The Museum of Modern Art opened Picasso's Guitars 1912-1914 on February 13, 2011. Artforum's fetched exhibition page gives the exact run, February 13-June 6, and identifies Anne Umland as curator. The show centered on Picasso's cardboard Guitar of 1912 and sheet-metal Guitar of 1914, works that MoMA treated as pivots between Cubist collage, constructed sculpture, and the broader twentieth-century move away from carving and modeling toward assembled form. Artforum's preview connected the exhibition to William Rubin's earlier curatorial and acquisition work at MoMA, while the 2011 in art listing corroborated the date and institution. The exhibition mattered because it concentrated attention on a narrow but foundational moment in Picasso's studio practice rather than on a broad retrospective narrative.
It reinforced Picasso's guitars as touchstones for modern constructed sculpture and collage.
