Jane Kallir (born July 30, 1954) is an American art dealer, curator and author. She is co-director of the

Galerie St. Etienne Galerie St. Etienne is a New York art gallery specializing in Austrian and German Expressionism, established in Vienna in 1939 by Otto Kallir (originally Otto Nirenstein). In 1923, Kallir founded the Neue Galerie in Vienna. Forced to leave Austri ...

in New York, which specializes in Austrian and German

Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

as well as self-taught and “outsider” art. Kallir has curated exhibitions for many American and international museums and is the author of the

catalogue raisonné A ''catalogue raisonné'' (or critical catalogue) is a comprehensive, annotated listing of all the known artworks by an artist either in a particular medium or all media. The works are described in such a way that they may be reliably identified ...

of Egon Schiele’s work in all mediums.

Life and career

Kallir was born in New York City and graduated from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

in 1976, with a BA in art and art history. In 1977, she began working for her grandfather,

Otto Kallir Otto Kallir (born Otto Nirenstein, April 1, 1894, in Vienna – November 30, 1978, in New York) was an Austrian-American art historian, author, publisher and gallerist. He was awarded the Silbernes Ehrenzeichen für Verdienste um das Land Wien in ...

, who founded the

in 1939 in New York. She became the gallery’s co-director, with

Hildegard Bachert Hildegard Bachert (April 3, 1921 – October 17, 2019) was a German-born American art dealer and gallery director. Born in Mannheim, Germany in 1921, Bachert moved to America in 1936 to seek refuge from the Nazi regime. In 1940, she began workin ...

, in 1979. In 1985, Kallir married Gary Cosimini, whom she had met in college. The couple divorced in 1996 and remarried in 2008. Under Kallir’s direction in 1980, the Galerie St. Etienne initiated a regular program of museum-scale loan exhibitions, a practice not then common among commercial galleries. These shows were routinely accompanied by book-length catalogues, published by trade publishers. Lenders included the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

, the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

, the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was des ...

the Phillips Collection The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the grandson of James H. Laughlin, ...

, the

Kunsthalle Bremen The Kunsthalle Bremen is an art museum in Bremen, Germany. It is located close to the Bremen Old Town on the "Culture Mile" (german: Kulturmeile). The Kunsthalle was built in 1849, enlarged in 1902 by architect Eduard Gildemeister, and expanded ...

, the

Lenbachhaus The Lenbachhaus () is a building housing an art museum in Munich's '' Kunstareal''. The building The Lenbachhaus was built as a Florentine-style villa for the painter Franz von Lenbach between 1887 and 1891 by Gabriel von Seidl and was expa ...

in Munich, the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the l ...

in Ottawa, the

Wien Museum The Vienna Museum (german: Wien Museum or ''Museen der Stadt Wien'') is a group of museums in Vienna consisting of the museums of the history of the city. In addition to the main building in Karlsplatz and the Hermesvilla, the group includes nume ...

and the

Belvedere Belvedere (from Italian, meaning "beautiful sight") may refer to: Places Australia *Belvedere, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region Africa *Belvedere (Casablanca), a neighborhood in Casablanca, Morocco *Belvedere, Harare, Zim ...

in Vienna, plus many private collectors. Kallir publishes a scholarly essay to accompany each Galerie St. Etienne exhibition and also issues an annual “Art Market Report,” timed to coincide with

Art Basel Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel, Switzerland; Miami Beach; Hong Kong and from 2022, Paris. Art Basel works in collaboration with the host city's local institutions to help ...

each June. In addition to presenting major exhibitions at the Galerie St. Etienne, she curates museum shows both nationally and internationally. A frequent lecturer, Kallir has written over twenty art books and numerous catalog essays. The Galerie St. Etienne is a longstanding member of th
Art Dealers Association of America
which Kallir served as Vice President from 2003-2006. The gallery participates in the Winter Antiques Show, The ADAA Art Show and the IFPDA Print Fair (all in New York) and Art Basel (in Basel, Switzerland). In 1994, Kallir was recognized with the Silver Medal of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria.

Museum exhibitions

Kallir has organized over 50 museum exhibitions in the United States, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and The Netherlands. Institutions with which she has worked include the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the

National Museum of Women in the Arts The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since openin ...

, Washington, D.C.; the Hangaram Museum of Art, Seoul Art Center, South Korea; and the Museo del Vittoriano, Rome, Italy. She has curated three shows for The Belvedere in Vienna: Egon Schiele in der Österreichischen Galerie, Egon Schiele: Self-Portraits and Portraits and The Women of Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka. Kallir has also sent

Grandma Moses Anna Mary Robertson Moses (September 7, 1860 – December 13, 1961), or Grandma Moses, was an American folk artist. She began painting in earnest at the age of 78 and is a prominent example of a newly successful art career at an advanced age. H ...

exhibitions to more than 30 venues in the U.S. and Japan. Her involvement with the artist continues a tradition that dates to Moses’ first one-person show, which took place at the Galerie St. Etienne in 1940.

Publications

Kallir is the author of 21 art books. She has published nine volumes on Egon Schiele, including the artist’s catalogue raisonné,Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works–Including a Biography and a Catalogue Raisonné (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1900; expanded edition 1998). and seven studies on other aspects of fin-de-siècle Austrian art. Her 1986 history, Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstätte, remains a standard text on the subject. Kallir’s most recent publication is The Women of Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka, to accompany the exhibition she curated at The Belvedere in 2015. Kallir’s writings also include four volumes on Grandma Moses. Together with the Galerie St. Etienne’s co-director,

, Kallir maintains the Grandma Moses archives assembled by Otto Kallir in connection with the Grandma Moses catalogue raisonné. Kallir and Bachert provide opinions regarding the authenticity of works not in that 1973 book, and add them to the archive. In addition to her book-length publications, Kallir has written numerous magazine articles, as well as exhibition catalogue essays for such institutions as the Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen, the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Neue Galerie New York the American Folk Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. As an author, Jane Kallir has received several literary prizes. In 1982, the “Art Libraries Societies Award” was awarded to The Folk Art Tradition, and in 1985 for Arnold Schoenberg’s Vienna. The “Elie Faure Award” and the “Prix des Lecteurs de Beaux-Arts Magazin” both were given in 1991 for Egon Schiele: The Complete Works.

Egon Schiele

Kallir is the foremost expert on the work of Egon Schiele, publishing Egon Schiele: The Complete Works in 1990, with an update in 1998. Kallir regularly provides opinions regarding works not in that catalogue raisonné and Schiele scholarship, in addition to maintaining an archive of Schiele works authenticated since 1998. Many Schiele collectors were persecuted after Hitler annexed Austria in 1938. Egon Schiele: The Complete Works contains an appendix, “Who’s Who in the Provenances,” which documents collections that were looted or otherwise lost during the Nazi years. In 1997, Kallir gave the New York Times a file documenting the Nazi theft of Schiele’s painting

Portrait of Wally ''Portrait of Wally'' is a 1912 oil painting by Austrian painter Egon Schiele of Walburga "Wally" Neuzil, a woman whom he met in 1911 when he was 21 and she was 17. She became his lover and model for several years, depicted in a number of Schiele ...

. The resulting story led to the seizure of the painting by the NY District Attorney and a twelve-year lawsuit. As a result, the Austrian Parliament in 1998 issued a decree reopening the claims process for State museums, and in 2010, the heirs of the original owner of Portrait of Wally received a settlement of $19 million. Kallir’s role in the case is featured in the 2012 documentary film Portrait of Wally.Andrew Shea, Director, Portrait of Wally: The Face that Launched a Thousand Lawsuits (documentary film, 2012). The opening of previously sealed Austrian archives, in tandem with the 1998 restitution decree, has produced a wealth of new evidence documenting Nazi spoliation. Kallir continues to work with Austrian researchers on updating Schiele

provenance Provenance (from the French ''provenir'', 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art but is now used in similar senses i ...

References

External links

* http://www.gseart.com * http://www.portraitofwally.com * http://the-adaa.tumblr.com/post/98396070016/gallery-chat-jane-kallir-galerie-st-etienne-75th-anniver * http://www.lootedart.com/MFEU4Q69617 * http://theartnewspaper.com/comment/jane-kallir-answers-what-is-art-for-/ * https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-high-estimates-caused-schieles-embarrassing-auction-flops-experts {{DEFAULTSORT:Kallir, Jane American art dealers Women art dealers 1954 births Writers from New York City Living people 20th-century American women writers American art curators American women curators 21st-century American women writers Brown University alumni

Life and career

Museum exhibitions

Publications

Egon Schiele

References

Further reading

External links