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