NEW ORLEANS – Earlier this month, the New Orleans Museum of Art announced the dedication of its third-floor Japanese art gallery in honor of longtime museum supporters and patrons. The Kurt A. Gitter, MD and Alice Yelen Gitter Gallery opened to the public on May 10, with a new installation titled “Envisioning Japan: Transformational Gifts from Kurt A. Gitter, MD and Alice Yelen Gitter.”
“Kurt Gitter and Alice Yelen Gitter have had an indelible impact on NOMA’s permanent collection, exhibitions, and presentations of Japanese art,” said Susan M. Taylor, the Montine McDaniel Freeman director of NOMA. “Their contributions solidified Edo period painting and contemporary Japanese ceramics as two important areas of NOMA’s collection.”
Since the 1970s, NOMA has prioritized the collection and presentation of Japanese art within its global collection. This was an outgrowth of the Gitters’ connection to the museum, and enthusiasm shared by the Gitters and NOMA’s Director Emeritus E. John Bullard.
Over the course of five decades, the Gitters have donated nearly 350 works of art to NOMA and facilitated the donation of scores of other gifts from friends, family, and colleagues. These donations, both direct and indirect, form the core of NOMA’s Japanese art collection, which prior to 1972 only included six paintings.
At a time when Edo-period painting was extremely underappreciated in the United States, Kurt Gitter and his then spouse Millie inspired and encouraged the development of NOMA’s collection in this area—a legacy continued by Gitter and Alice Yelen Gitter, who, beginning in the mid-1980s created parallel collections of contemporary Japanese ceramics and American self-taught art.
“Kurt’s significant foresight allowed NOMA to prioritize collecting Edo-period painting at a time when other museums were not doing so,” said Lisa Rotondo-McCord, NOMA’s Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Asian Art. “The Gitters’ dedication to Japanese art, and their continual support has ensured that the museum’s collection has continued to grow in both size and significance.”
While the Gitters have broadly supported the field of Japanese art through a number of institutions, NOMA remains at the center of their giving in this area, recently donating over 50 works to the collection, including historic paintings and contemporary ceramic works. This significant gift will ensure that NOMA maintains its position as one of the major collections of Edo-period painting in the United States.
“Envisioning Japan: Transformational Gifts from Kurt A. Gitter MD and Alice Yelen Gitter” is the first in a series of exhibits scheduled for the next 18 months. It pairs recent and previous donations of paintings by Zen and literati-style painters, echoing the first major exhibition of the Gitter Collection at NOMA: “Zenga and Nanga: Paintings by Japanese Monks and Scholars” in 1976. Also on view are selections from their donations of modern and contemporary Japanese ceramics. Before the gallery opens to the public, the Gitters will be honored in a private reception at the museum.
In March, the Japan Society in New York opened the exhibition None Whatsoever: Zen Paintings from the Gitter-Yelen Collection, which explores the origins of Zen Buddhism through over four centuries of ink paintings and calligraphies by painter-monks.
For 50 years, the Gitters have been dedicated to increasing scholarly and public access to Japanese art through significant donations to institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution (formerly Freer Gallery of Art). In the past decade, they have made substantial donations and undertaken significant gift/purchase agreements with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Princeton University Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
