Louise Nevelson, Untitled, 1972

Narrator: Look closely at this collage. In the center, there is small piece of silver visible. Clémence White talks about the materials Nevelson included in these works, which were made later in the artist’s career.

Clémence White: The collage has a square of silver foil on it. She's using a stamp from a film company to create texture, but also is imprinting the logo of this film company onto the foil. She's really thinking about all of her materials as divorced from the context in which they exist. No material was too lowly for her. And she was really interested in giving this other life to discarded objects.

Narrator: In these collages, Nevelson put old works of her own side by side found materials. In doing so, she asks us to consider the power that everyday objects have to transport us. Nevelson describes how she felt upon returning to New York after a trip abroad.

Louise Nevelson: I returned to America and New York and I'd got into the subways. The columns in the subways are black iron. And for me, personally, they certainly had as much meaning, and in form as well as many of the things that are in museums. I didn't make that distinction, for me. And they still have that power and they still are grand and glorious.