Horsham Regional Art Gallery is pleased to exhibit the Mack Jost Gift, a selection of works drawn from over 250 works donated to the Horsham Regional Art Gallery collection by Australian concert pianist Mack Jost (pronounced ‘yost’) AM (1918-2000). Jost’s legacy tells a nationally significant story of private benefaction supporting regional Australia and is an important element in the story of art and culture in the Wimmera. His generosity served our region and propelled forward the development of the art gallery.

The Horsham Regional Art Gallery collection was then established in 1972. Eight years later, Horsham-born Mack Jost approached Council and Gallery staff with the proposal of a significant series of gifts to the collection; he offered to gift his private collection of Australian paintings and works on paper to the Horsham collection, as a series of donations during his lifetime and culminating in a significant bequest. Jost selected Horsham to commemorate his family’s long association with the Wimmera, having been born in Horsham in 1918, and his father Conrad Henry Jost was a farmer on land outside of Horsham for several decades. From then, Jost progressively donated his personal art collection of over 250 works by significant Australian artists from the colonial and modern eras, culminating in the final bequest after his death in 2000.