The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) has received a donation of more than 450 works from the collection of the late Torontonians Carol and Morton Rapp. The trove includes examples by a murderer’s row of 20th- and 21st-century artists, including Lee Bontecou, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, William Kentridge, Roy Lichtenstein, Barnett Newman, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Yinka Shonibare, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, and Rachel Whiteread.
The Rapps began collecting prints in the 1960s and expanded their purview to contemporary photography in the 1990s. The new gift comes atop 474 works the couple had already donated. Some 203 artists are represented in the donation, which the museum will use to tell the story of printmaking from its growth in the 1960s and ’70s through the early 21st century. A number of the works include the artists’ textbook imagery.
“More than collectors, Carol and Morton Rapp were stewards of great art, eager to share and preserve the things that brought them pleasure, beauty, and insight,” Stephan Jost, AGO director and CEO, said in a statement. “During their lifetimes they contributed immensely to the cultural fabric of Toronto and to the AGO, and this gift by their family is a heartfelt expression of their enduring commitment to this place.”
Morton Rapp was a mechanical engineer by training and headed up Smith Belting, which he grew into a chain of machinery parts and distribution centers across Canada. Carol Rapp was an accomplished model, actress, and singer who performed alongside figures such as Nat King Cole and Robert Goulet. The couple also donated many works to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and his collecting extended to areas such as antique dictionaries and corkscrews. The couple also endowed a curatorial post at the AGO in 2015.
Here are 11 highlights from the gift.
