The Robertsons’ Picassos | Rivalry and Wish-Fulfilment

The Robertson Gift: Paths through Modernity  includes important paintings by major European artists of the modern era from the collection of New York philanthropists Julian and Josie Robertson. Donating 15 modernist masterworks to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and five more to North Carolina Museum of Art, the New York couple transformed these public institutions’ ability to tell the story of modern art. 

In this lecture, Kenneth Brummel, Curator, International Art, will focus on Woman in a Hairnet [Femme à la résille], 1938 and Mère et enfants à l’orange [Mother and Children with an Orange], 1951, two paintings by Pablo Picasso donated by the Robertsons in 2023. Identifying and analysing the art-historical sources of these highly intertextual works, Kenneth will show how they bespeak universal anxieties the artist experienced at mid-career in the late 1930s and at mid-century when he was turning 70 years old.

Joining in live-streamed from the United States to respond to Kenneth’s lecture are Jared Ledesma, Curator of 20th-century and Contemporary Art at the North Carolina Museum of Art, which received an important 1952 painting by Picasso from the Robertsons’ collection in 2023, and Dr Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Senior Curator of European Arts at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.

Online and in-person audience members will be encouraged to participate in a Q&A session.

[4pm CST on Friday, 12 DEC U.S.A.]

[5pm EST on Friday, 12 DEC U.S.A.]

The exhibition The Robertson Gift: Paths through Modernity is on show at the Gallery until Sun 1 February 2026.

 

Kenneth Brummel has over 15 years’ experience working at major art museums in Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand and the United States of America. In 2021–22, he was co-curator of Picasso: Painting the Blue Period, which was named a top 10 international exhibition by The Wall Street Journal and the third-best exhibition in the world by The Washington Post. At Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, he is co-curator of The Robertson Gift: Paths through Modernity and coordinating curator of Pop to Present: American Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. A specialist of 19th- and 20th-century international art, Brummel has mounted exhibitions on a range of modern artists, including Vilhelm Hammershøi, Joan Mitchell and Jean Paul Riopelle, Anthony Caro, and Andy Warhol. His collaborative research in the field of technical art history has been covered in major magazines and newspapers such as National Geographic, The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine and Science. Brummel holds an MA in art history from The University of Chicago.

Jared Ledesma is Curator of 20th-century and Contemporary Art at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. Since joining the NCMA in 2022, Ledesma has organised many exhibitions including Allana Clarke: Tender, David Gilbert: Flutter, and most recently the traveling show Grace Hartigan: The Gift of Attention. He has also secured notable works by Ruth Asawa, Gwen Knight and Irene Rice Pereira, among others, for the museum’s collection. Ledesma held previous curatorial roles at the Akron Art Museum, the Des Moines Art Center, where he organised the groundbreaking, travelling exhibition Queer Abstraction, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Dr Aimee Marcereau DeGalan serves as the Louis L and Adelaide C Ward Senior Curator of European Arts at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, where she leads the department’s curatorial vision. A specialist in British and French 18th- and 19th-century painting, her work explores the intersections of artistic practice, materiality, and cultural exchange in Europe, advancing new perspectives on European art. An alumna of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, she has held posts at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Dayton Art Institute, and the University of Vermont.

Image: The Robertson apartment, photo by Gavin Ashworth, 2009 {reproduction} | Kenneth Brummel