Jane Meyerhoff, collector & philanthropist
MJohnson
Baltimore collector, gracious philanthropist
Couple gave major gifts to Goucher, MICA and National Gallery of Art
By Jacques Kelly
Sun Staff
Originally published October 18, 2004
Jane Meyerhoff, a collector whose knowing eye led her, with her
husband, Robert, to assemble one of the country's major collections of
latter 20th-century art, died Saturday at Johns Hopkins Hospital after
heart surgery. She was 80.
When the Meyerhoffs announced in 1987 that they would donate their
collection to the National Gallery of Art, it was called the
institution's largest single gift -- estimated at more than $300
million -- after those from its founding benefactors, who included
Andrew Mellon.
Art curators compared her collecting instinct and passion to that of
Baltimore's late Claribel and Etta Cone, the sisters whose donation of
French art became the centerpiece of the Baltimore Museum of Art.
"My mother was the curator, the genius behind the collection," said
Rose Ellen Greene of Coral Gables, Fla. "The collection was always a
joint effort, though."
Over the past 46 years, Mrs. Meyerhoff purchased many canvases by
modern masters Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Roy
Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns. She displayed them in the family's home
in Phoenix -- the 300-acre Fitzhugh Farm, where the Meyerhoffs raised
thoroughbreds in the rolling countryside of Baltimore County.
A 1996 article in The Sun described it as "a private Museum of Modern
Art."
"She was a master at arranging artists' works in a room," said Mr.
Kelly, a painter and friend, from his home in Spencertown, N.Y. "She
was a very strong and decisive woman, a woman who knew what she was
and knew what she wanted."
He recalled that Mrs. Meyerhoff would enter his studio and say,
"That's what I want."
"Robert and Jane Meyerhoff put together the finest collection of
postwar art that I know of," said retired Sun art critic John Dorsey.
"The five artists on which they concentrated, Johns, Kelly,
Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg and Stella -- are among the greatest
artists of the second half of the 20th century."
They also collected "extraordinary works" by other artists, Mr. Dorsey
said. "Baltimoreans are fortunate that the collection is so near, at
the National Gallery in Washington."
The couple decided to give the gallery their entire collection, more
than 100 works by modern American and European masters. The decision
caused consternation in Baltimore cultural circles, but Mrs. Meyerhoff
stood by her decision.
"It never charges, not for special exhibitions, not for anything," she
said in 1996 of the Washington gallery. "It is closed only two days a
year. It has a 'no deaccessions' policy, which means that the
institution never sells its art."
When the paintings she collected were placed on display that year, the
show drew more than 159,000 visitors in 113 days.
Last year, Business Week magazine ranked the Meyerhoffs in the top 20
of the nation's most generous philanthropists, a generosity that went
beyond the world of art.
Concerned about the relatively low number of blacks earning advanced
degrees in the sciences, the couple established the Meyerhoff Scholars
Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 1988.
"Mrs. Meyerhoff has been an inspiration to the UMBC community because
of her strong belief that students from all backgrounds can excel,"
said Freeman A. Hrabowski III, the school's president.
Nearly 40 years ago, she was co-chairwoman of a fund-raising campaign
to save and convert old Mount Royal Station in Baltimore into a
library and sculpture studio for the Maryland Institute College of
Art.
More recently, she endowed the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff House,
formerly the Hospital for the Women of Maryland on Lafayette Avenue,
where she was born and which is now a MICA dormitory. Mrs. Meyerhoff
was a longtime MICA trustee.
"While she was charming, attractive and had a wicked sense of humor, I
don't know any other collector who had such a passion," said artist
Grace Hartigan of Lutherville, whose works Mrs. Meyerhoff collected.
"She had a depth that was extraordinary. She had an absolutely
instinctive eye for art."
Art journals said the couple's collection was monumental in size. For
many years, ArtNews placed the Baltimore County couple among the top
10 art collectors in the world, a list that included the sultan of
Brunei, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, the theater composer, and Baron Hans
Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza.
"She formed a close relationship to the particular artists to whom she
was especially devoted," said Doreen Bolger, director of the Baltimore
Museum of Art. "She continued the great tradition of patronage of
Claribel and Etta Cone."
Artist Frank Stella, upon hearing of Mrs. Meyerhoff's death, left New
York City and drove to Baltimore County yesterday afternoon.
"When Jane acquired one of your paintings, she really lived them," Mr.
Stella said. "To an artist, she was quite nurturing."
Born Jane Bernstein in Baltimore in 1924 and raised in Forest Park,
she was a 1941 graduate of Forest Park High School and earned her
undergraduate degree in history at Goucher College. In 1945, she
married Robert Meyerhoff, a homebuilder and developer.
The couple also donated her alma mater's Robert and Jane Meyerhoff
Fine Arts Center and set up visiting Goucher professorships. In 1994,
they were honored for distinguished service to the college.
The 1996 Sun article described her as a "small, handsome woman with a
penchant for precision," who "reads voraciously, keeps her own
records, and installs and reinstalls the galleries."
The article said that a love of art may have been in her genes. "Her
father, Harry A. Bernstein, was a devotee and collector. ... In the
1950s, two life-changing events also played roles in advancing Mrs.
Meyerhoff's interest in art. Her father died, and the family
established a memorial collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art. And
in 1955, she became ill with polio -- and took a correspondence course
in art while recuperating."
Mrs. Meyerhoff later said the experience with her illness "helped me
to see while I was looking."
In the late 1950s, Mrs. Meyerhoff began volunteering in the BMA's old
Sales and Rental Gallery, a job that often took her to New York. While
on trips there, she bought for the museum's shop -- and often for
herself.
Her initial purchase was in 1958, a Hans Hofmann painting called
Autumn Gold, which became the first in her collection.
"For me it was like adopting a child," she told The Sun.
"She brought a vivacity to the Baltimore art scene," said Stiles T.
Colwill, a decorative arts consultant. "There was no one like Jane
Meyerhoff for speaking her mind and being ahead of her time."
Mrs. Meyerhoff was a founder of the Women's Initiative of United Way
of Maryland, giving $1 million to the agency in 2001 -- when the
couple were named its philanthropists of the year.
Her funeral is private; plans for a memorial service were incomplete
yesterday.
In addition to her husband and daughter, survivors include two sons,
Neil Meyerhoff and John Meyerhoff, both of Baltimore; a sister, Joan
B. Katz, also of Baltimore; six grandchildren; and four
great-grandchildren.
Hyfler/Rosner
October 19, 2004
Jane Meyerhoff, 80, Art Collector, Dies
By CAROL VOGEL NY Times
Jane Meyerhoff, a philanthropist and collector who was a
major donor of modern art, most of it American, died on
Saturday in Baltimore. She was 80.
The cause was complications of heart surgery, said her
daughter, Rose Ellen Meyerhoff Greene.
For nearly 50 years, Mrs. Meyerhoff and her husband, Robert,
a real estate developer, collected art by American masters
like Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and
Frank Stella, which filled Fitzhugh Farm, their 300-acre
home and horse farm about an hour and a half north of
Washington.
Over the years, as the collection grew, the Meyerhoffs built
a series of galleries attached to their house. Some were
devoted to the work of a single artist like Lichtenstein,
others had a mix of works. One, which Mrs. Meyerhoff called
her "old masters,'' had paintings by Rothko, Pollock, Kline
and de Kooning.
Also over the years the couple became friends with many of
the artists whose work they collected and would often name
horses either after an artist or one of their famous works.
In 1987 they announced they would donate their collection,
which experts say is worth well over $300 million, to the
National Gallery of Art in Washington, becoming the
gallery's largest single-gift donor after Andrew W. Mellon
and the gallery's founding benefactors.
For years other museums, including the Baltimore Museum of
Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, courted the
couple in the hope that someday the collection would become
theirs. But officials at the gallery seemed to make the best
case, convincing the couple the art should go to the nation.
"We thought someday when we fall off our perches, we wanted
our art in a place like the National Gallery, which is open
to the public and free of charge,'' Mrs. Meyerhoff said in
an interview last year.
The Meyerhoffs made their first donation to the gallery in
1986 when they provided the money to buy Barnett Newman's
"Stations of the Cross'' (1958-66), a series of 14 canvases
regarded by contemporary art experts as Newman's most
important work. Ten years later the gallery organized a show
of the Meyerhoffs' collection, which included 194 works and
filled major portions of two levels of the East Building.
Born Jane Bernstein in 1924, she grew up in Baltimore and
graduated from Goucher College in 1945, the same year she
married Mr. Meyerhoff.
Mrs. Meyerhoff first entered the art world after her father,
Harry A. Bernstein, died in 1958. She and her step-mother, a
Baltimore artist named Ruth Bernstein, established a
memorial art fund in his memory at the Baltimore Museum of
Art. One of her first purchases was a Rothko painting that
cost $3,000.
"When I got it home and showed it to Bob he said, 'I can't
believe you spent $3,000 on something that looks like this,'
'' she said in an interview last year.
Also in the 1950's she learned she had polio. While
recovering she took a correspondence course in how to look
at art.
"We never intended to be collectors,'' Mrs. Meyerhoff often
told friends. "It sort of happened by accident.''
Art was not the couple's only area of their philanthropy. In
1988 they established the Meyerhoff Scholar Program at the
University of Maryland Baltimore campus, which has become a
leading science-education initiative for African-Americans.
Besides her husband, who lives in Maryland and Manhattan,
and Mrs. Greene of Coral Gables, Fla., she is survived by
two sons, Neil and John of Baltimore; a sister, Joan B.