The Foundation

The Easton Foundation was established by Louise Bourgeois in the 1980s as a non-profit and charitable organization. Upon her death in 2010, at the age of 98, Bourgeois bequeathed her home and an adjacent townhouse to become the Foundation’s offices and donated a substantial collection of her art to its holdings.

The Easton Foundation is now dedicated to preserving Bourgeois’s legacy. Serving to promote the scholarship and awareness of Bourgeois’s life and art, the Foundation aims to cultivate new interpretations of her work while providing a deeper understanding of her artistic process and creative milieu. As part of this mission, the Foundation has established the Louise Bourgeois Archive, a study center and residency for curators and scholars, as well as a sculpture garden and a small exhibition space presenting 
original archival materials and works from the collection. The Foundation is also undertaking the ongoing conservation of Bourgeois’s distinctive home and studio, in which she lived and worked for almost 50 years. 

The Home

Bourgeois and her husband, the art historian Robert Goldwater, purchased their townhouse on West 20th Street in 1962. Built in 1856, the building lies in the Chelsea Historic District, designated in 1970 by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Upon Goldwater’s death in 1973, Bourgeois rearranged the domestic spaces of the home and expanded her studio practice from the basement to the parlor floor, transforming the whole house into something of a work of art. It is here that Bourgeois realized many of her sculptures, drawings, gouache paintings, and prints, and conceived of large-scale projects and commissions before their actualization in foundries, or at her large Brooklyn studio. Bourgeois also held her renowned Sunday Salons in the parlor, during which artists, writers and curators would share their work for discussion and critique.

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