*Wisdom of the Ancestors*, 2005, acrylic on canvas. 19” x 57” (48.26 x 144.78 cm). © Wosene Worke Kosrof Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Jolene Tritt and Paul Herzog, 2025.521. Photo by Travis Fullerton.

Noted collectors of contemporary art Jolene Tritt and Paul Herzog have donated paintings by Wosene Worke Kosrof to ten American art museums. The couple collected more than forty works by Wosene over many years, with the artist’s paintings forming the heart of their exciting collection. Indelibly impressed when they first encountered Wosene’s art in a museum exhibition, they pursued more and more of his paintings. Long determined to share the canvases they had developed such a deep feeling for, the couple recently made an unprecedented donation of twenty-eight of their paintings to the ten museums. Of the gifts, Jolene said, “. . . the best thing is that many people will get to view, learn about and fall in love with his work.”

Through this singular act of generosity by Herzog and Tritt, the opportunity to see paintings by Wosene has been greatly advanced in museums from New England to New Orleans and in midwestern cities. The museums receiving works include the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond; the Walters Art Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art, both in Baltimore; the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA; the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA; the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Kennedy Museum of Art at Ohio University in Athens; the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and the Stanley Museum of Art at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

The impact of the Tritt-Herzog gifts will elevate the presence of Wosene’s work in museum galleries, websites, and publications in a lasting way. Already, paintings have started going on view. At the Walters Art Museum, curator Christine Sciacca has positioned The Classroom (2001) prominently in relationship with the museum’s superb collection of Ethiopia’s historic arts in their handsome gallery.

*The Classroom* (2001) in the Ethipian gallery at the Walters Art Museum. © Wosene Worke Kosrof.

Photo by Christine Sciacca.

In New Orleans, Memories of Addis Ababa (2006) will be on view until September 13, 2026, in the exhibition Afropolitan: Contemporary African Arts at NOMA, by curator Amanda Maples, where Wosene’s iridescent memoir of his birth city joins works by other contemporary artists from Africa. Following that exhibition, Maples plans to move the painting to NOMA’s African Art gallery.

*Memories of Addis Ababa* (2006) in the exhibition *Afropolitan* at the New Orleans Museum of Art. © Wosene Worke Kosrof.

Photo by Amanda Maples.

By placing works in museums at universities where there are significant schools of arts and design, Tritt and Herzog’s gifts provide access to Wosene’s art for the many art students at those institutions. Krannert curator Allyson Purpura notes that earlier this year the two works they received promptly went on view, where they will remain long-term in the gallery that also includes Wosene’s, Migrations II (2006), acquired by the museum in 2012.

*A Beauty of Your Own III* (2008; left) and Eloquent Poet A and B (2006; right). © Wosene Worke Kosrof.

Photo by Allyson Purpura.

Ohio University’s Kennedy Museum of Art will feature the four paintings donated there from January 11 to March 14, 2027 in an installation curated by Andrea Frohne, professor of art history at OU. At the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where construction of a new wing is pending, Wosene’s works will eventually be displayed in the museum’s new and substantially expanded gallery complex. Until construction is completed, the seven works donated there, nine overall by Wosene in their collection, can be seen on the VMFA website https://www.vmfa.museum/collection/search?q=wosene&sortOptions=relevance

In time, the Tritt-Herzog gifts will also factor in plans at Wellesley, Dartmouth, and University of Iowa, and at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Peabody Essex Museum, all part of the dramatic array of art by Wosene that the couple has generously and thoughtfully spread so widely to museums across the country.

Jolene Tritt and Paul Herzog give twenty-eight paintings by Wosene Kosrof to ten American art museums

Artist : : Wosene Worke Kosrof

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