Five major paintings from one of the world's top art collections have been given to the Cincinnati Art Museum.
American works from the 1980s, the paintings are from the Douglas S. Cramer Foundation. Mr. Cramer, a television producer raised in Cincinnati, is ranked by Art News magazine as one of the world's top 200 art collectors.
This is the largest single gift to the museum since 1984, when Robert Orton donated the RSM Corp. collection of 287 works of contemporary art, appraised at $1.5 million to $2 million in 1990. Auction records indicate the value of the Cramer gift could be $6 million.
"We'll be celebrating this for months," museum director Barbara Gibbs said Wednesday.
Producer of the long-running TV series Love Boat and Dynasty, Mr. Cramer has acquired more than 600 works at his California ranch, La Quinta Norte.
A graduate of Walnut Hills High School who began his career at Procter & Gamble, he credits the Cincinnati Art Museum with fostering his early interest in art.
The paintings going to the museum are by Frank Stella, Sean Scully, Donald Sultan, Julian Schnabel and former Cincinnatian Jim Dine. The Dine, "Painting Acting Like a Tree," is the first work by the artist from this period in his career. The Stella is a three-dimensional piece from his "Cones and Pillars" series.
The Sultan is a 1983 landscape titled "Forest Fire, June 23, 1983." Other works are Julian Schnabel's 1984 "Untitled (The Incantation)" and Sean Scully's 1987 "Signal," a geometric abstraction.
The paintings should be installed by November.
