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

    An abstract artwork in black and yellow consists of several concentric vertical ovals.
    Image Credit: ©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

    A line drawing shows two young men standing next to a bed, both wearing only their underwear, one of them with his arm thrown around the shoulder of the other, who seems to be holding him up
    Image Credit: ©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

    An artwork shows a Savarin coffee can holding a number of paintbrushes in front of an abstract geometrical background.
    Image Credit: ©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

    An artwork in shades of black and gray shows a woman in a flowing dress whose upper body merges with an old-fashioned rotary telephone.
    Image Credit: ©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

    An artwork that resembles a comic book shows a fist punching a man's face with a speech bubble saying sweet dreams baby and the word pow! punctuating the blow
    Image Credit: ©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

    A sculpture depicts a used teabag, with several drops of tea surrounding it.
    Image Credit: ©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

    A photo shows a large sculpture in which a plastic disk printed with various colored images is propped up in a stand on the floor
    Image Credit: ©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

    A photograph shows actors and actresses in formal 18th-century clothing in a grand parlor with gold-framed portraits on the walls.
    Image Credit: ©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

    An artwork shows two hands in silhouette manipulating paper cutouts of a horse and a figure riding it
    Image Credit: ©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

    An artwork shows the head of Marilyn Monroe, her hair an exaggerated shade of yellow, with heightened coloring of her lips and eyeshadow, on a pink background
    Image Credit: ©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

    A photo shows a small sculpture or a number of pieces of furniture tightly arranged in a room, including a loveseat, a refrigerator, and two chairs sitting atop a round table.
    Image Credit: ©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.