Whitney, Gertrude Vanderbilt

orig. Gertrude Vanderbilt

(born Jan. 9, 1875, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died April 18, 1942, New York City) U.S. sculptor and art patron. Great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, she was born to great wealth and studied sculpture in New York City and Paris. Among her major works were the Titanic Memorial (1914–31) in Washington, D.C., and Victory Arch (1918–19) in New York. All her works were simple, direct, and traditional. In 1929 she offered to donate her collection of about 500 works by modern American artists to the Metropolitan Museum of Art but was refused by the traditionalist director. The next year she founded the Whitney Museum of American Art, also in New York City, which opened in 1931; today it is the foremost museum of American art.

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