Margaret “Peggy” Brennan Grant
Toledo, Ohio (b. 1929 – d. 2019)
For purchase inquiries, please contact 20 North Gallery:
419-241-2400 or info@20northgallery.com
Artist Biography
A native of Baltimore (Maryland), Mrs. Grant received her degree in Fine Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1952. She continued her studies at the Schuler School of Art (Baltimore, Maryland), University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and later at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Detroit (Michigan) and The Toledo Museum of Art, School of Design in Ohio. In 1952 she answered an advertisement for the position of a commercial designer to work for Palmer Paint Company, a firm in Detroit that would produce the world-renowned Paint By Number kits for the Craft Master brand. It was at Craft Master that she met her future husband, Polish refugee and painter Adam (Grochowski) Grant, whose life experiences as a Holocaust survivor and work as a fine artist would inspire her and her life’s avocation as his curator and tireless supporter. The newly-married Grants moved to Toledo when Craft Master relocated in that community. In addition to her career at Craft Master, Mrs. Grant served as a commercial designer with several other corporations, illustrated a book for children (Forty Fabulous Tales by Aesop, published 1982), as well as continuing her own work as an independent portrait painter and a free-lance artist in her studio. In 2016, her fine art painting, Artist and Son, was accepted into the permanent collection of the Midwest Museum of American Art (Elkhart, Indiana).
Mrs. Grant also served as art curator for the Fortune 500 company, Owens-Illinois Corporation from 1981 to 1984, assembling a corporate collection of over 400 works of art encompassing the major movements in contemporary art from the mid-20th century to the present. In that capacity, she was curator for the Owens-Illinois art galleries and mounted several exhibits including Sculptural Glass (which introduced the work of glass artist Dale Chihuly to the Midwest), Nature in Glass, Art in America: A Selected Exhibition of Works from the Butler Institute of American Art, and a 50-year retrospective of the work of studio glass pioneer Dominick Labino. In addition, she served as the curator of Toledo Hospital, assembling what is now the ProMedica corporate collection; the Sculpture Garden of Ottawa Hills (Ohio) and the Schedel Gardens in Elmore (Ohio). Mrs. Grant has also independently produced and curated over 75 shows for museums, art centers, corporations and various non-profit cultural institutions from 1981 to the present.
She was an Emeritus Docent for the Toledo Museum of Art and served on the Committee for Cultural Diversity for the museum’s Board of Directors. She also served as a member of the board for several area arts organizations including the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo; the Toledo Modern Art Group, of which she was a founder; the Glass Collector’s Club of Toledo; the Toledo Artists’ Club and The Blair Museum of Lithophanes. She was a lifetime honorary member of the Athena Art Society and past member of the Toledo Federation of Art Societies where she served as a delegate and an officer for ten years, receiving their Special Award in 1997. She was also published in Who’s Who of American Women in 1996. In 1984 she received Ohio’s Distinguished Citizen’s Award for Art Education and, in 1999, the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo Community Achievement Award. She was the 2007 recipient of the Toledo YWCA Milestones Award for Women in the field of Arts & Sciences and a 2008 recipient of the Crosby Award from the Toledo Botanical Garden. And in 2009, she received recognition from representatives of the Polish Government for her work in promoting the artistic contributions of her late husband. In 2012, she was awarded by the Polish Government the Order of Merit, bestowed upon her for her world-wide contributions to promoting Polish culture through the arts.
Peggy Grant began as the art director at 20 North Gallery in 1994 and has curated over 100 exhibitions there involving local, national and international artists. Her major, ground-breaking exhibitions include the Wood Sculpture exhibit in cooperation with the Ohio Crafts Museum in Columbus, Ohio; Glass Month ’96 with the International Michigan Month of Glass; The Baltimore Realists, (continuing to the Midwest Museum of American Art, The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Evergreen House, Baltimore, Maryland; and Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland), Adam Grant: Figure Master, (continuing to the Toledo Museum of Art; University of Toledo; Collegius Maiues, Krakow, Poland); and the Annual Black History Month Exhibit, begun by Grant in 1977, which was the oldest, continuing Black History Month event in Toledo during its 37-year run.
In 2012, her painting Artist and Son, a portrait of her late husband and their eldest son Tom as a young child, was accepted into the permanent collection of the Midwest Museum of American Art (Elkhart, Indiana).
Peggy Grant retained the position of Art Director Emerita for 20 North Gallery until her death in 2019.
Previous 20 North Gallery exhibitions including artwork by Peggy Grant
- The Grant Collection: January 12 – March 31, 2018. Click to view exhibit page.
- The Grant & Goodridge Paint By Number Collections: January 12 – March 31, 2018. Click to view exhibit page.
- Salon: the Collection of Ann Goodridge: April 19 – June 30, 2018. Click to view exhibit page.