KALLIR RESEARCH INSTITUTE DONATES 16 ARTWORKS TO MAJOR AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS IN 2023-2024.
KALLIR RESEARCH INSTITUTE DONATES 16 ARTWORKS TO MAJOR AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS IN 2023-2024.
New York, NY – [MAY 22, 2024] –The Kallir Research Institute is pleased to announce the donation of seven works by Käthe Kollwitz to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and nine works by Anna Mary Robertson (“Grandma”) Moses to the following three institutions: the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM), Washington, D.C.; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and, the Bennington Museum, Bennington, Vermont. The estimated total value of the 16 donations is approximately $3.5 million.
Five Kollwitz drawings (Marching Weavers, Six People at a Table by Lamplight, Storm, The End and Mother and Children Going Toward Death) and two rare etchings (Mother and Dead Son and Widow with Dead Child) were given to MoMA on the occasion of Käthe Kollwitz (the museum’s current exhibition of the artist’s work on view through July 20). These works, donated by the family of KRI namesake Otto Kallir, honor his longtime associate, Hildegard Bachert who passed away in 2019. “If Hildegard were alive today, she would certainly consider MoMA’s current Kollwitz show a dream come true,” said KRI President Jane Kallir. “Hildegard would be thrilled to see these important works enter the museum’s collection, and so are we.”
The three Moses paintings (Checkered House, The Old Automobile and In Harvest Time) donated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum are part of a long-term gifting program that will eventually result in the establishment of a “Grandma” Moses study center in Washington, D.C. SAAM is mounting a Moses retrospective in 2025.
Otto Kallir gave Anna Mary Robertson Moses her first solo exhibition in 1940 and represented her until her death in 1961. In the early 1940s, he promoted the artist by organizing traveling exhibitions, collecting her best paintings for that purpose. Later, he considered using those works to establish a “Grandma” Moses museum. His granddaughter, Jane Kallir, decided to distribute the paintings more widely. “Fortunately, we have enough works to create a core collection in Washington, as well as smaller satellite collections in museums, such as the High and Bennington, that have demonstrated an enthusiastic commitment to the artist,” she notes.
The Kallir family has donated three Moses paintings (Mt. Nebo in Winter, Sugaring Off and Old Times) to the Bennington Museum, which houses the largest permanent display of the artist’s work in the U.S. The Kallir family will be giving the High Museum of Art a total of six Moses works over the next three years. Three of these (Jack & Jill, Night is Coming and The Covered Bridge) are being donated in 2024.
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About the Kallir Research Institute
The Kallir Research Institute (KRI) is a nonprofit foundation established in 2017 to continue and expand upon the scholarship of art historian and art dealer Otto Kallir (1894-1978). Our research focuses primarily on the Austrian and German Expressionists, foremost among them Egon Schiele, Richard Gerstl and Käthe Kollwitz. The KRI also specializes in the work of artists who were introduced to the U.S. by Kallir—including Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Alfred Kubin, and Paula Modersohn-Becker.
Image credit, clockwise left to right: Käthe Kollwitz, Woman and Children Going to Their Death (Frau mit Kindern in den Tod gehend), 1924, charcoal on gray paper. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the Kallir Family in honor of Hildegard Bachert.
Anna Mary Robertson (“Grandma”) Moses, The Old Automobile, 1944, oil on pressed wood. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Kallir Family in Memory of Hildegard Bachert. © Grandma Moses Properties, New York.
Anna Mary Robertson (“Grandma”) Moses, Sugaring Off, 1951, oil on pressed wood. Bennington Museum, Vermont, Gift of the Kallir Family in honor of Hildegard Bachert. © Grandma Moses Properties, New York.
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