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historical notes
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Werner "Wynn" Hans Kramarsky was a public health official, art collector, and patron. Kramarsky's father, Siegfried Kramarsky (-1961), was also a collector and once owned his estate Vincent Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet, 1890 (The painting was sold at a New York City auction in 1990, for $82.5 million to the Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito, 1916-1996).
Together with his wife, née Sarah-Ann Backer, Kramarsky amassed a collection of works on paper, with more than four thousand Minimalist and Conceptual works. The collection included work by Jasper Johns, Eva Hesse, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Mel Bochner, Robert Mangold, Barnett Newman, and Richard Serra. From 1991 to 2000, the couple exhibited works of art from their collection at their non-commercial art space in SoHo, Fifth Floor Foundation.
The Kramarsky's donated more than two thousand works to institutions, including MoMA, the Harvard Art Museums in Massachusetts, the Yale University Art Gallery in Connecticut, the Seattle Art Museum, the Menil Collection in Houston, and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.
Kramarsky served on the board of directors of the Hammer Museum, was a trustee at the Museum of Modern Art, and a member of Dia's big donor group.
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