Agnes Gund

Agnes Gund (August 13, 1938 – September 18, 2025) was an American philanthropist, arts patron, art collector, and arts education and social justice advocate. She was President Emerita and Life Trustee of the Museum of Modern Art and Chairman of its International Council. She was a board member of MoMA PS1. In 1977, in response to New York City budget cuts to arts education in public schools, Gund founded Studio in a School, a nonprofit that engages professional artists as art instructors in public schools and community-based organizations.

Early life and education Gund was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 13, 1938,

Agnes was the second oldest of six children. Her brother Graham would become an architect, brother Geoff a teacher of economics and American history, and her sister, Louise, a Tony Award–winning theatrical producer.

Gund developed her interest in art, after the death of her mother, Later, Gund attended Connecticut College for Women, She served on the boards of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Frick Collection, and the Morgan Library and Museum.

She was active in arts advocacy, education policy, women’s initiatives, and environmental programs,

Philanthropic activities

Art for Justice Fund In January 2017, Gund sold Roy Lichtenstein's Masterpiece in order to provide $100 million in seed funding for the Art for Justice Fund, which supports criminal justice reform and seeks to reduce mass incarceration in the United States. Gund described Michelle Alexander's 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and Ava DuVernay's 2016 documentary 13th about African-Americans in the prison system as motivators for starting the fund, as well as concern for her grandchildren, six of whom are Black. About 90 percent of all children who participate in Studio programs come from low-income families. By 2018, the Studio Institute had provided expanded programming in five cities: Boston, Philadelphia, Providence, Cleveland, and Memphis. In 2017, Studio in a School received the National Arts Award for Arts Education from Americans for the Arts.

Art collecting Gund's vast collection of modern and contemporary art from the 1940s through the present ranges from modern masters, including Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Lee Bontecou, James Lee Byars, Vija Celmins, Eva Hesse, Arshile Gorky, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Wolfgang Laib, Roy Lichtenstein, Martin Puryear, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko, Richard Serra, and Frank Stella; through cutting-edge contemporary artists, such as Teresita Fernandez, Kara Walker, Lorna Simpson, Cai Guo-Qiang, Glenn Ligon, and David Remfry. Essentially all of her most valuable works that have not already been given are promised gifts to institutions.

Awards and recognition

In 1997, Gund received the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton. In 2011, Hillary Clinton honored Gund with the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies' Leonore and Walter Annenberg Award for Diplomacy through the Arts, and in doing so, listed Gund's 23 charitable board and committee appointments (at that time). In 2016, Gund was elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2018, she was awarded the J. Paul Getty Medal.

On February 14, 2020, Gund received the first Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award of the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation, which was presented by Justice Ginsburg. In October 2022, Gund received the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal, the highest honor given by Harvard University in the field of African and African American studies.

Gund received honorary doctorate degrees from Hamilton College (1994), Case Western Reserve University (1995), Brown University (1996), Kenyon College (1996), the University of Illinois (2002), the CUNY Graduate Center (2007), Bowdoin College (2012), and the University of the Arts (2021).

Media features

In May 2025, Gund was featured in The New Yorkers photojournalism piece "Power Houses: Inside the Living Rooms of Notable New Yorkers".

Personal life From 1963 until their 1981 divorce, Gund was married to Albrecht ‘Brec’ Saalfield, an heir to the Saalfield Publishing Company of Akron, Ohio. They had four children:

Gund died at her Manhattan home on September 18, 2025, at the age of 87, leaving a legacy of arts philanthropy and advocacy documented in national media obituaries.