The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) has received a donation of more than 450 works from the collection of the late Torontonians Carol and Morton Rapp. The trove includes examples by a murderer’s row of 20th- and 21st-century artists, including Lee Bontecou, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, William Kentridge, Roy Lichtenstein, Barnett Newman, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Yinka Shonibare, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, and Rachel Whiteread.
The Rapps began collecting prints in the 1960s and expanded their purview to contemporary photography in the 1990s. The new gift comes atop 474 works the couple had already donated. Some 203 artists are represented in the donation, which the museum will use to tell the story of printmaking from its growth in the 1960s and ’70s through the early 21st century. A number of the works include the artists’ textbook imagery.
“More than collectors, Carol and Morton Rapp were stewards of great art, eager to share and preserve the things that brought them pleasure, beauty, and insight,” Stephan Jost, AGO director and CEO, said in a statement. “During their lifetimes they contributed immensely to the cultural fabric of Toronto and to the AGO, and this gift by their family is a heartfelt expression of their enduring commitment to this place.”
Morton Rapp was a mechanical engineer by training and headed up Smith Belting, which he grew into a chain of machinery parts and distribution centers across Canada. Carol Rapp was an accomplished model, actress, and singer who performed alongside figures such as Nat King Cole and Robert Goulet. The couple also donated many works to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and his collecting extended to areas such as antique dictionaries and corkscrews. The couple also endowed a curatorial post at the AGO in 2015.
Here are 11 highlights from the gift.
Lee Bontecou, Fifth Stone, 1964
Lee Bontecou, Fifth Stone, Sixth Stone, 1964.
Photo : ©2025 Lee Bontecou/Courtesy Art Gallery of Ontario
Three prints and a portfolio of etchings and poems by Bontecou, all produced at the legendary Universal Limiated Art Editions, are among the gift, including Fifth Stone (1964).
David Hockney, One Night, 1966
David Hockney, One Night (from Illustrations for Fourteen Poems from C.P. Cavafy, 1966.
Photo : ©David Hockney/Courtesy Art Gallery of Ontario
Three early works by the British artist are included, among them two etchings from a suite inspired by Greek poet Constantine Cavafy: One Night (1966) and Two boys aged 23 or 24 (1966). Their subject, gay love, is significant in that the UK Parliament decriminalized homosexuality only in 1967, the year they were published.
Jasper Johns, Savarin, 1982
Jasper Johns, Savarin, 1982. Lithograph and monotype, Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of Carol and Morton Rapp, 2025. © Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / CARCC, Ottawa 2025.
Photo : ©Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/CARCC, Ottawa 2025/Courtesy Art Gallery of Ontario.
The gift includes nine pieces by Johns, including his lithograph Savarin (1982), showing a coffee can full of paintbrushes in front of a characteristic gemoetric background.
William Kentridge, Telephone Lady, 2000
William Kentridge, Telephone Lady, 2000.
Photo : ©William Kentridge/Courtesy Art Gallery of Ontario.
The gift includes three Kentridge works, among them the linocut Telephone Lady (2000), which stands some seven feet high. Also included is Learning the Flute (2003), composed of 110 individually printed sheets, printed on unbound pages from a 1950 edition of Chambers’s Encyclopedia.
Roy Lichtenstein, Sweet Dreams, Baby, 1965
Roy Lichtenstein, Sweet Dreams, Baby, 1965. Silkscreen, Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of Carol and Morton Rapp, 2025. © 2025 Estate of Roy Lichtenstein / DACS, London.
Photo : ©2025 Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/DACS, London/Courtesy Art Gallery of Ontario
Sweet Dreams, Baby (1965) is a classic example of Lichtenstein’s comic book–inspired imagery.
Claes Oldenburg, Teabag, 1966
Claes Oldenburg, Teabag, 1966.
Photo : ©Estate of Claes Oldenburg/Courtesy Art Gallery of Ontario.
Three Oldenburg works figure among the gift, including Teabag (1966), a sculptural print of screenprinted vinyl and felt on Plexiglas, humorously immortalizing the humblest subject imaginable.
Robert Rauschenberg, Passport, 1967
Robert Rauschenberg. Passport from “Ten from Leo Castelli” series, 1967.
Photo : ©Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/Courtesy Art Gallery of Ontario.
Eight Rauschenberg pieces are entering the museum, including his first illustrated book, Shades (1964) and Passport (1967), a screenprint on a Plexiglas sculpture.
Yinka Shonibare, Diary Of A Victorian Dandy, 19:00 Hours, 1998
Yinka Shonibare, Diary Of A Victorian Dandy, 19:00 Hours, 1998. C-type print; unglazed in a fake gilt frame, Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of Carol and Morton Rapp, 2025. © Yinka Shonibare / DACS, London / CARCC, Ottawa 2025.
Photo : ©Yinka Shonibare/DACS, London/CARCC, Ottawa 2025/Courtesy Art Gallery of Ontario.
Shonibare’s photograph Diary of a Victorian Dandy: 19.00 hours (1998) is a satirical take on the famed caricatures of 18th-century English satirist William Hogarth.
Kara Walker, Testimony, 2005
Kara Walker, Testimony, 2005. Photogravure. Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of Carol and Morton Rapp, 2025. © Kara Walker.
Photo : ©Kara Walker/Courtesy Art Gallery of Ontario.
Walker began making her shadow-puppet animations in 2004, and her first film, Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions, from that year, depicted an enslaved young woman who murders her plantation-owning enslaver.
Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, 1967
Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe (Yellow & Red F&S31), 1967. Silkscreen. Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of Carol and Morton Rapp, 2025. © 2025 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / CARCC, Ottawa.
Photo : ©2025 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/CARCC, Ottawa/Courtesy Art Gallery of Ontario.
The gift holds 13 screenprints by Warhol, including four showing screen icon Marilyn Monroe, one of his most recognizable subjects.
Rachel Whiteread, Secondhand, 2004
Rachel Whiteread, Secondhand, 2004.
Photo : ©Rachel Whiteread/Courtesy Art Gallery of Ontario.
Whiteread’s sculpture Secondhand (2004) is an example of stereolithography, created using a 3D scan of vintage doll house furniture.
