Melva Bucksbaum

Melva Jane Bucksbaum (née Venezky; April 5, 1933 – August 16, 2015) was an American art collector, curator and patron of the arts.

The daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants to the United States she was born in Washington, D.C. and attended the University of Maryland.^[1] She married her second husband Martin Bucksbaum in 1967. He built shopping centers and started real estate investment trusts in Iowa and there she became the President of the Des Moines Art Center board. Martin Bucksbaum died In 1996 and in memoriam the family endowed a chair at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, The Martin Bucksbaum Professorship in Urban Planning and Design.^[2]

Bucksbaum began serving on the Whitney Museum of American Art's board of trustees in 1996 and eventually became its Vice Chairwoman. In 2001 she married her fellow Whitney trustee, Raymond J Learsy.^[3] Together Bucksbaum and Learsy lived admist their collection of over four hundred contemporary, impressionist, modernist and post-impressionist works, including pieces by; Vanessa Beecroft, Gregory Crewdson, Nan Goldin, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Salle, Richard Serra, Terry Winters, Henri Mattisse and Su-en Wong. They also owned works by Peter Paul Rubens, In 2004–2005 Francesco Clemente painted a portrait of the couple.^[4] In 2000 she and her family inaugurated the Melva Bucksbaum Prize with an award of $100,000 to an individual contemporary artist and an exhibition of the artist's work at the Whitney.^[5]

Bucksbaum died at her home in Aspen, Colorado from bladder cancer on August 16, 2015 at the age of 82.^[6] She is survived by her second husband as well as Mr. Learsy, survivors include her sons, Gene and Glenn Bucksbaum; her daughter, Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan; her stepchildren, Bill and Peter Lese and Olexa Mandelbaum; seven grandchildren; and six stepgrandchildren.

References

External links