Seligmann befriended many American artists as well as the art historian, Meyer Schapiro. With Schapiro as author, in 1944 he produced a limited edition set of six etchings illustrating the Myth of Oedipus. In 1948, a book called "The History of Magic" was published under his name by Pantheon Books. After the war, his work began to be exhibited widely and acquired by museums throughout the United States and Europe. Seligmann taught at various colleges in New York City, particularly at Brooklyn College, from which he retired in 1958. The changing nature of the New York art world, as it embraced Abstract Expressionism, caused his work to be relegated to art history and perceived as passé. Due to illness, he gave up his Manhattan apartment and retired to his farm, where he died of an accidentally self-inflicted gunshot wound in January 1962. Shortly before his death in 1992, his widow, Arlette Seligmann, bequeathed the entire Seligmann estate to the "Orange Country Citizens Foundation", a private nonprofit corporation dedicated to the preservation of Orange County, New York. The foundation now serves as Seligmann's official estate and uses the Seligmann's farm as their office. The U.S. copyright representative for the Orange County Citizen's Foundation and the estate of Kurt Seligmann is the Artists Rights Society. At the request of the Orange County Citizens Foundation, artist, Jonathan Talbot, undertook the restoration of the etching press formerly owned by Kurt Seligmann, which is located on the Seligmann property in Sugar Loaf. The project is expected to be completed by August 2011.