Sondra Gilman Gonzalez-Falla

GILMAN GONZALEZ- FALLA--Sondra. The Board and Staff of the Whitney Museum of American Art express with profound sadness the passing of beloved Trustee and dear friend Sondra Gilman Gonzalez-Falla. As the longest serving Trustee, having joined the Board in 1977, Sondra left an indelible mark on the Whitney during her illustrious forty-four year tenure. She served on many Museum committees and held numerous leadership positions at the Whitney, including Vice President of the Board of Trustees and Chair of the Painting and Sculpture Committee. Above all, she will be remembered for the tremendous impact she made on the collecting of photography at the Museum. With a discerning eye and always in search of the perfect print, Sondra shaped the Whitney's photography collection into what it is today. Indeed, it was under her leadership in 1991 that the Whitney formally started to collect photography and formed a Photography Acquisition Committee, which she chaired for well over a decade. The Committee has been instrumental in enhancing the Whitney's photography collection, which numbers more than 6,000 works with deep holdings in areas such as New York School and conceptual photography. A true champion of contemporary art and artists she encouraged the Museum to focus on the work of living artists. In 1998 she established the Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography and created the Sondra Gilman Gallery at the Breuer Building, which showcased seminal photography exhibitions, such as Lee Friedlander: America by Car; Polaroids: Mapplethorpe; Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar--all shows of artists she knew and admired. As part of the transformational Campaign that brought the Whitney downtown to Gansevoort Street, she and her beloved husband Celso gifted the Museum with 75 iconic photographs by Walker Evans, Alfred Stieglitz, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, William Eggleston, and Imogen Cunningham, among others, that enabled the Whitney to better tell the story of twentieth century American art. In 2015, Sondra also founded the Sondra Gilman Study Center, a state-of-the- art storage and research facility, which for the first time since the Museum's founding in 1932, affords scholars, artists, art historians and students access to the Whitney's renowned works on paper collection. Sondra was a visionary leader, who led by example and spoke with authority but in the most gracious and elegant manner. Her acquisition committee dinners for photographers, where she hosted many of the greatest practitioners of our time, were legendary. Her philanthropic endeavors extended beyond the Whitney. In addition to her passion for photography, she was a theater aficionado, and in particular musical theater, having served as Chair of the American Theater Wing and on the Board of Lincoln Center. To know Sondra was to adore her and to be in awe of her courage, persistence and forward-thinking. We are honored to carry on her legacy and will miss her dearly. We extend our most heartfelt sympathy to Celso, her devoted husband of 35 years, son Charles and his wife Marilyn, daughter Hadley and her husband David, her many beloved grandchildren, and her extended family and many friends with whom she shared her life. Flora Miller Biddle, Honorary Chairman; Leonard A. Lauder, Chairman Emeritus; Richard M. DeMartini, Chairman; Fern Kaye Tessler, President; Robert J. Hurst, Chairman of the Executive Committee; Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director