Fort Worth philanthropist Anne Marion, key benefactor of Modern Art Museum, dies at 81
Anne Marion, a pivotal Fort Worth arts patron and philanthropist and the primary benefactor of the city’s modern art museum, died Tuesday. She was 81.
An oil and ranching heiress, Marion died in California, according to Cody Hartley, director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which Marion founded with her husband.
Marion, a resident of Westover Hills, was a “passionate arts patron, determined leader, and generous philanthropist,” Hartley wrote in a statement, the Associated Press reported.
Former President George W. Bush wrote in a statement that he and former first lady Laura Bush were mourning the death of their friend. He said she was “a true Texan, a great patron of the arts, a generous member of our community, and a person of elegance and strength.”
Anne Windfohr Marion was the great-granddaughter of Samuel Burk Burnett, founder of the Four Sixes Ranch in King County.
She was the daughter of Anne Burnett Tandy, whose family’s wealth created the Burnett Foundation.
In the early 1980s, Marion was dismayed at how the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth had outgrown its longtime building south of the Amon Carter Museum, according to a 2002 Star-Telegram profile. That cramped space allowed the museum to display only a fraction of its permanent collection.
“I remember thinking, ‘What could we do about this?’ and I realized we couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” she recalled in the newspaper’s report. “We had to have a new building.”
Marion held a long list of honors, including the Golden Deed and Charles Goodnight awards, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and the American Quarter Horse Association Merle Wood Humanitarian Award. She was in the Texas Business Hall of Fame.
This story was originally published February 12, 2020 at 10:13 PM.
