Eugene Thaw

Eugene Victor Thaw (October 27, 1927 – January 3, 2018) was an American art dealer and collector. He was the owner of an art gallery on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, and a past president of the Art Dealers Association of America. With his wife, Clare, he donated over 1,000 works of art to the Fenimore Art Museum and the Morgan Library & Museum. Early life Thaw was born on October 27, 1927, in Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York City. His father was a heating contractor and his mother a schoolteacher. Thaw was educated at the DeWitt Clinton High School in Brooklyn and St. John's College in Annapolis. Career Thaw opened an art gallery and bookstore on West 44th Street at the Algonquin Hotel in 1950. He moved the gallery to Madison Avenue in 1954, He sold artwork to private collectors like Paul Mellon and Norton Simon as well as institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art. Thaw was a co-founder of the Art Dealers Association of America in 1962, and he served as its president from 1970 to 1972. He was an honorary trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.