Mary Griggs Burke

Mary Griggs Burke (June 20, 1916 – December 8, 2012) was an American art collector. Over fifty years, Burke acquired the largest private collection of Japanese art outside Japan. Her collection grew so large that she housed it in a separate apartment adjacent to her own on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She also inherited Forest Lodge, a family lake-side property on Lake Namakagon near Cable, Wisconsin which she loved dearly; that property was left to Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, along with a $10-million endowment to create the Mary Griggs Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation.

Biography Burke was born Mary Livingston Griggs in St. Paul, Minnesota, on June 20, 1916, to Theodore W. Griggs and Mary Steele Livingston.

Burke and her spouse began to collect Japanese art in the 1960s. This endeavor flourished and in 1972 the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation was created. On May 10, 1973, her foundation purchased their first art piece: a pair of six-panel folding screens by Kano Sanraku (1559-1635) titled View of the West Lake. Burke served as the foundation's President from the beginning to December 4, 2008, then was elected Honorary President until the end of her life. The collection of artwork is known as the most important collections of Japanese art held by a private group outside of Japan.

The government of Japan awarded her the Order of the Sacred Treasure in 1987. On March 16, 2015 the two museums jointly announced the details of their respective bequests.

In addition to her home in New York City, she kept a winter home in Hobe Sound, Florida and her family summer home, Forest Lodge on Lake Namakagon just outside Cable, Wisconsin.

Collection