Eli Leon

Eli Leon (1935–2018) born as Robert Stanley Leon, was an American psychologist, writer and collector. As a self-taught scholar of African-American quilts, he helped bring attention to the field and especially to the quilts of Rosie Lee Tompkins.

Early life and education Leon was born in the Bronx on June 27, 1935, the son of first-generation Jews from Lithuania. He attended the High School of Music & Art and spent his summers at Black Mountain College, where he studied with potter Karen Karnes.

He entered Oberlin College before transferring to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Reed College in Psychology in 1958. He earned a master's degree from the University of Chicago, where he trained in Reichian psychotherapy. In the late 1950s and early '60s, he was briefly married to his college girlfriend, although they both knew he was gay. Sometime after that he changed his first name to Eli and settled in Oakland, California.

Drawing from the Eli Leon Collection, BAMPFA organized the exhibit Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective (February 19 to July 19, 2020). Drawing on the larger collection, BAMPFA organized the exhibition Routed West: Twentieth Century African American Quilts in California (June 8, 2025—November 30, 2025) and published a book with the same title. On the eve of the show's opening, approximately $230,000 in conservation funds from an Institute of Museum and Library Services "Save America’s Treasures" grant was revoked by an executive order from Donald Trump, placing the museum and the Eli Leon Collection squarely in the crosshairs of the Trump Administration's "war on woke."