Abby Weed Grey
Born1902
Minnesota
Died1983(1983-00-00) (aged 80–81)
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Occupation(s)art collector and art patron
Known forGrey Art Museum at New York University

Abby Weed Grey (1902–1983) was an art collector and patron for whom New York University's Grey Art Gallery is named.[1] Grey had a particular interest in non-Western modern art and art of the Middle East was particularly well-represented in her collection.[2][3]

Early life and education

Abby Weed was born in 1902 in Minnesota and was educated at Vassar College. She married Benjamin Edwards Grey, an army officer, in 1924.[3]

Career

Grey was a native of Saint Paul, Minnesota. She established the Ben and Abby Grey Foundation to sponsor artists after her husband died in 1956.[2] Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Grey undertook curatorial projects such as Fourteen Contemporary Iranians (1962–65) and Turkish Art Today (1966–70), each of which toured the United States; Communication Through Art (1964), which opened simultaneously in Istanbul, Tehran, and Lahore, before traveling throughout the eastern Mediterranean, Asia, and eastern Africa; and One World Through Art.[4][5] By 1979, Grey had become one of American's prominent collectors of Asian and Middle Eastern art.[4]

Grey served on the Board of Trustees of The Minnesota Society of Fine Arts (1967–1973) and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design's Board of Overseers (1964–1983).[1] In 1974 she established the Grey Art Gallery at New York University.[3] She endowed the Grey Fellowship in Museum Studies at the Walker Art Center, and in 1979, established and endowed The Grey Fine Arts Library and Study Center, a resource in NYU's Department of Art History (formerly Department of Fine Arts).[6]

Grey was also the author of The Picture is the Window; the Window is the Picture, her autobiography, which was published by New York University Press.[1][7]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Abby Weed Grey, Art Patron And Founder of Study Center". The New York Times. 1983-06-04. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-12-14.
  2. 1 2 "The Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art".
  3. 1 2 3 Chaves, Alexandra (2021-11-16). "How an American woman built a unique collection of 1960s art from India, Iran and Turkey". The National. Retrieved 2023-12-14.
  4. 1 2 Surak, Amy; Gelfand, Aleksandr. "Guide to the Papers of Abby Weed Grey 1922–1978". New York University Archives. New York University.
  5. ↑ Gumpert, Lynn; Balaghi, Shiva (2002). Picturing Iran: Art, Society and Revolution. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. ISBN 1860648835.
  6. ↑ Minnesota Historical Society. "Abby Weed Grey and family papers, 1811–1983 (bulk 1910s–1970s)". Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America. The Frick Collection.
  7. ↑ Grey, Abby Weed (1983). The Picture Is the Window, the Window Is the Picture. New York: New York Univ Press. ISBN 0814729886.
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