Calmer New York living through minimalist art

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Show Us Your Walls
By Randy Kennedy

Nathalie de Gunzburg with Carl Andre’s “The Way East West (Uncarved Blocks),” center. Left to right in back: three sculptures by Louise Bourgeois, Dan Flavin’s “Untitled (Fondly to Helen).” Right, Glenn Ligon’s “Stranger #39.” Credit Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

NEW YORK----It’s quite a distance — stylistically and chronologically — from the brightly colored geometry of the French early-Modernist painter Sonia Delaunay to the Shaker-like austerity of the Minimalist sculptor Carl Andre. But in her collecting life, Nathalie de Gunzburg, the chairwoman of the Dia Art Foundation’s board in Manhattan, has bridged the gap. Their Upper East Side townhouse is a well-lived-in shrine to many artists from that generation — Andre, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and Robert Smithson — but also to bold outliers like Louise Bourgeois. Here are edited excerpts from a conversation during our visit. [link]