Adam Kulach, Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs for Africa and the Middle East, is en route to Ohio to present a prestigious award.
Peggy Grant, art director for 20 North Gallery, will receive the “Bene Merito” Decoration ofHonor, recognizing Polish or foreign citizens for activities aimed at strengthening Poland’s position in the international arena.
Kulach will present the award to Grant at the Toledo Club June 2 at 10 a.m.
Grant has traveled the globe with her late spouse Adam Grant’s paintings, focusing particularly on Adam’s homeland of Poland. Adam grew up in Warsaw in the 1920s and ’30s and was seized by Nazis when he was 18 years old. He moved from a prison called Pawiak to Auschwitz to Mauthausen, where the typical prisoner survived about two weeks.
But Adam lived because he could paint. His Nazi captors afforded him marginally better treatment than the other prisoners because he painted portraits of them for their families or landscapes for their offices.
Peggy has devoted much of her time and attention to speaking out against prejudice and ignorance, educating people about the history of the Holocaust and educating people about Poland-U.S. relations.
After Adam died in 1992, Peggy was determined to hang Adam’s work in Poland — a place he never returned to once he moved to America. Peggy’s hard work enabled her to hang Grant’s work at the Jagiellonian University in Poland. A room in the Polish embassy in Saudi Arabia is named after Adam.
