Seligmann Center at the Citizens Foundation 3.92

The Seligmann Center at the Citizens Foundation is an art center located on the 50-acre rural homestead of Swiss-American Surrealist Kurt Seligmann (1900-1962) and his wife Arlette (Wildenstein Paraf) Seligmann (1906-1992). The Seligmann Center is committed to celebrating the artistic and intellectual legacy of Kurt Seligmann, honoring the history of its site, and presenting contemporary work by emerging and established artists. The Center is home to four galleries and performance spaces, housed in the homestead’s converted farmhouse buildings, and the Robert Fagan Art Library, the largest public collection of art books in the county. The Seligmann Center’s Permanent Collection features 112 prints, and 19 paintings by Kurt Seligmann, as well as an archive of the couple’s photographs, letters, and personal effects, a portion of which are on view in the Seligmanns’ home. Founded in 2011 by the Orange County Citizens Foundation and a group of artists, the Seligmann Center offers rotating exhibitions, workshops, and performances that interpret surrealism, trace its origins, and explore its contemporary resonance.

The Center is located about 50 miles northwest of New York City in a vibrant rural area of Orange County in the village of Sugar Loaf. The history of the site is palpable—Max Ernst slept in the Guest House; Marcel Duchamp shot five bullets into the barn foundation; Alexander Calder pulled prints from the very same press that is still in use today, and others, including Yves Tanguy, Kay Sage, Peggy Guggenheim, and Meyer Schapiro, spent time on the property. In its four years the Seligmann Center has presented works by such notable artists as Robert Whitman, Hiroaki Sato, Jacob Kirkegaard, Katinka Fogh Vindelev, Philip Pearlstein, Chaim Gross, Cy Twombly, and Lynne Sharon Schwartz. The Seligmann Center honors the Seligmanns’ legacy and welcomes the new, presenting contemporary work that enriches, challenges, and connects.