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Time Capsule: Richard Diebenkorn

Exhibitions & Events, From the Archives

Presented in conjunction with Breaking It Down: Conversations from the Vault, Time Capsule: The Phillips Collection Library & Archives is a special installation (on view Phillips House, floor 2U) featuring archival materials that reveal the museum’s dynamic relationships with artists that have “units” in the collection created by Duncan Phillips. 

The collection of works by Richard Diebenkorn at The Phillips Collection began not with Duncan, but with his nephew, Gifford. The younger Phillips and his wife Joann purchased a large home in Santa Monica, California in 1953. “We knew little or nothing about the latest trend in contemporary art,” Gifford wrote in a 2009 essay. But with wall space to fill, Gifford and Joann began visiting art dealers around Los Angeles, including the Paul Kantor Gallery. There, Gifford and Joann purchased four works by Diebenkorn in 1954, and they sent one the museum for consideration. Underwhelmed by what he described as a “composition of ambiguous shapes,” Duncan returned Berkeley #16 to Paul Kantor. Within the decade, his opinion had shifted. He acquired both Interior with View of the Ocean and Girl with Plant by 1960. 

Letter from Duncan Phillips to Mr. and Mrs. Gifford Phillips
Letter from Duncan Phillips to Gifford and Joann Phillips, May 27, 1955. Gifford sent Duncan Berkeley #16 in 1955.Phillips was initially ambivalent about the picture, stating: “we liked the Diebenkorn in color, but not quite enough in composition of the ambiguous shapes.”
Letter from Gifford Phillips to Laughlin Phillips
Letter from Gifford Phillips to Laughlin Phillips, November 29, 1977. This letter to Duncan Phillips’s son and museum director from 1972-91, confirms the gift of the painting Berkeley #1 to The Phillips Collection from Gifford and Joann Phillips
Letter from Laughlin Phillips to Richard Diebenkorn
Letter from Laughlin Phillips to “Dick” (Richard Diebenkorn), March 30, 1990. Laughlin thanked the artist for the gift of Standing Nude, noting that “Giff hadn’t heard about it before and was particularly enthusiastic.”
Letter from Duncan Phillips to Paul Kantor
Duncan Phillips to Paul Kantor, May 27, 1955, stating, “Someday we wish to acquire an example of this interesting painter… . This year we are not buying any more pictures.”

Today the Diebenkorn Unit consists of 14 works, though only those first two were acquired by Duncan himself. The remaining were gifts to the museum largely by the artist and his widow, Phyllis Diebenkorn. One notable exception is the first work in Diebenkorn’s Berkeley series, which originally hung in Gifford and Joann’s home. The letters on view give insight into how and when Diebenkorn’s art entered the collection.

See works by Richard Diebenkorn in Breaking It Down and browse more correspondence between Duncan Phillips and Tack in the archives.