Met Receives 'Generous Donation' for Curatorial Role
A sizeable donation from ‘Prince of Prints’ Jordan Schnitzer will fund an existing curator role for the New York museum’s department of drawings and prints, which has amassed some 1.2 million works since 1916. Save to My Ocula
Jennifer Farrell will become the first to benefit from the significant endowment to the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, following a ‘generous donation’ from American collector and print enthusiast Jordan Schnitzer.
Farrell has been tasked with the study and presentation of the department’s vast collection of some 1.2 million prints, 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas, and artists’ books.
Met director and CEO Max Hollein said the historic museum is ‘immensely grateful’ for Schnitzer’s ‘remarkable gift’. He added that the donation will enable the department to continue to collect, study, and present significant works of art on paper across time.
According to the Met, the drawings and prints division is exceptional for the scope of its collecting, which spans the rare and visually compelling to the popular and functional, promoting discussions around connoisseurship and the historical role of said materials.
The Met’s Nadine Orenstein said the Oregon-based patron, who is known for his extensive holdings of prints and multiples by postwar American artists, has been a longtime friend of the department.
Hollein said Schnitzer shares contemporary art with U.S. audiences in ‘unprecedented ways and scale’, citing his long-time work with artists, scholars, and art institutions.
Schnitzer said he is ‘honoured’ to support the position and hopes his contribution can help the Met continue to give voice to historic and contemporary artists working in ‘a powerful medium’.
The real estate entrepreneur’s print collection is among the largest of its kind in the world, featuring more than 18,000 works by the likes of Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Ellsworth Kelly.
Farrell previously held curatorial positions at the Yale University Art Gallery, the University of Virginia, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. —[O]
Main image: Exterior view of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Courtesy The Met. Photo: Brett Beyer.
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