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

Early life

Bucksbaum was born in Washington, D.C. on April 5, 1933, to William Venezky and Millie Ruth Venezky (née Bronstein), two

Russian Jewish The history of the Jews in Russia and areas historically connected with it goes back at least 1,500 years. Jews in Russia have historically constituted a large religious and ethnic diaspora; the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest pop ...

immigrants to the United States. Bucksbaum attended the University of Maryland.

Philanthropy and art collection

Bucksbaum served as the president of the Des Moines Art Center board. In 1996, Bucksbaum and her family endowed the Martin Bucksbaum Professorship in Urban Planning and Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University in memory of her late husband. Additionally, she established the Martin Bucksbaum Distinguished Lecture Series in Des Moines, Iowa at Drake University. Bucksbaum began serving on the Whitney Museum of American Art's board of trustees in 1996 and eventually became its vice chairwoman. 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. Bucksbaum served on additional boards such as the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., the American Friends of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Aspen Institute, the Drawing Center in New York, the Jewish Museum in New York, and the International Committee of the Tate Gallery in London. Bucksbaum collected over four hundred contemporary, impressionist, modernist and post-impressionist works, including pieces by

Vanessa Beecroft Vanessa Beecroft (born April 25, 1969) is an Italian-born American contemporary performance artist; she also works with photography, video art, sculpture, and painting. Many of her works have made use of professional models, sometimes in large nu ...

, Gregory Crewdson, Nan Goldin,

Robert Mapplethorpe Robert Michael Mapplethorpe (; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-p ...

, David Salle, Richard Serra,

Terry Winters Terry Winters (born 1949, Brooklyn, NY) is an American painter, draughtsman, and printmaker whose nuanced approach to the process of painting has addressed evolving concepts of spatiality and expanded the concerns of abstract art. His attention ...

, Henri Matisse, Su-en Wong, and works by Peter Paul Rubens. In 2004–2005 Francesco Clemente painted a portrait of the couple.

Personal life and death

Bucksbaum married

Martin Bucksbaum Martin Bucksbaum (July 31, 1920 – July 7, 1995) was an American business executive. He served as the chairman and chief executive officer of GGP Inc., a publicly traded real estate investment trust that invests in shopping centers. Early life B ...

in 1967. They had two sons, Gene and Glenn, and a daughter, Mary. He predeceased her in 1995, and she married Robert I. Goldman in 199

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/28/classified/paid-notice-deaths-goldman-robert-i.html] In 2001 she married a third time to fellow Whitney trustee, Raymond J. Learsy. Bucksbaum died at her home in Aspen, Colorado from bladder cancer on August 16, 2015 at the age of 82. She is survived by her third husband as well as her sons, Gene and Glenn Bucksbaum; her daughter, Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan; her stepchildren, Bill and Peter Lese and Olexa Mandelbaum; seven grandchildren; and six step-grandchildren.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bucksbaum, Melva 1933 births 2015 deaths American people of Russian-Jewish descent People from Washington, D.C. People from Aspen, Colorado American art curators American women curators American art collectors Women art collectors American art patrons Jewish American philanthropists Deaths from cancer in Colorado Deaths from bladder cancer Bucksbaum family