The Hall Art Foundation

The Hall Art Foundation is an American nonprofit organization founded in 2007 by collectors Andrew Hall and Christine Hall to present postwar and contemporary art. Headquartered in Reading, Vermont, the Foundation oversees two museum sites: a converted dairy farm in rural Vermont and Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg near Hildesheim, Germany. It also supports a permanent installation of Anselm Kiefer's work at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. With a collection exceeding 5,000 works, the Foundation has been compared to Glenstone, another prominent private museum, though its ambitions extend further, particularly in the expansion of its German site.

Andrew Hall and Christine Hall, a British-American collecting couple, established the Hall Art Foundation in 2007 with the purpose of making their substantial holdings of German and American contemporary art accessible to the public. The Foundation's development involved the creation of two new museums in rural settings rather than urban centers. In 2013, the Vermont site gained recognition when Architectural Digest named it one of the "Must-See Museums Opened by Collectors Around the World." The Foundation has also pursued educational initiatives, including a 2020 partnership with the Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida, for which it established an endowment exceeding $1.5 million to provide merit-based scholarships to low-income graduates pursuing visual or performing arts degrees. The Foundation has supported the publication of approximately two dozen books related to its exhibitions.

The combined Hall and Hall Art Foundation collections comprise over 5,000 works by several hundred artists, with particular strength in German and American contemporary art after 1945. The collection encompasses painting, sculpture, and other media, and the Foundation actively collaborates with institutions worldwide to organize exhibitions and facilitate loans from its holdings. Beyond exhibition, the Foundation engages in publishing and co-publishing activities to support scholarship on the artists it collects.

The collection includes significant works by Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Nicole Eisenman, Olafur Eliasson, Eric Fischl, Anselm Kiefer, Barbara Kruger, Ed Ruscha, Julian Schnabel, Andy Warhol, and Franz West. The Foundation's commitment to Kiefer is especially pronounced: in September 2013, it opened a long-term installation of his sculpture and paintings in a repurposed 10,000 square-foot building at MASS MoCA, the largest contemporary art museum in North America. In 2014, the Foundation landscaped the surrounding area to present long-term outdoor sculpture installations. At Schloss Derneburg, the English landscape park has been transformed into a sculpture park featuring works by Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Jeppe Hein, Jörg Immendorff, Jonathan Meese, and Julian Schnabel.

The Hall Art Foundation operates two distinct sites. In Reading, Vermont, the museum occupies a former dairy farm with a campus of converted galleries including a 19th-century stone farmhouse, three barns, a reception center, and a café. These structures provide approximately 6,000 square feet of museum-quality exhibition space beside a waterfall on a tributary of the Black River, surrounded by roughly 400 acres of pastures, hayfields, and woodland. Outdoor sculptures by internationally recognized artists are installed throughout the grounds.

Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg, near Hannover in the municipality of Holle, has a history stretching back nearly one thousand years. It served as a convent and later a monastery before becoming the residence of the Dukes of Münster in the 19th century, who commissioned Hanoverian architect Georg Ludwig Laves to convert it into a stately home. Artist Georg Baselitz acquired the property in the 1970s and maintained his residence and studio there for approximately thirty years until its sale in 2006. The Hall Art Foundation subsequently reunited the Schloss with its adjacent domain and undertook extensive renovations. Berlin architect Tammo Prinz directed the conversion of the building into a museum. The Foundation aims to develop 10,000 square meters of renovated exhibition space, making it one of the largest privately owned public museums for contemporary art in Europe. The surrounding English landscape park, established by the Münster family after the Congress of Vienna, now functions as a sculpture park.

The Hall Art Foundation in Reading, Vermont holds seasonal exhibitions from May through November. The Vermont site offers public access to its converted farmhouse and barn galleries, reception center, and café, with outdoor sculpture distributed across its extensive grounds. Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg in Germany provides access to multiple simultaneous solo exhibitions of contemporary artists within the renovated castle and former outbuildings, as well as the sculpture park. The Foundation's administrative headquarters are located in Vermont. The MASS MoCA partnership in North Adams, Massachusetts offers year-round access to the Anselm Kiefer installation as part of the larger museum complex.