Robert A. Ellison Jr.

Robert A. Ellison Jr. (May 14, 1932 – July 9, 2021) was an American abstract painter, author, and collector of ceramics whose gifts of more than 600 works to the Metropolitan Museum of Art helped transform its ceramics holdings into one of the foremost collections in the world. A self-taught connoisseur, Ellison was also a scholar of the potter George Ohr and co-wrote a monograph on his work.

Early life

Ellison was born on May 14, 1932, in Fort Worth, Texas, where he was also raised. His family had founded the Ellison Furniture & Carpet Co. in Fort Worth in 1888. He served in the United States Navy before earning a degree in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin,

Artistic career

Fort Worth, New York, and the Tenth Street scene

Ellison spent a formative year in New York City in the late 1950s with his first wife, Nancy Ellison, forging early ties with Abstract Expressionists including Milton Resnick, Pat Passlof, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Wolf Kahn, and Emily Mason. Around 1958, the Ellisons returned to Fort Worth and opened the Ellison Gallery on the ground floor of his family's furniture business, introducing artists of the New York School avant-garde to a Texas audience.

In 1959, after the Fort Worth Art Association declined to exhibit a nude painting by Ben Johnson on grounds of supposed vulgarity, Ellison displayed the work in the gallery's street-facing window alongside a sign reading, "This painting was rejected by the Fort Worth Art Association as being vulgar. What do you think?" Describing the act as a "protest for aesthetic freedom", he removed the painting after a few days following objections from a local ministers' association.

Following the sale of the family store, the Ellisons left Texas in 1962 and moved permanently to New York, settling in Manhattan's Lower East Side and later in Greenwich Village, where Ellison set up a live/work loft studio.

Painting style

Robert A. Ellison Jr, Passion #3, 1965, Oil on canvas, 70 x 70 in; 177.8 x 177.8 cmEllison's paintings of the 1960s evolved out of the late Abstract Expressionist movement, with the work of Lester Johnson and Milton Resnick as significant influences. In the mid-1960s, he shifted from short, woven brushstrokes to large, individual strokes applied with a collage-like quality – a style described as like a non-representational neo-pointillism.

Ceramics collecting

Ellison began collecting ceramics in the 1960s, initially not knowing the formal classifications of what he was acquiring. "I started out not knowing anything, so everything I've learned has been self-discovered," he told ARTnews in 2021. "I don't have advisers or a curator or an assistant or anything like that. I'm just one guy doing it all myself."

He described himself as a "serial collector",

George Ohr

In 1974, Ellison encountered his first work by George Ohr, the eccentric Biloxi-based potter later known as "The Mad Potter of Biloxi", at a friend's antique shop. "I was just bowled over", Ellison recalled.

Metropolitan Museum of Art donations

In 2009, Ellison donated about 300 pieces of American art pottery to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met). The collection, spanning works from 1876 to 1956, was described by the museum as helping to create "one of the great repositories of Art Pottery in the world".

In 2013, Ellison made a further gift of European pottery to the Met. His final major donation, 125 works of modern and contemporary ceramic art, was made in honor of the museum's 150th anniversary and formed the basis of the 2021 exhibition Shapes from Out of Nowhere: Ceramics from the Robert A. Ellison Jr. Collection, curated by Adrienne Spinozzi. The exhibition featured works by 49 artists, including Peter Voulkos, Ken Price, Toshiko Takaezu, Lynda Benglis, and eight works by George Ohr.

In total, Ellison's gifts to the Metropolitan Museum exceeded 600 objects spanning several centuries.

Personal life

Ellison married Nancy Ellison in 1957; they shared his early years between New York and Fort Worth. He met the artist Rosaire Appel in 1983; they married in 1994.

Selected books

Exhibitions

Making Pottery Art (2014 French ceramics show), Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014 Shapes from Out of Nowhere: Ceramics from the Robert A. Ellison Jr. Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021 Languages: Rosaire Appel and Robert Ellison – A Life in Art & Collecting, Sculpture Space NYC, New York, 2025 New York City Circa 1960: Works from the Collection of Robert A. Ellison, Jr., Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, 2026