Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Donates Prints, and $25,000, to Blanton Museum

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation has donated 16 artworks and $25,000 to the Blanton Museum of Art, part of a larger initiative of the foundation of the late artist to support university-level art and art history programs and university art museums.

The Blanton will receive ten prints and six related trial proofs, drawn from the foundation’s extensive collection of prints by Frankenthaler (1928-2011).  The ten university museums chosen all have significant print collections. The Blanton holds more than 14,000 prints and drawings in its collection.

The Blanton will also receive $25,000 from the Frankenthaler Foundation to fund a project or program for the study, presentation or interpretation of the donated artworks.

“Helen Frankenthaler was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters, and widely known as one of the most significant printmakers of her time,”Elizabeth Smith, executive director of the foundation, said in a statement. “Through gifts and grants to university art museums, the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative will enrich their collections and make possible the study of her many innovative contributions to the printmaking field.”

The Blanton has several paintings by Frankenthaler in its collection.

The foundation also announced the Frankenthaler Scholarships initiative that will support outstanding MFA students concentrating in painting. The foundation will make one-‐time endowment gifts of $500,000 to each of four MFA programs to create annual scholarships for selected students at Columbia University, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, UCLA and Yale University.