The
Foundation
Mission
The Hassel Smith Foundation seeks to preserve, protect, and promote the legacy of the American artist Hassel Smith through exhibitions, loans of artworks, research, publications, educational programs, and the continuing extension and development of the Hassel Smith website and catalogue raisonné & database.
The Foundation strives to further establish the artist’s contribution to the history of American art, and the history of abstraction in painting, while encouraging greater public interest and appreciation of the visual arts.
The Foundation maintains a collection of the works of Hassel Smith across a variety of mediums, including paintings, prints, drawings, and three-dimensional objects.
Board Members
Mark Harrington
President
Mark Harrington was born in 1952 in Bakersfield, California, and has lived in Europe from early adolescence. He gained BA Hons in Sculpture and History of Art at Sheffield Polytechnic, 1975, and MA in Literature at University of Reading, 1977. Harrington was active in teaching as a Lecturer and Associate Professor, Head of Department and Director of Studies, for Fine Art and Design, in Britain, Spain and Norway during the 1980s and 1990s. Since 2000 he has lived and worked in Southern Germany, exhibiting in Europe and the United States. His paintings are represented in international private and public collections.
Mark Barnekow
Trustee
Mark Barnekow is Executive Director of the University of Chicago’s Hong Kong Campus, where he serves as a bridge between the University and Asia’s dynamic cultural, business and academic communities. Alongside his role in higher education, Mark is deeply engaged in the arts: he is President of the Joseph Glasco Charitable Foundation, dedicated to advancing the legacy of the postwar American painter. Together with his wife, Jean Song, he established the Hou Beiren Graduate Student Enhancement Fund at the University of Chicago’s Center for the Art of East Asia, supporting innovative research into the visual cultures of East Asia. Prior to these roles, Mark spent two decades in Silicon Valley as CEO of technology companies, experience that now informs his commitment to fostering cross-disciplinary connections between art and the humanites, innovation, and global exchange.
Rosamund Lucy Domvile
Trustee
Lucy Domvile’s first exposure to art was during the 80’s as a cultural nomad between London and Vienna, rounded out with an internship in Chicago with large scale performance artist John David Mooney. Relocating to Ho Chi Minh City in the early 90’s, she worked as photographer, location coordinator, assistant producer but principally as a journalist and writer. ‘Morale from the Ministry’ came from this era, an illustrated book on North Vietnamese Propaganda Art from the so called ‘Vietnam’ War. She now resides in Somerset, England.
Petra Giloy-Hirtz
Trustee
Dr. Petra Giloy-Hirtz was Associate Professor for medieval literature at Heinrich University Dusseldorf, and Lecturer at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. She has been an independent curator for contemporary art since the 1990’s, and Artistic Advisor of the Alexander Tutsek Foundation since 2017.
As editor and contributor, Giloy-Hirtz collaborated with Mark Harrington on the project of the Hassel Smith monograph, ‘Hassel Smith - Paintings 1937-1997 (Prestel, 2012).
She has curated exhibitions of the work of Hassel Smith in Germany and California.
Giloy-Hirtz has produced numerous monographic and thematic exhibitions and publications, including : ‘Kiki Smith, Procession’, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2018), Sara Hilden Museum, Tampere/Finland (2019), Belvedere, Vienna (2019) ; ‘Dennis Hopper, The Lost Album’, Royal Academy of Art, London (2014), Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2012) ; ‘David Lynch, The Factory Photographs’, The Photographers Gallery, London, MAST, Bologna (2014) ; 'Julian Schnabel, Polaroids’, Hague Museum of Photography, Den Hague/Netherlands (2010). As author, the most recent monograph by Giloy-Hirtz is ‘Anselm Kiefer, The Women’ (Prestel, 2025).
Naima Karlsson
Trustee
Naima Karlsson (b. 1982) is an interdisciplinary artist, musician and composer based in London. She is also an archivist and coordinator for the Estate of Moki Cherry and Cherry Archives.
(MA History of Art & Photography, University of London)