Martha Beck, Founder of Drawing Center, Has Passed Away at the Age of 75

January 23rd, 2014

 Martha Beck, New York curator and founder of the Drawing Center, has passed away at the age of 75.  Ms. Beck, a champion of  both emerging artists and the more rugged, experimental drawing works of masters like Michelangelo and architect Antonio Gaudi, established the Drawing Center in the late 1970’s, using a small, publicly-funded budget to put on world-class shows of drawings and works on paper that earned her museum a reputation of quality and adventurousness.  “Amazingly, she would ask the most important museums all over the world to lend their precious rare old master drawings to this funky warehouse space in Lower Manhattan — and they would — because its reputation for innovation, connoisseurship and excellence preceded it,” says Ann Philbin, a former director of the museum.Read more at New York Times