05/04/22

By FHSU University Communications

HAYS, Kan. - Fort Hays State University is pleased to announce a large donation of artwork to the university’s permanent collection. The donation is curated as an academic research collection and encompasses nearly 200 artworks by renowned New York-based artists.

The donor, Rosemary Hornak, is a Midwest-based artist, art collector, and retired real estate developer. She worked as a studio artist alongside her brother, founding Photorealist artist, Ian Hornak (1944-2002). Portions of her collection have been the subject of museum exhibitions nationwide. In the last 15 years, she has donated hundreds of artworks by the country’s leading artists to approximately 50 museums throughout the United States including, the Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, Dartmouth College, and The George Washington University.

Rosemary Hornak’s son brought Fort Hays State to her attention after he graduated from the university in 2021, and she chose FHSU as the beneficiary of this portion of her collection. FHSU history instructor Hollie Marquess helped facilitate the donation.

The collection will reside in FHSU’s Schmidt Foundation Center for Art and Design. It includes comprehensive retrospective sub-collections of artwork by Jon Carsman (1944-1987), Ian Hornak (1944-2002) – the donor’s late brother – and Scott Kahn (1946).

Jon Carsman was one of the most successful artists in New York during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, having been credited as one of the artists who helped to re-popularize Realism in painting following its demise during the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1950s. Carsman’s artwork is owned by most major museums in the United States, including the National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Metropolitan Museum of Art; and locally, the Wichita Art Museum, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University, and the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. 

Ian Hornak was one of the founding artists of the Photorealist movement in the 1960s and later one of the country’s most celebrated artists. He was described by the New York Times as “right at the top of the list of romantically descriptive painters today.” His artwork is included in the collections of major museums nationwide, including the Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and locally, the Albrecht Kemper Museum of Art in St. Joseph, Mo. His paintings were the subject of Barack Obama’s Presidential Inaugural exhibition at the Federal Reserve on the National Mall in Washington D.C. in 2013 and have sold for up to $165,000 each.

Scott Kahn is currently one of the most popular artists in the United States. Several of his paintings recently sold at Christie’s and Phillips auction houses for nearly $1 million each. Kahn’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and several of his pieces are included in the collections of major public, corporate, and private collections around the world.

Rosemary Hornak, the donor, said, “I hope for this donation to help to attract additional national attention and respect for Fort Hays State, as well as to aid the students, faculty, and the Hays community in their studies, work, and personal enjoyment.”

She has committed to ongoing donations to the university as she downsizes her collection, including artworks by some of the most renowned artists in the world, including Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Robert Motherwell, and Robert Rauschenberg.

In addition to instructor Marquess, the university is grateful to Colin Schmidtberger, the director of the Moss-Thorns Gallery, and Schuyler Coates, a director of development at the Fort Hays State Foundation, for their invaluable assistance in making this donation possible.