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Time Capsule: Paul Klee

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. 

“Klee builds himself a little house of art in a realm somewhere between childhood’s innocence and everyman’s prospect of infinity.”—Duncan Phillips, c. 1938 

In 1930, Duncan Phillips acquired Tree Nursery by Paul Klee, becoming the third United States museum to own his work, after the Detroit Institute of Arts and New York University’s former Gallery of Living Art. From the 1930s through the 1950s, Duncan Phillips acquired 13 of Klee’s oil and watercolor works. They spanned the artist’s career—a strong unit that remains a cornerstone of the museum’s permanent collection. 

Committed to bringing Klee’s art to a larger audience, Phillips placed his work on nearly continuous view after 1948 in what came to be known as the “Klee Room.” The Klee Room served as an abiding source of inspiration for the generation of midcentury American abstract painters, especially Washington, DC-based artists Gene Davis and Kenneth Noland.

Black and white photo of artworks by Paul Klee displayed at The Phillips Collection
Photograph of “Klee Room” in Gallery A on the second floor of the Phillips House, 1963 (prior to 1983-84 renovations)
Photograph of Gallery B on the second floor of the Phillips House, 1984
Photograph of “Klee Room” in Gallery B on the second floor of the Phillips House, 1984

As a memorial to Klee, Phillips and art dealer Karl Nierendorf developed a loan show in 1942. In a June letter Phillips explained, “We have a delightful room of Paul Klee’s paintings installed … I think we should have a price list not only for our own interest and information but the possibility that we might find purchasers among our visitors.”

Letter from Duncan Phillips to Karl Nierendorf, June 9, 1942, where Phillips talks about the museum’s “delightful room of Paul Klee’s.”
Letter from Duncan Phillips to Karl Nierendorf, June 9,1942, where Duncan Phillips talks about the museum’s “delightful room of Paul Klee’s.”
Paul Klee A Memorial Exhibition brochure
For Paul Klee’s memorial exhibition in 1942, Phillips contributed an essay to the pamphlet, writing: “No art could be more personal than the art of Klee.”

As you explore how Paul Klee’s work has been displayed and read about his importance to Duncan Phillips, consider the role a single artist can play in influencing a generation of artists. 

See works by Paul Klee in Breaking It Down and browse more materials about the Phillips’s Klee unit in the archives.