Henry G. GARDINER

GARDINER, Henry G. Henry Gilbert Gardiner, son of Robert Hallowell Gardiner IV and Elizabeth Denny Gardiner, died peacefully on July 2, 2018 in West Palm Beach, Florida, just two months before his 91st birthday. Raised in Boston and Gardiner, Maine, he graduated from the Brooks School and Harvard College (class of 1950), where he was a member of the Porcellian Club. After a stint in the US Navy and a short career in banking in New York City, he discovered his true talents and passion were for the fine arts. He earned a Masters degree in Fine Arts from Harvard in 1960 and went on to become Assistant Curator of modern painting and sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1960 to 1968. He was appointed Director of the Fine Arts Gallery in San Diego in 1969 to 1979, during which period it became the San Diego Art Museum. While in San Diego he met and married Eunice Haymes in July 1976, and together they moved to West Palm Beach in 1985, where he established Henry Gardiner Fine Art and worked many years as an art appraiser. After Eunice's death in 2011, he began volunteering at the Four Arts Library in Palm Beach as an expert in the art book section, enthusiastically contributing many catalogues of contemporary art exhibits from museums around the country. Loved and appreciated by many, he is survived by his stepdaughter Christine Schmidt, her two sons Charles and Robert, and her grandson Nico; his last surviving brother Charles W. Gardiner and wife Jane; 12 nieces, 8 nephews, an impressive number of great and great-great nieces and nephews, among other relatives and friends including Jeanne Hunter and Betse Gori of West Palm Beach and Denise Fitch of San Francisco. His ashes will be interred at the family plot at Christ Church in Gardiner, Maine.