Jack Shear, the widower of painter, sculptor, and printmaker Ellsworth Kelly, who died in 2015, has donated 146 works valued at $16 million to 19 museums and, through the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, awarded grants totaling $2.75 million to 50 museums.

As part of an effort to mark Kelly’s centenary, the foundation awarded grants of $50,000 each to 45 museums across the United States as well as pieces from Kelly’s body of work given directly by Shear. Five museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art will each receive $100,000 grants and 25 works of art selected by the museums from Shear’s collection.

In addition, Kelly’s work will be on display at several museums and galleries this year in Europe and the U. S., including major exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland, as well as presentations of his work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio (in Italy), the Blanton Museum of Art, Lever House, the Edward Hopper House, Gemini G.E.L., Peder Lund Gallery (in Norway), and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

“Jack [Shear] has taken on the responsibility of Ellsworth’s legacy with an enormous amount of seriousness,” MoMA director Glenn Lowry told the New York Times. “His strategy is to reinforce those institutions that have long legacies with Ellsworth…but he also wants to make strategic gifts across the country.”

“Ellsworth loved museums from a very young age, and they were a key part of his education in Paris after the war,” said Kelly Foundation board member Emily Rauh Pulitzer. “He understood their essential function in preserving, interpreting, and sharing our cultural heritage.”

(Photo credit: Wikimedia/Jeremiah Garcia)