MoMA makes significant purchase of Denny works

In the scheme of things a New Zealand artist getting something purchased by the Museum of Modern Art is a very rare thing indeed. Len Lye has work there and so too film maker Gregor Nicholas. Now it’s Simon Denny’s turn. Today MoMA confirmed that five significant works by the artist have been acquired by the Department of Painting and Sculpture for the permanent collection.  They are Berlin Startup Case Mod: Rocket Internet (2014), 16.20 Family Strings, 16.40 Conversation, 17.05 Break (3 works; all 2013) and All you Need is ... Data? (2013).

For Denny the MoMA confirmation represents the high point of a number of significant purchases into important collections including Channel document into the Rubell Family collection in Miami. Last month his exhibition New management at Portikus in Frankfurt was also purchased by a private collector.

Denny received news of the MoMA confirmation as he was setting up his exhibition The personal effects of Kim Dotcom at Wellington’s Adam Art Gallery. The scale of the confiscations of Dotcom’s possessions by the New Zealand police is revealing. Anyone looking at the ambition and complexity of this show will get a great insight into why Denny was the object of desire for the famed New York museum.
Image: Berlin Startup Case Mod: Rocket Internet, now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York