Thanks to a $4.4 million gift from Bader Philanthropies, the Milwaukee Art Museum has started an endowment fund to support its collection and exhibition of European artwork, including related scholarship.
The Isabel and Alfred Bader European Art Program Endowment Fund, named for longtime MAM patrons, will provide permanent support for the museum’s curator of European art position, held by Tanya Paul since 2013.
“Bader Philanthropies’ generous gift enables us to maintain this collection, continue scholarly research, and ensure access for everyone, continuing our work in the spirit that the Baders would have wanted,” said museum director Marcelle Polednik in a statement issued by MAM.
It also will help facilitate the forthcoming exhibit “Art, Life, Legacy: Northern European Paintings in the Collection of Isabel and Alfred Bader,” which will open in September. That exhibit will include more than 75 Dutch and Flemish paintings — including works by Rembrandt van Rijn and Jan Lievens — that the Baders assembled in Milwaukee.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to carry on Isabel and Alfred’s legacy and passion for connoisseurship, research, and education thanks to their incredible generosity. I’m particularly looking forward to organizing programming and exhibitions that uphold the rigorous scholarship of the European art program,” Paul said in the MAM statement.
During her time at MAM, Paul has led a reinstallation of MAM’s European galleries and organized several exhibitions of European art.