Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Maurice Sendak collection on the move


Posted: September 15, 2014

The Maurice Sendak Gallery at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. The museum still owns about 600 original and printed Sendak pieces, which will remain in Philadelphia, says Patrick Rodgers, curator of the collection.

The Maurice Sendak Gallery at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. The museum still owns about 600 original and printed Sendak pieces, which will remain in Philadelphia, says Patrick Rodgers,curator of  the collection. (MICHAEL BRYANT / File Photograph)

According to  will, filed in Fairfield County, Conn., Sendak instead chose to leave the collection to his eponymous foundation, which is expected to establish a museum and study center in his home in Ridgefield, Conn

Nearly half a century ago, the Rosenbach Museum and Library began building a relationship with the young author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, who very quickly started using the townhouse museum on Delancey Place as a repository for his original drawings, manuscripts, proofs, and rare editions.
Through the years the numbers mounted, and today about 10,000 items of Sendakiana, from original artwork to finished editions, fill the Rosenbach - the museum's best calling card with generations that grew up with his books.

But now that card is being recalled. Sendak never gifted the original artwork for Where the Wild Things Are and thousands of other items to the Rosenbach, and the trustees managing his legacy - he died at 83 in 2012 - have asked that the Sendak Collection be returned to them, ending a bond between artist and institution that many assumed would continue in perpetuity.

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