Americans for the Arts mourns the loss of Melva Bucksbaum, an extraordinary patron of the arts. She passed away at the age of 82 on August 16, 2015, surrounded by her loving family in Aspen, Colorado, the mountain community that she cherished.  A generous benefactor and board member of numerous arts organizations and institutions, her lifelong interest in and support of artists and arts institutions spanned a wide arc. 

 

Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Melva’s passion for the arts became deeply imbedded early on and continued throughout her life. She often reminisced about her early passion for art and her countless visits to the National Gallery of Art where she felt “transported into another world.”

 

Melva tried her hand at being an artist but soon turned to her true calling as a patron, collector, and muse. Artists Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Francesco Clemente, and Kathleen Gilje, among many others, created powerful portraits of Melva, capturing her incandescent beauty, strength, and joy of life.  

 

Melva was deeply committed to the Whitney Museum of American Art, joining the board in 1996. In 2000 she established the Bucksbaum Award of $100,000, the largest cash award for an individual visual artist, given to an artist selected from the Museum’s signature Biennial Exhibition. Melva played a leading role in the Museum’s transformative move to its new location where there is now the Bucksbaum, Learsy, Scanlan Conservation Center.  At the time of her passing she was the museum’s Vice Chairman.

 

It was through Melva's involvement with the Whitney that she met and fell in love with fellow trustee Raymond J. Learsy.  In a true later-in-life love match, together they built a gallery adjacent to their home in Sharon, Connecticut, where they presented powerful exhibitions comprised of works from their collection. Last year, Melva curated her first large scale exhibition, The Distaff Side, which focused exclusively on work by women including Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Kathe Kollwitz, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Mika Rottenberg, Kiki Smith, and Mickalene Thomas, among many others.

 

Melva was an active supporter of some of the top art institutions in the country and the world. In addition to her nearly two decades of work with the Whitney, she was a long-time trustee of the Des Moines Art Center; a trustee of the Aspen Institute, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Modern Art (where she sat on the International Council), a member of the American Friends of the Israel Museum, part of the International committee of the Tate Gallery, and the committee on collections of Harvard University. 

 

In addition to her interest in artists and exhibitions, Melva and Ray where both major supporters of arts policy programming including Americans for the Arts’ National Leadership Roundtable, held at the Aspen Institute.

 

Americans for the Arts will miss Melva’s intelligence, insights, and devotion to artists and ideas. She helped to shape so many organizations working to advance the arts across the country and the globe, and we are all richer for it.

 

(Melva is pictured above with her husband Raymond J. Learsy at Americans for the Arts' 2013 National Arts Awards in New York City)