Heckscher, August

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role

Collector Patron

dates

1848-1941

city

New York City

state

NY

other cities

Hamburg, Germany; Huntington, NY; East Islip, NY; Shenanadoah, PA; Lake Wales, FL;

sex

M

historical notes

August Heckscher was a collector, industrialist, real estate developer, and philanthropist who founded The Heckscher Museum in 1929, and Heckscher Foundation for Children, in 1921 (now home of El
Museo del Barrio).

The Heckscher collection was eclectic and consisted of work from Egyptian artifacts to 19th-century paintings.

The collection included work by Ralph Albert Blakelock, Thomas Eakins, George Inness, and Thomas Moran, George Romney, Sir Henry Raeburn, François Girardon, Albert Bierstadt, Jean-Désiré-Courbet, Alfred Thompson Bricher, Jean-Léon Gérôme, William Trost Richards, and Daniel Ridgway Knight.

Heckscher and his first wife, the former Miss Anna Atkins of Pottsville, Pennsylvannia whom he had married in 1881, were also known as a generous benefactors of the Huntington Hospital and St. John’s Episcopal Church. His second wife, married in 1930 at 81, was Mrs. Virginia Henry Curtiss, 1875-1941, widow of Edwin Burr Curtiss, former president of A G Spalding & Bros.

Mrs. Heckscher's jewelry and furs were sold in an estate sale at Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York in 1942.

decades
of activity

1900-1910
1910-1920
1920-1930
1930-1940

website

http://www.heckscher.org/

updated

02/14/2025 10:12:24

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