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Michael Sweerts, Self-portrait with Skull, around 1661, oil on canvas. Gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader, 2004
EXHIBITIONS
Art, Life, Legacy: Northern European Paintings in the Collection of Isabel and Alfred Bader
29 September 2023–28 January 2024
OFF SITE at Milwaukee Art Museum
Co-curated by Dr Tanya Paul, Isabel and Alfred Bader Curator of European Art at Milwaukee Art Museum, and Dr Suzanne van de Meerendonk, Bader Curator of European Art at Agnes

On view at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Art, Life, Legacy presents more than 75 artworks from Isabel and Alfred Bader’s extraordinary collection of Dutch and Flemish Baroque artworks. As a young man, Dr Alfred Bader, who was Jewish and born in Vienna, escaped Nazi persecution through the Kindertransport program, which evacuated him from Austria to England. A year later, he was deported from England to Canada, where, following internment in a prisoner-of-war camp, he began his undergraduate studies at Queen’s University. After completing advanced studies in organic chemistry at Harvard University in 1950, he settled in Milwaukee, finding tremendous success as a chemist and business magnate.

Organized in part around key themes drawn from Alfred Bader’s life story, including generosity, sacrifice, struggle, family, and faith, the exhibition also spotlights current scholarship on topics such as the Dutch role in colonial expansion and identity in the Dutch Republic, and is accompanied by robust public programming and a scholarly catalogue. Works included are by Rembrandt van Rijn, Pieter Lastman, Jan Lievens, Willem Kalf, and Gillis Neyts, among others.

Hero image: Michael Sweerts, Self-portrait with Skull, around 1661, oil on canvas. Gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader, 2004
Gillis Neyts, Landscape with Tobias and the Angel, with a View of Antwerp in the Background, 1660s, oil on copper. Gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader, 2012.

Gillis Neyts, Landscape with Tobias and the Angel, with a View of Antwerp in the Background, 1660s, oil on copper. Gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader, 2012.

Willem Kalf, Still Life with Wanli Sugar Bowl, around 1678, oil on canvas. Milwaukee, Estate of Isabel Bader.

Willem Kalf, Still Life with Wanli Sugar Bowl, around 1678, oil on canvas. Milwaukee, Estate of Isabel Bader.

Bader Philanthropies is the presenting sponsor of the exhibition, with further support from The Bader Conservation Fund.
Footnotes
Image Credits

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