Since the beginning of 2009, the Tower Gallery of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., high in the East Wing, has been home to a series of long-running solo exhibitions that are small but revealing and dedicated, we are told, to “developments in art since mid-century.” Initiated on the watch of Harry Cooper, the museum’s curator and head of modern art, the first five exhibitions of the “In the Tower” program focused on the work of Philip Guston, Mark Rothko, Mel Bochner, Nam June Paik, and Barnett Newman. Not surprisingly, given this idiosyncratic, diverse list, each of the shows was slightly different, now emphasizing a particular group of works, now examining a particular moment in an artist’s evolution, now circling around a particular motif or obsession, but always taking a narrow slice of the material under review. Some exhibitions have been drawn almost entirely from the National Gallery’s own collections, while others have brought seldom seen private holdings to public attention.
Whatever the specific approach, the format has been straightforward and effective. Major works are installed in the generously proportioned, light-flooded main space, with the dimmer, corridor-like space through which we approach the larger gallery used for an introductory or parallel section that includes related and/or contextual works, frequently on paper, along with didactic material and, often, short films. The Newman installation, for example, in the large gallery consisted of his well-known series of large black and white canvases, The Stations of the Cross,
