By Jim Lowe
Staff Writer
Artists Wolf Kahn (1927-2020) and Emily Mason (1932-2019) not only left their mark on American art, they left an indelible impression on Vermont’s art and artists. The couple, who split their time between New York City and Brattleboro, founded the Wolf Kahn | Emily Mason Foundation in 1998, originally to support cultural institutions through grants for exhibitions, artists residencies and community engagement with the arts.
“The foundation has consistently been giving about $110,000 a year in grants to cultural and educational organizations,” explains Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, recently named interim president and CEO of the foundation.
“Now that the artists are no longer with us, the foundation has this legacy responsibility,” she said by phone. “So now it will own art works and be responsible for how Wolf Kahn’s work is seen and appreciated in the future.”
A Christie’s New York live auction May 18, and online sales open now through May 20, will benefit the Wolf Kahn | Emily Mason Foundation, as well as Emily Mason | Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation.
Titled “Fields of Vision: The Private Collection of Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason,” the Christie’s auction will feature works by some of the world’s most distinguished artists, including Georgia O’Keeffe, Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud, Charles Demuth, Milton Avery and Lee Bontecou. In addition, the auction will offer important works by Kahn and Mason.
McCulloch-Lovell, once executive director of the Vermont Arts Council, served in national cultural and policy positions in the Clinton White House, at the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and the Library of Congress, as well as chief of staff to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., for more than 10 years. Most recently McCulloch-Lovell served a decade as president of Marlboro College, and interim executive director of the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson.
“Wolf Kahn’s paintings are beautiful and move us, and bring people to looking at the world in a new way,” McCulloch-Lovell said. “And because even though a lot of people see Wolf Kahn as a landscape painter, his main concern was color and form. He worked on that consistently and distilled it so that toward the end of his career — not that this is a value — you could almost see the paintings as abstractions.
“The fields are there, the barn is a shape behind the trees and the big fluffs of hill and sky are there, but what’s completely absorbing is the use of color and form,” she said. “I see them really as almost spiritual expressions — as abstractions of the world that make us think more deeply into it. Calling him a landscape artist is a great oversimplification.”
Mason was an abstract painter and printmaker, who developed her individual approach to Abstract Expressionist traditions. In their 62-year marriage, Kahn and Mason raised a family, had independent studio practices, and a lifetime of sharing friendships and influencing each other. This collection represents the work they admired and lived with, including what they acquired from artist friends.
“I think both Wolf and Emily thought of themselves as New York artists, along with their influences, however, they did live half of the year on that hillside farm in Brattleboro and were very much involved with other artists and arts organizations, in Vermont — and were extremely generous toward them,” McCulloch-Lovell said.
Both were very instrumental in the Vermont Studio Center.
“They wanted to support organizations that supported artists and arts education,” McCulloch-Lovell said. “Because the Studio Center supports those residencies and that precious time that artists have to create, that was a big cause of theirs.”
As was Marlboro College and the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center. In 2017, the BMAC hosted a major Kahn exhibition. In an interview with the online news website VTDigger, Danny Lichtenfeld, the museum’s director, said, “Wolf Kahn is to southern Vermont what Winslow Homer is to the coast of Maine, Georgia O’Keeffe to the New Mexico high desert and Claude Monet to the French countryside.”
In 2020, the year of her death, Mason created her own foundation, the Emily Mason | Alice Trumbull Foundation.
“I think it grew out of her awareness of her work on her mother’s catalogue raisonné,” McCulloch-Lovell said. “Alice Trumbull (1904-71) was a pioneer of modern abstraction, and her work was not as appreciated as it should have been during her lifetime.
“So the legacy responsibilities will be divided between the two foundations,” McCulloch-Lovell said.
[email protected] / [email protected]
As your daily newspaper, we are committed to providing you with important local news coverage for Sullivan County and the surrounding areas.