With a belief in art’s aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual value, and the importance of sharing it, Philadelphia resident Paul Kania has generously donated more than two hundred and fifty works to the Museum since 1996. A Collecting Spirit celebrates these gifts, featuring one hundred and fifty pieces by thirty artists, including Georges Rouault, Thomas Lias, and Clare Leighton.

Prints from the innovative and influential twentieth-century print workshop Atelier 17 and its founder Stanley William Hayter will be on display, including copper printing plates and progressive proofs that demonstrate an artist’s process. Contemporary lithographs from the renowned Tamarind Institute by David Row, Daniel Brice, and Linn Meyers will also be on view. And a “Collector’s Cabinet” section will reveal the eclecticism and personal nature of collecting and give a sense of the breadth of Kania’s gifts, from nineteenth-century lithography and painting to twenty-first-century monotype and drawing.

A Collecting Spirit is supported through the generosity of an anonymous donor and the Harry C. Trexler Trust, the Julius and Katheryn Hommer Foundation, the Century Fund, the Bernard and Audrey Berman Foundation, the Leon C. and June W. Holt Endowment, the Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation, the Rider-Pool Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Friends of the Museum.