Vera G. List, 94, Philanthropist and Collector -- Rest in Peace

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Subject: Vera G. List, 94, Philanthropist and Collector

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Date Posted: October 15, 2002 1:16:43 EDT
In reply to: Michelle 's message, "Recent obituaries you might have missed seeing elsewhere" on October 15, 2002 1:00:40 EDT

Vera G. List, a forward-looking philanthropist whose causes included contemporary art, opera, education and social justice, died Thursday at her home in Greenwich, Conn. She was 94.

Mrs. List, who received the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1996, was born Vera Glaser in 1908 in Brookline, Mass., the daughter of a housepainter from Latvia. She credited her interest in art and music to her mother, who despite an often constrained budget maintained a beautifully decorated house.

She attended Simmons College, and in 1930 married Albert A. List, from Fall River, Mass., who made his family's grocery the basis of a business empire that eventually included RKO Theaters.

Mrs. List began collecting art almost immediately. As her husband's wealth grew, her art purchases and their philanthropy kept pace. The saying in the family was that "the money was his, the ideas were hers," her daughters said.

The Lists' beneficiaries included the Metropolitan Opera, Mount Sinai Hospital, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Jewish Museum and the New School for Social Research, now New School University. They built art centers at M.I.T., Brown University and Swarthmore College, and endowed professorships at various universities and medical schools.

Mrs. List endowed art-lending programs (and provided them with prints) for students at the New School and M.I.T. Another endowment enabled New School students to attend the Metropolitan Opera for $5.

The Albert A. List Foundation, formed in the 1950's, donated money to the construction of Lincoln Center. The foundation also paid for much of the center's art, including the large two-piece sculpture by Henry Moore that dominates its reflecting pool.

Mrs. List was particularly proud of the List Art Posters program at Lincoln Center, which invited contemporary artists to design posters for cultural events.

Mrs. List also became an avid collector of modern and contemporary art, especially sculpture. The List family's sculpture collection included works by artists from Giacometti to Joel Shapiro and a full-length portrait of Mrs. List by George Segal.

Mrs. List was on the boards of the Jewish Museum and the American Federation of Arts. But she may be best known in the art world for helping Marcia Tucker, a former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, establish the New Museum of Contemporary Art, now in SoHo. It opened in 1977 in the Albert A. List Building at the New School on Fifth Avenue and 14th Street.

Although the Lists gave art to several New York museums, after her husband's death in 1987, Mrs. List sold much of her collection to have more money to give away. In her last years she supported programs with missions like reducing hate crimes or the birth rate. She liked to remember people by endowing lecture programs, like the one named for Barbara Jordan at the New School, or providing fellowships, like one for New School students from Poland, named for Katarzyna Kalwinska, a Polish Catholic who hid Jews who had escaped from concentration camps.

She is survived by three daughters, Olga Mack of New York City, Carol Schwartz of Denver, and Viki List, of Rosemont, Pa.; 11 grandchildren; and 23 great-grandchildren. One daughter, Jo Levinson, died last year.

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Ray Conniff, songwriter/bandleader	-	October 15, 2002 1:21:57 EDT