Untitled

During the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, the AMAM added important paintings and three-dimensional works by Minimalist artists to its collection, many of them purchased with financial support from Ruth Roush (OC 1932). Works by Dan Flavin entered the collection in 1973, followed by Donald Judd (1968 & 1977), Sol LeWitt (1972), Robert Mangold (1972), and Robert Morris's Untitled (1969). These works allowed Oberlin students and the public to encounter firsthand emerging artists' explorations of new forms and new processes in art making, such as the use of modern technology, industrial materials, and fabrication methods. Largely acquired through the perspicacity of Oberlin College professor of art Ellen Johnson and AMAM curator of modern art Athena Tacha, Oberlin's Minimalist collection now boasts a core group of works by artists who are widely recognized for their major contributions in setting a new course for twentieth-century art.

"The sensuous object," Morris wrote in 1966, "resplendent with compressed internal relations, has had to be rejected." The object was to be replaced, Morris explained, by a "unitary art form." The AMAM's aluminum sculpture, installed in 1970 on the museum's north lawn, illustrates Morris's vision. Composed of eight rectangular units that were fabricated in a St. Paul, Minnesota, factory according to Morris's specifications, Untitled makes use of new industrial processes for its manufacture. Its spareness of form and hard metal surface together achieve Morris's intent to create a clear, logical structure. Ironically, in the end it is not the artist's hand but the surrounding environment that creates for the work a surprisingly organic visual beauty, most apparent when sunlight filters through the openings of its individual units.