The Samstag Legacy: An Artist's Bequest

Samstag Museum of Art

The American artist Gordon Samstag famously made one of the great cultural bequests benefitting the arts in this country, enabling Australian visual artists to develop their skills and abilities internationally – through the Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarships. Proudly published by the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art for the University of South Australia’s 25th birthday celebrations – and the 25th anniversary of the Samstag Scholarships – this groundbreaking book charts the lives and careers of Anne and Gordon Samstag, and their sixteen years of living and working in Australia and eventual return to America. Who were the enigmatic Samstags? Intensely private, each boasting rich ancestral family trees, philanthropy was in their blood. This is their story. 

When Anne and Gordon Samstag migrated to Australia in 1961, they left few clues as to their reasons or motivations. In fact, although both had enjoyed early artistic success in America, their backgrounds and achievements remained unknown to new friends and colleagues alike; in Australia, they became people of mystery. Gordon soon began teaching at the South Australian School of Art, and after a decade in Adelaide the Samstags moved to tropical Cairns, in Queensland, eventually returning to America in 1977. The Samstags had loved their time in Australia, and they reciprocated with a significant, in-perpetuity benefaction to Australia’s artists; the Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarships, established in 1991. After 25 years, Anne and Gordon’s historic gift still ranks as one of the very great bequests to visual arts education in Australia.

392 pages, hardback, richly illustrated with over 190 images, Editor Ross Wolfe, Essays by Lea Rosson DeLong and Ross Wolfe.

$70.00

Available for purchase through Samstag Museum of Art