PETER RUTA painting acquired by 9/11 Memorial Museum

October 2016, a month before he died, Westbeth painter Peter Ruta invited Jan Ramirez, curator at the 9/11 Memorial Museum to the studio, to offer a donation to their collection. Ramirez chose the work (o/c 44×56 in) painted from Westbeth roof in 1979 when the West Side Highway hadnt come down and Battery Park City had not yet gone up.

Ramirez praised the work as a painting in which “the Towers loom as both subject in the downtown cityscape, and foil for some dazzling color and afternoon light demonstrations. … It will prove a wonderful teaching piece as well as a visually engaging historical “document.”

One of a series Ruta painted in those years, and showed at Museum of the City of New York in 2004.

Westbeth’s programming is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State. Westbeth is supported in part by an American Rescue Plan Act grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support general operating expenses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.