Kate Rothko Prizel: Preserving Mark Rothko’s Legacy
On 17 September 2025, 5 PM, the Rothko Museum in Daugavpils celebrated the 122nd birthday of the Latvian-born artist Mark Rothko with an open lecture by his daughter, Kate Rothko Prizel, on preserving her father’s legacy and the long legal battle to bring back his paintings. Kate Rothko Prizel, M.D., is a retired physician and the daughter of abstract painter Mark Rothko. Dr. Rothko Prizel was born and grew up in New York City. She received her B.S. degree from Brooklyn College and then attended Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she earned her medical degree in 1978. Until 2009, Dr. Rothko Prizel practiced Clinical Pathology and Transfusion Medicine and taught in medical schools in the Baltimore-Washington area. As a young woman and still a college student, Dr. Rothko Prizel sued one of the most powerful art galleries in New York City to reclaim her father’s paintings, which had all been sold against his wishes shortly after his death. After nearly a decade of wrangling in court, Dr. Rothko Prizel won the return of more than 650 paintings and became the administrator of his estate. As estate administrator, she was involved in overseeing the donation of the bulk of her father’s artworks to 19 museums, allowing the public access to his paintings, which had been so important to her father. For more than a decade, a deeply meaningful philanthropic project for Dr. Rothko Prizel and her brother, Christopher Rothko, has been the patronage of the Rothko Museum in Daugavpils, Latvia, their father’s native city. The siblings’ generosity supports the museum through regular rotations of original paintings by Rothko loaned out from the Rothko family collection. The next loan is scheduled for April 2026. In 2023, Dr. Rothko Prizel and Mr. Christopher Rothko donated two original drawings by Rothko to the Rothko Museum collection. In mid-September 2025, another two will join the first donation, reaffirming the Rothko family’s commitment to securing a permanent presence and public availability of their father’s work in his birthplace. Video by Andrejs Jemeljanovs This video is the property of the Rothko Museum and may not be copied, reproduced, or used by third parties. © Rotko muzejs © Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko
