ReTooled: Highlights from the Hechinger Collection

Tools as Art, both the premise and title of John Hechinger’s collection, is the culmination of a relationship between man and his tools….[his] discerning and keen eye has amassed an important group of works worthy of museums.

– ReTooled artist Arman,exerpt from Tools as Art, Sarah Tanguy

"I felt that if I could show my associates how so many artists had celebrated the handsaw or the hammer or the paint brush, they would be aware of the intrinsic beauty of the simple objects that they handled by the tens of thousands. They were not only the focus of their workdays, but our company’s very lifeblood."

– John Hechinger

ReTooled brings life to the unexpected subject of tools by profiling 28 visionary artists from the Hechinger Collection including Arman, Anthony Caro, Richard Estes, Howard Finster, Red Grooms, Jacob Lawrence, Fernand Léger, Roger Shimomura, and H.C. Westermann; photographers Berenice Abbott, William Eggleston, and Walker Evans; and pop artists Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, and James Rosenquist. Featuring more than 40 imaginative paintings, sculptures, works on paper and photographs, the exhibition consists of four sections that dynamically frame the themes of this collection into accessible categories: Objects of Beauty; Material Illusions; Instruments of Satire; and Tools: An Extension of Self.

Some of the artists represent tools with reverence to accentuate their purity of design. Others transform and distort tools to highlight their tragic obsolescence in a technological age. But all of the works remind us that tools embody the can-do spirit that defines America and the quest to improve our quality of life.

The Hechinger Collection
What began in the 1980s as an initiative to make his rapidly expanding hardware company’s new headquarters appear less bare resulted in John Hechinger’s acquisition of a tool-inspired collection of diverse 20th century art. Illuminating a variety of modern and contemporary art that celebrates an overlooked subject through pun, wit, and wonder, The Hechinger Collection has exhibited at venues such as the National Building Museum, the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, the Joslyn Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design. To learn more about IA&A's Hechinger Collection, click here.

Please contact Eileen Streeter for more information.

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