Remembering Anna Walinska

Anna Walinska: Self-Portrait, Paris, 1927, oil on canvas

With anticipation and unexpected trepidation about what awaits us in 2022, I am taking a moment to pause and reflect on the joyful moments of last year.

In the world of Anna Walinska the year began with the closing days of Women to the Fore at The Hudson River Museum. It was fun to see my favorite aunt included in an exhibition of women artists dating from the Impressionist era to contemporary artists just starting to get their due, and exciting that the Museum elected to retain the Self-Portrait loaned for the exhibition for its permanent collection. In these times, it felt all the more appropriate that the work chosen by the exhibition’s curator was the product of a political statement. Painted in 1939, the painting depicts a performance at Town Hall which raised funds for the Loyalistas during the Spanish Civil War.

Also in early 2021, the The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC selected two works from the 1950’s for their permanent collection. Though it was bittersweet to watch them leave my personal walls, I celebrate that others will be able to see these paintings for many years to come.

Anna Walinska: Self-Portrait, Flamenco, 1939, oil on canvas collection, Hudson River Museum, New York

Anna Walinska: Self-Portrait, c.1950, oil on board
collection, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Anna Walinska: Odalisque & Friend, c.1950, oil on canvas
collection, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

On September 8, when Anna Walinska would have turned 115, I was delighted to find that she was featured by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art in its ongoing Transcription Center project Celebrating 175 years since the Smithsonian’s founding.

In the midst of Fashion Week and the Fall art fairs, curators from the Baltimore Museum of Art were my first post-Covid visitors at Uovo, It was wonderful to welcome them in person.

Out of the blue, I was asked to provide images of works to dress the set of White House Plumbers — I’ll be watching for them next year when the mini-series airs on HBO.

And as a follow-up to an ArtTable Table zoom that offered a glimpse of the collection of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, I was able to connect across the ocean to see the image of a painting gifted to them by my aunt more than sixty years ago with assistance from the American Israel Cultural Foundation. (Photo: Margarita Perlin/Tel Aviv Museum of Art)