Francine Tyler

FRANCINE TYLER (1933 – 2025)

Francine Tyler, PhD, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, who became both an artist and a specialist in the art and social history of the Great Depression, died on Feb. 3. She was 91.

After living in San Francisco, London and Rome, she settled with her journalist husband and their children in New York City, first in Greenwich Village and later in Hell's Kitchen.

At the Brooklyn Museum, she was a researcher in the Department of Prints and Drawings. Her 1984 book, American Etchings of the 19th Century, was based on an exhibition she curated. She also published articles in Artforum and other arts journals.

Dr. Tyler attended the University of Chicago and New York University, where she earned her doctorate. She taught at the University of London and Long Island University in Brooklyn, and, for more than 30 years, at New York University's School of Professional Studies. She conducted oral histories of artists for the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art and worked as an archivist for the New York Public Library and the Museum of Modern Art.

A great walker, she regularly walked to Lincoln Center to attend the Metropolitan Opera. She volunteered for some years with the Rosenberg Fund for Children.

Born in Chicago, Ill., she was the youngest of four children, and the only girl. Her father, Nathan Milrod, who came to the U.S. from Russia, read the newspapers and listened to opera. Her mother, Sarah Milrod, from Lithuania, never learned to read or write.

Ralph Tyler, her husband of 60 years, predeceased her in 2016. Survivors include her daughter Aubin Tyler of Northampton, Mass., her son Mike Tyler and daughter-in-law Kate Wight Tyler and two grandchildren of Manhattan.