose "uniquely American" paintings by Mark Rothko, Edward Hopper, Helen Frankenthaler, Gifford Beal and Milton Avery. While these paintings are on temporary loan, one imagines the LeWitt installation, applied to the wall as it is, will remain for some time. Now the trick is to get invited to a reception to see them. Make ready a box of Ferrero Rocher.