Anges Gund, an avid art collector and patron of towering importance to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, died on Thursday in Manhattan. She was 87. The New York Times reported her death on Friday, but did not provide a cause.
Following the announcement of Gund’s death, artists and cultural workers took to social media to honor her memory. “My heart just broke. Rest in peace dear Aggie. They broke the mold with you,” Roxana Marcoci, chief curator of photography at MoMA, wrote alongside a photograph of Gund at the opening of “LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity” with Frazier, playwright Lynn Nottage, and labor leader and feminist activist Dolores Huerta.
Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak wrote, “Rest in power, Aggie— you gave us a world more just, more beautiful, and infinitely more human.”
Within the art world, Gund was a force of tireless achievement. She spearheaded the 1990s-era expansion of MoMA, transforming it—and by consequence, New York City—into a global center for contemporary art. She collected many canon-bound artists, including Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, and Brice Marden, but was not afraid to part with pieces for a good cause: In 2017, she sold Roy Lichtenstein’s Masterpiece (1962) at auction and used $100 million of the proceeds to develop the Art for Justice Fund, a grant-based initiative dedicated to criminal justice reform.
“Gund never separated her collecting and philanthropy from her politics,” said David Weiner, interim president of the arts education nonprofit Studio in the School, in an emailed statement. Weiner recounted how Gund started the nonprofit in 1977, which continues to provide children art classes: “She did so after spreading open her copy of the New York Times one morning and reading with horror that New York intended to cut back on art classes, which had become a victim of a fiscal crisis facing the city. ‘How could children not have art?’ she asked herself.”
Gund was known, too, for befriending the artists she championed. “I look like I’m part of Aggie’s security detail in this picture but she was one of those rare people in the art world you would have done anything for—including being the bodyguard— because she would have done anything for you,” Glenn Ligon wrote beneath a portrait of Gund and himself posted to Instagram. Replying to Ligon’s post, filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien said, “Such a loss and you both look so beautiful together! I know she meant the world to you and so many of us! May she rest in eternal peace and power.”
In her own post, Lorna Simpson said of Gund, “An amazing person who steadfastly held to the principles of broadly diverse art and world, and for decades a champion of a just society. Extraordinary and beloved.”
Museum professionals beyond New York, too, offered their condolences. “I have been so privileged to have spent time with Agnes Gund during my time with MoMA PS1,” wrote president and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, Hoor Al Qasimi. She continued: “A legend and icon, her belief and support for the arts and social justice throughout her life has been instrumental in the lives and careers of so many people.”
