Barbara Mackey Kaerwer, art historian, lecturer, collector, and great friend of the Chazen Museum of Art, was a loyal and generous alumna of UW–Madison. Works from her vast collection of German Expressionist prints, and Austrian fine and decorative art of the Vienna Secession and Wiener Werkstätte, were shown in four exhibitions between 1972 and 2003. She gave nearly four hundred pieces of fine and decorative art to the Chazen during her life and she contributed one thousand books, exhibition catalogues, and other printed materials to the University’s Kohler Art Library.
Prints by Egon Schiele, Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, and Käthe Kollwitz are among Mrs. Kaerwer’s many gifts to the Chazen and are featured in this exhibition.
Image: Erich Heckel, (German, 1883–1970), Fränzi Reclining (Liegende Fränzi), 1910, color woodcut, Gift of Barbara Mackey Kaerwer, 2012.9.24.