What began in the 1980s as an initiative to make his rapidly expanding hardware company’s new headquarters appear less bare resulted in John Hechinger, Sr.’s acquisition of a tool-inspired collection of diverse 20th century art. The collection’s holdings of prints, drawings, paintings, and sculptures represent a variety of modern and contemporary art that incorporates tools and hardware. Among the notable artists whose work is included are: Berenice Abbott, Arman, Jim Dine, William Eggleston, Richard Estes, Walker Evans, Red Grooms, Jacob Lawrence, Fernand Léger, Claes Oldenburg, and James Rosenquist among others.
The Hechinger Collection celebrates the ubiquity of tools in our lives with work that magically transforms utilitarian objects into fanciful works of beauty, surprise, and wit. Some of the artists represent tools with reverence to accentuate their purity of design. Others transform and distort tools to highlight their tragic obsolescence in a technological age. But all of the works remind us that tools embody the can-do spirit that defines America and the quest to improve our quality of life.
