This article is part of our Museums special section about how art institutions are reaching out to new artists and attracting new audiences.
SPENCERTOWN, N.Y. — Ellsworth Kelly became one of the 20th century’s most influential artists in part because of the economical quality he brought to his pared-down, hard-edge paintings. Using minimal means, he made something as simple as a plain red wedge against a white background seem monumental.
The artist, who died in 2015, was thrifty in the rest of his life, too. “In every relationship, there’s a saver and a spender,” said Mr. Kelly’s widower, Jack Shear. “Guess which one I am?”
In March, Mr. Shear and a colleague were pulling out sliding racks full of drawings here at the art-filled compound he runs in the northern reaches of the Hudson Valley, part of which used to be Mr. Kelly’s studio. Many of the works were earmarked as donations — part of a huge wave of giving by Mr. Shear — and would not remain on the premises much longer.
“There’s a lot of me here,” said Mr. Shear, 69, who met Mr. Kelly in 1982, marrying him in 2012. On one rack, there was a line drawing of Mr. Shear reclining and reading; nearby was a self-portrait by Mr. Kelly, naked except for his glasses.
The couple’s intertwined quality rings especially true in light of Mr. Shear’s main activity these days: donating Mr. Kelly’s artworks to museums and giving money to various causes, art-related and not.
To honor the centenary of Mr. Kelly’s birth in 1923, Mr. Shear is donating 146 works to 19 museums.
Four of the institutions to which Mr. Kelly had a special connection — the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art — are getting 25 works each, and they chose the ones they wanted.
“They all know what they have, and what story they want to tell,” Mr. Shear said of the favored four; for the other institutions, which are getting fewer works, he made specific offers.
Other institutions are putting on shows of Mr. Kelly’s work. One of the largest such presentations, “Ellsworth Kelly at 100,” opens Thursday at the private contemporary art museum Glenstone, in Potomac, Md., with around 70 works.
Emily Wei Rales — who co-founded Glenstone with her husband, Mitchell Rales — is a collector of Mr. Kelly’s work and a friend of Mr. Shear.
“More than any other artist’s estate I can think of, he’s making outright gifts,” said Ms. Rales, Glenstone’s director. “It’s highly unusual. Normally, an estate tries to keep the work together and slowly dole it out.”
As Sasha Suda, the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, put it, “Jack is so effective at keeping the story alive,” she said. “He now embodies Ellsworth’s story.”
Mr. Shear inherited all the work that remained in Mr. Kelly’s hands when he died; there is also a separate Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, of which Mr. Shear is the president. It has given away $30 million since its inception in 1991.
For the centenary, the foundation is making $50,000 grants to 45 museums, including the ones to which Mr. Shear is personally giving artworks. His favored four museums are getting $100,000 each, as is the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Mr. Shear has found himself in a position to be an art world Santa Claus — and in his hands, nearly every day is Christmas. But he said he was uncomfortable putting too much attention on himself.
“Whatever happens is because of Ellsworth,” he said, noting the artist’s generosity to museums in his lifetime. “I’m stewarding his legacy as best I can.”
At MoMA, “Ellsworth Kelly: A Centennial Celebration” includes a presentation in the museum’s second-floor atrium until June 11, featuring “Spectrum IV” (1967), “Chatham VI” (1971) and “Sculpture for a Large Wall” (1957). In another gallery the museum is displaying 25 of Mr. Kelly’s sketchbooks, a previous gift of Mr. Shear, with other works on paper.
“Jack has taken on the responsibility of Ellsworth’s legacy with an enormous amount of seriousness,” said Glenn Lowry, MoMA’s director. “His strategy is to reinforce those institutions that have long legacies with Ellsworth, and MoMA is a perfect example. But he also wants to make strategic gifts across the country.”
Mr. Shear is on MoMA’s prints and drawings committee. “He’s very sophisticated about how museums work,” Mr. Lowry said. “He knows our secret code.”
The collector Agnes Gund, a longtime patron and now president emerita of MoMA, serves alongside Mr. Shear on the drawings committee.
Ms. Gund is also a collector of Mr. Kelly’s work and was a friend of the artist’s who appreciated his philanthropy.
“It became much more pronounced once Jack began it in earnest after Ellsworth died,” Ms. Gund said, adding, “He has so much to give away.”
Mr. Shear started hosting curators from his favored four institutions in 2019. Luckily, there wasn’t too much overlap in the requests. “Only one piece was picked by all four,” Mr. Shear said, declining to say what it was or who got it in the end.
James Rondeau, the president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, made several trips here on selection missions, accompanying his curators. The museum will highlight a lesser known part of the artist’s oeuvre, as seen in the coming show “Ellsworth Kelly: Portrait Drawings,” opening July 1 at the Art Institute.
Despite being famed for his abstractions, “Ellsworth drew a portrait of himself or someone else every day of his life,” Mr. Rondeau said.
When Mr. Shear is not traveling to supervise installation of Mr. Kelly’s work — he recently did so for a show in Rome — he collects the work of others. He is also an artist in his own right, specializing in photography. In November, Mr. Shear published the book “Knot,” pairing his photographs with the poetry of Forrest Gander.
During their relationship, Mr. Shear largely put his own art-making aside to assist Mr. Kelly.
“I believe there can only be one artist in a family,” Mr. Shear said, noting that Mr. Kelly was eager to give up the day-to-day responsibilities of life, so intense was his focus on work. “He only cared about his art.”
Increasingly, Mr. Shear is turning his philanthropy toward his personal passions — he endowed an annual prize, the C.D. Wright Award for Poetry, through the Foundation for Contemporary Arts — and many of his favorite causes are in the surrounding area. Since Mr. Kelly died, Mr. Shear has given away $14 million, much of it in New York’s Columbia County to nonprofits like the Columbia Land Conservancy.
Through the Kelly Foundation and his own pocket, he is a lead patron of the forthcoming Shaker Museum in Chatham, N.Y., just one hamlet over from Spencertown. It will be housed in an extant brick building that is slated to be renovated by the architect Annabelle Selldorf. In addition, the Kelly Foundation refurbished a building that serves as the Austerlitz Town Hall.
Asked about his busy schedule giving away art and money, Mr. Shear cited the “big responsibility” he feels to Mr. Kelly, owing to their decades together. “I used to cook for him everyday,” he recalled. “I miss it.”
But there seemed to be another reason for his activities: Spreading the wealth is fun. As Mr. Shear put it, “Why not?”
