SYDNEY, AU - The Art Gallery of NSW announced the most extraordinary single gift of works of art to an Australian public gallery. The gift is from John Kaldor and his family. Built up over the past 50 years, the John Kaldor Collection represents the history of international contemporary art, and is today valued at over $35 million AUS.

John Kaldor is one of Australia’s foremost patrons of contemporary art. Since the 1960s Kaldor has collected the work of emerging artists, many of whom went on to become the most influential artists of our time. Many of the works in the collection are now beyond the reach of public museums.

Gallery director Edmund Capon said: "The John Kaldor Collection is the most important collection of late 20th century avant-garde art in Australia. This unique collection is an exemplary vision of one man on behalf of his family. This is a gift that will forever be a milestone in the history of this Gallery."

Comprising some 260 works, the gift includes work by Christo, Jeff Koons, Robert Rauschenberg, Sol LeWitt, Gilbert & George, Richard Long, Carl Andre, Andreas Gursky and many more.

At the opening of this year’s Archibald Prize the NSW Premier, Morris Iemma, announced a grant of $25.7 million AUS to construct an off-site collection storage facility for the Art Gallery of NSW. In August 2007 the Belgiorno-Nettis family generously donated $4 million AUS to the Gallery. This donation will go towards converting existing storage space at the Art Gallery of NSW into the new John W Kaldor Family gallery for contemporary art.

The Gallery’s contemporary collection has grown steadily over the last 20 years with an emphasis on conceptual and European art. The collection includes significant works by Joseph Beuys, Rebecca Horn, Anselm Kiefer, Yves Klein, Jannis Kounellis, Tatsuo Miyajima, Sigmar Polke, Doris Salcedo, Gerhard Richter, and Haim Steinbach among others. These are displayed along with an extensive collection of Australian, and increasingly Asian, contemporary art.

The John Kaldor Collection complements and extends the Gallery’s contemporary collection. The union will enable the Gallery to present a formidable display of international contemporary art spanning five decades.

The number of works by Christo in the John Kaldor Collection surpasses the holdings of most museums internationally. It also includes a substantial representation of Robert Rauschenberg, whose work since the early 1950s took dada collage and assemblage to new levels. Representation of work by the minimalist and advocate of conceptual art Sol LeWitt is strong and there are excellent examples of work by Carl Andre and Donald Judd. These complement the Gallery’s holdings of classic conceptual works by Joseph Kosuth, Ian Burn and others.
Kaldor, like the Gallery, collected new British art from the 1960s for example, Richard Long and Gilbert & George. The Gallery has works by Antony Gormley and Tony Cragg and Anish Kapoor.

One of the outstanding aspects of the John Kaldor Collection is German photography. In particular, it includes significant works by Thomas Demand, Andreas Gurksy and Thomas Struth, all of whom have become much sought after and prohibitively priced in recent years. The Gallery holds a number of works by Bernd and Hilla Becher, who inspired this new generation of objective visionaries in photomedia. These works together with the Bernd and Hilla Becher’s in the John Kaldor Collection will present a comprehensive and clear historical representation.

Minister for the Arts, Frank Sartor, Steven Lowy, president of the board of Trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW and Edmund Capon, director of the Art Gallery of NSW, met with John Kaldor and his family to officially thank him for his gift.