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Following the $8.1M single-seller Christie’s sale of highlights from their collection in May 2021, the two foundations devoted to the respective legacies of the late, 62-years-married artists Emily Mason and Wolf Kahn are pleased to announce their first joint giving initiative: $800,000 in grants to six arts organizations in New York City and Vermont, the two locales in which the couple built their lives and art practices.
While they spent summers in their foliage-surrounded studios on the grounds of the Brattleboro farm they purchased in 1968, the couple’s NYC roots go back to before Emily was born. She was the daughter of Alice Trumbull Mason, who co-founded the American Abstract Artists group with Josef Albers in 1936 and was a leading, avant-garde force among the “boys club” of Abstraction in the 1930s-1960s New York art world. Emily came of age sitting at her mother’s feet at Eighth Street Club gatherings (with Elaine de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko, and others)—which is where Wolf and Emily met in 1956. Separately, Wolf Kahn (a Holocaust refugee who escaped Germany via Kindertransport in 1939) got his start on the New York scene as a studio assistant to Hans Hofmann.
Having both been active participants in the cultural moment that saw New York achieve international prominence as a hub of artistic innovation, Emily and Wolf were prolific supporters of the city’s younger generations of creators. As further outlined in the press release linked here and above, the grant recipients’ focuses revolve around five intersecting themes that were important to Wolf and Emily during their lifetime. 2022 GRANT RECIPIENT OVERVIEW (further details and specific designations are in the press release): • Brattleboro Museum & Art Center • The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop) • Hunter College (Advanced Curatorial Certificate Program) • International Print Center New York • New York Botanical Garden • Vermont Studio Center
See the Dropbox folder linked above to download high-resolution image files. Image year and photographer (if known) are in each image’s file title; image reuse must be with credit to the Emily Mason | Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation and the Wolf Kahn Foundation.
