Known primarily as an actor, Anthony Quinn was also an accomplished visual artist. Throughout his long life, he produced a wealth of artwork, including paintings, drawings, and sculptures. At the same time, Quinn was a voracious and obsessive collector, accumulating a personal collection of over 3,000 objects, including artworks, rare books, antiques, African masks, decorative eggs, and a variety of found objects such as rocks and fragments of coral.

“The T'ang Horse: Anthony Quinn” brings together a representative selection of Quinn’s own artworks, juxtaposing them with pieces from his collection. Quinn’s art and his collection were intrinsically intertwined, both nurtured and influenced by his constant travels as an international film star. Taken together, the objects in the exhibition trace the intersection of Quinn’s life, art, and film career, presenting a portrait of a prodigiously talented and tireless man who, in the words of lawyer Jay Parini, was “an actor and artist who never failed to create compelling work on any canvas he chose.”

The exhibition takes its name from Quinn’s first art acquisition as a teenager: an ancient Chinese ceramic horse sculpture, which he paid for in ten- or twenty-cent installments while working as a janitor and taking acting classes. Quinn kept the precious object throughout his long and legendary life. Today, it symbolizes his enduring commitment to art and the arts. As Quinn himself said of his fierce and insatiable need to create: “I have a need to say I was here.”