Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art has announced that it has received a donation of eight significant works of art. The donation of works are by artists, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, Jean Dubuffet, Anselm Kiefer, Joan Miró, and Ellsworth Kelly, and are reportedly worth a combined 100 million kroner or £10.6 million. The artworks were gifted to the institution by the late arts philanthropist and former director of the Riklis-McCrory Collection in New York, Celia Ascher and were reportedly Ascher’s personal favourites, The works hung in her New York home until her death in April of last year.
Celia Ascher was an art curator, advisor, collector, who passed away on April 8, 2014 aged 93. Ascher was born in Berlin, Germany, 1920. At a young age she escaped the Nazis and became a refugee in London where she met her future husband, Joseph Ascher. She married Mr. Ascher on New Year’s Day as German ‘bombs were falling’ on the city of London.
After World War II, the Aschers immigrated to the United States and made their home in New York City. Throughout her life, Ascher was devoted to the arts. Even as a child in Berlin, when given the opportunity the soon-to-be collector and curator would choose to spend her spare time looking at art rather than indulging in typical child’s play with the other children, and would often be found touring art galleries.
Ascher had been a supporter and benefactor of the Louisiana Museum since 1977. To mark the receipt of the donation and to honour the Aschers’s long-standing commitment to the museum, a special exhibition consisting of a selection of approximately 50 works from the Joseph and Celia Ascher Collection will go on display. The exhibition will be on view in the Asger Jorn Gallery in the museum’s North wing from January 13 to March 22.