Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

• Born: October 26, 1874
• Birthplace: Providence, Rhode Island
• Died: April 5, 1948
• Place of death: New York, New York

American art collector, museum founder, and philanthropist

Rockefeller was a major collector of French and American art who cofounded and donated some of her collection to the Museum of Modern Art. She also initiated a unique collection of American folk art that would later be housed in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Sources of wealth: Inheritance; marriage

Bequeathal of wealth: Relatives; museum; artistic patronage

Early Life

Abby Greene Aldrich Rockefeller (RAW-keh-fehl-luhr) was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the third of eight children of Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich, a businessman who later became a U.S. senator, and Abby Chapman Aldrich. She was educated by a private teacher at home and then attended Miss Abbott’s School in Providence, graduating in 1893. As a debutante, she traveled frequently in the United States and Europe, often accompanying her father, who stimulated her interests in art collecting and public affairs.

Abby Greene Aldrich was married to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., son of John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil Company, on October 9, 1901, following a long courtship that began when the younger Rockefeller was an undergraduate at Brown University. This marriage of two vastly different personalities was a successful union of his reserved personality and her more engaging and impulsive temperament. They had six children, and all whom were involved in the family’s philanthropic activities.

First Ventures

As the daughter-in-law of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and wife of his only son and heir, Abby Rockefeller learned the significance of the family’s charities, especially after her husband decided to focus his life on philanthropy instead of being an executive at Standard Oil, the company that was the major source of the Rockefellers’ wealth. She was an active participant in the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), and she founded the Good Fellowship Council, a neighborhood association that included representatives from many of the immigrant and minority groups on New York City’s East Side.

Mature Wealth

As her children grew older, much of the Rockefeller fortune was directed to philanthropies that were often the initiatives of others, such as Rockefeller aides Abraham Flexner, Simon Flexner, and Frederick T. Gates. This enormous wealth impacted Abby Rockefeller’s life. Along with the management of several homes, including a nine-story house on Fifty-fourth Street in New York City (later the first permanent home of the Museum of Modern Art) and estates in Pocantico Hills, New York, and Seal Harbor, Maine, Rockefeller was involved in several social welfare causes, including the Girl Scouts and the American Red Cross. She planned and organized a model home and community center project for Standard Oil employees in Bayway, New Jersey, site of the company’s headquarters; helped to build and furnish International House, a dormitory and social center for American and foreign students near Columbia University; and encouraged the housing and community service efforts of the YWCA during World War I. During World War II, with four sons either on active duty or in government work, Rockefeller entertained servicemen, helped the United Service Organizations (USO), and worked with planners of veterans’ rehabilitation centers.

Her most important philanthropic contribution grew out of her fascination with art. Her personal art collection, composed primarily of drawings and watercolors and purchased almost entirely with her own funds, initially consisted of works of European and Chinese art. After 1920, she began collecting work by American artists. This interest eventually led to Rockefeller’s most demanding project: the founding of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) with art collectors Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan. The idea to create a new museum was first proposed during a luncheon meeting of the three women in May, 1929, when they decided to appoint a committee to raise the necessary funds and recruit museum staff. As the moving spirit behind the creation of this now internationally recognized art museum, Rockefeller is considered one of a small number of founders in the field of museum patronage, and her activities helped stimulate investment in the works of living artists. In her efforts to develop MOMA, Rockefeller served as its treasurer, first vice president, and vice chairman of the board, and she donated more than 2,000 art objects from her personal collection to the museum, including some 190 paintings and 1,600 prints.

She also donated a good part of her art collection to colleges throughout the East in order to educate future patrons. With her son Nelson A. Rockefeller, she established an unrestricted purchase fund for MOMA, deliberately remaining neutral in acquisition decisions so she would not impose her personal tastes in art on the museum staff. During the Depression, she commissioned works by American artists, such as Charles Sheeler and Ben Shahn. With her husband, she was involved in the restoration of colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, where in 1935 she initiated an American folk art collection. Her collection, which included favorite paintings, carved animals, and dolls, later was exhibited at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg.

Mrs. Rockefeller died in New York City at the age of seventy-three. She was cremated and her ashes were buried in the family plot at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Tarrytown, New York. Her estate, including her art collection, was appraised at $1,156, 296. Although she had already given most of her art collection and the bulk of her assets to MOMA, she bequeathed four major works (two by Georges Seurat and two by Vincent van Gogh) to MOMA for fifty years, after which the Seurats would go to the Art Institute of Chicago and the van Goghs would remain at MOMA. Her Oriental miniatures were donated to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University. Rockefeller’s entire residuary estate of $850,848, minus estate taxes of approximately $150,000, was given to MOMA.

In the 1950’s, Rockefeller’s son Nelson, who was involved in MOMA from the earliest meetings of the planning committee, was the museum’s president. Her husband John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in 1952 gave forty thousand shares of stock in the International Basic Economy Corporation, then worth $4 million, to MOMA’s endowment fund. John also financed construction of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum.

Legacy

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller combined her love of art with philanthropy and a strong family life. In her philanthropic work, she engaged in actual contact with those she helped, providing a human element in her projects. The organizations and charities she sponsored or created, especially the Museum of Modern Art and the folk art collection in Williamsburg that bears her name, are her best-known legacies. They are a testament to her incredible generosity, which could not have been possible without the Rockefeller fortune that subsidized it.

Rockefeller’s sense of mission was intensified by the fact that she was not born into the Rockefeller fortune, so she was more aware of its power, as well as the problems outsiders had in adjusting to it. Her marriage to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., helped perpetuate the Rockefeller social and political dynasty into the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Chase, Mary Ellen. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. New York: Macmillan, 1950. Short memoir that was written only two years after Rockefeller’s death and commissioned by her husband, John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

Kert, Bernice. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family. New York: Random House, 1993. The first complete biography of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. It is especially perceptive in its description of a complex but fulfilling marriage between two very different personalities that resulted in the establishment of both a social and a political dynasty.

Rockefeller, Abby Aldrich. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller’s Letters to Her Sister Lucy. New York: n.p., 1957. Lucy Aldrich (1869-1955) was one of her sister’s closest confidants, and the letters reflect the sisters’ views on all aspects of daily life.

Stourton, James. Great Collectors of Our Time: Art Collecting Since 1945. London: Scala, 2007. Includes a brief chapter on the Rockefeller family (pages 113-116) that describes the important role Abby played, her knowledge of art, and the inspiration to buy art that she passed on to her children.