…following quote taken from the Kimbell Art Museum website.  “Acquisitions of the first decade (1965–75) included several works that today rank among the treasures of the collection: Monet’s Point de la Hève at Low Tide; Bellini’s Christ Blessing; an eighth-century Maya stone panel depicting the Presentation of Captives; and Picasso’s classic Cubist painting of 1911, Man with a Pipe. A pre-Angkor-period bronze Bodhisattva Maitreya from Prakonchai, Thailand, was the first acquisition made during Brown’s tenure and the first work of Asian art to enter the collection.

In 1975, Mrs. Ben J. Fortson, beloved niece of Kay Kimbell, was appointed President of the Foundation’s Board of Directors—a leadership role many assumed she would one day have when she was elected to the Foundation Board at the age of 21 in 1956. Mrs. Fortson serves in that position to this day. About this time, all of the various businesses of the Kimbell estate were finally converted to income-producing assets by the executors, all of which were also Foundation Directors, providing critical funding to the Foundation for acquisitions. That funding made it possible to add on a regular basis such important works as Duccio’s Raising of Lazarus, El Greco’s Portrait of Dr. Francisco de Pisa, Rubens’s Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Buckingham, and Cézanne’s Man in a Blue Smock. The Foundation acquired the latter at auction in 1980, after Ric Brown’s unexpected death in the previous year, and designated the painting as a memorial to Brown in recognition of his outstanding service to the Foundation and the community.”

For more information visit the Kimbell Art Museum website link above.