Dede Wilsey

Diane Buchanan "Dede" Wilsey is a San Francisco socialite, Republican Party donor, and philanthropist. She is the widow and heir of the San Francisco dairy and real estate businessman Al Wilsey, and the Chair Emerita of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Early life and background

Wilsey was born Diane Dow Buchanan in 1944. Her father, Wiley T. Buchanan, Jr., was the U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg and Austria and the White House Chief of Protocol during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower. Her maternal great-grandfather, Herbert Henry Dow, was the founder of Dow Chemical.

Buchanan enjoyed a privileged childhood in which she summered at her family's estate, Beaulieu House in Newport, Rhode Island, or in the south of France, a member of a social circle that included royalty and heads of government. When she made her debut, while a student at Connecticut College, Town & Country Magazine featured her on its cover.

Personal life

In 1965, in a match opposed by her father, Buchanan married John Traina, a shipping magnate and art collector. They had two sons, Todd and Trevor Traina. A year after parting from Traina in 1980, she married the dairy product mogul and real estate developer Al Wilsey, who had recently divorced his third wife, a friend of Buchanan's, the social columnist Patricia Montandon. The couple soon became leading lights of the high society of San Francisco and Napa Valley, where they maintained a country house. Al Wilsey died in 2002 at the age of 82.

Wilsey is featured prominently in her stepson Sean Wilsey's memoir '' Oh the Glory of it All'', in which the author described her as his "evil stepmother", and contended that she married Al Wilsey because of his $300 million fortune.

Philanthropy

Wilsey has been a prominent supporter of several institutions in San Francisco, including its Grace Cathedral and the San Francisco Opera. But her most notable philanthropic affiliation has been with the city's Fine Art Museums, and Golden Gate Park's de Young in particular. Seven years after being elected president of the Museums' board of trustees in 1998, Wilsey led a campaign which raised $208 million to repair the damage to the de Young that had been inflicted by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, contributing $10 million of her own money to the cause. The sum elicited by her appeal was one of the largest ever given to an American museum.

After the Museums' long-serving director, John Buchanan, died in 2011, Wilsey assumed his executive responsibilities herself, but her management of the Museums' affairs was not universally applauded. In March 2013, she was accused of creating turmoil. It was alleged that she had exploited her wealth and her power to fire many of the de Young's most experienced curators, to force it to mount an exhibition of photographs owned by one of her sons and to appropriate some of its staff to tend to her personal collection. Her discharge of her duties attracted further controversy when she authorized a payment to a former employee of the Museums which their chief financial officer thought to be improper. The whistle-blower was dismissed, but she was subsequently awarded a $2 million settlement to compensate her for her firing and the payment which had triggered the scandal was refunded. In July 2016, it was reported that Wilsey was relinquishing her position as the Museums' lifetime president. In 2022, the Museums' official website described her as their Chair Emerita.

The JFK Promenade controversy

San Francisco's JFK Promenade was introduced in 1967, when the city's authorities decided to bar cars from a portion of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park on Sundays and some other days in order to make it available for recreation. When the COVID-19 pandemic led to a greater need for recreational spaces, the city decided to ban traffic from the Promenade altogether. Wilsey and the Fine Arts Museums were opposed to the city's measure because it made access to the de Young less convenient, but a citywide consultation that revealed a supermajority in favour of the Promenade's pedestrianization led to a Board of Supervisors decision to keep the Promenade free from traffic permanently. In 2022, Wilsey and the Museums promoted a ballot that invited San Franciscans to reopen the Promenade to cars, but 61% of voters chose to preserve the status quo.

Wilsey also serves on the board of the Museum Concourse Community Partnership that owns and manages the 800-car underground garage which is the most convenient place for visitors to the de Young to park. According to both IRS filings and a 2019 Recreation & Parks study, the garage is usually mostly empty. Drivers' reluctance to use it has been attributed to high prices and poor administration.

Portrayal in fiction

Dede Halcyon, a character in Armistead Maupin's ''roman-fleuve'' ''Tales of the City'', described by a reviewer of the 2019 miniseries based on the books as the "boozy art-patron friend" of the show's protagonist, is allegedly a "thinly-veiled portrayal" of Wilsey.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilsey, Dede
Living people
American socialites
People from Washington, D.C.
Debutantes of the International Debutante Ball
American philanthropists
People from San Francisco
Year of birth missing (living people)