Joseph Shapiro
1904–1996
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Joe served as the MCA’s president from the time it opened in October 1967 to 1973 and remained active on the board until the end of his life. His enthusiasm for art, especially surrealist art, lives on through the works of art he collected and generously donated to the MCA.
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- Enrico Baj, Le General Mechant et Decore (Angry General with Decorations), 1961
- Long An abstract collaged painting of a creepy ginger-bread shaped person wearing elements of a uniform: a maroon sash, military pins, and epaulets. His hair is made of a fringe of an epaulet that frames a face with distorted features. Its right eye is round and bulging, white with a large black pupil; its left is a red iris and a white pupil outlined by green, with a brown raised nose and black horizontal strokes form a mouth with three small white teeth. The body is composed of many green, brown, and tan blotches that almost look like mold or moss. The background is maroon with golden floral decoration. The painting is in a distressed wood gold-and-brown-painted frame.
- Catherine Opie, Untitled 13 (Chicago) from American Cities series, 2004–05
- Long In the horizontal black-and-white photograph taken at night, a high-rise building cropped by the image frame dwarfs a church to its right. An empty lot fills the foreground of the deserted neighborhood, drawing attention to bright starbursts from the streetlights. The spare high-rise with rectangular windows contrasts with the traditional church and steeple topped by a cross. The dark sky and white buildings and ground create the impression of a photographic negative.
