Virginia Wright

1929 - 2020

January 1, 1929 ~ February 18, 2020

Her parents, Prentice Bloedel and Virginia Merrill Bloedel both came from Pacific Northwest timber families. She grew up mostly in Vancouver, BC before attending college at Barnard in New York. There she discovered a passion for visual art, in part due to a course with the art historian Meyer Shapiro. After college she worked at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York and so began a lifelong commitment to collecting the art of the time. She met Bagley Wright in New York and they were married in 1953. After the birth of their first children (twins), they moved to Seattle. Starting in the mid 1950's, Virginia developed a relationship with the Seattle Art Museum that continued for 60 years. She helped the museum to begin to focus on contemporary art. In 1968, she started Current Editions, a gallery for prints and works on paper. Over the years, she also undertook commissions of prominent artists to produce work for long term installation on the campus of Western Washington College in Bellingham, and at various sites in Seattle. Over the course of the last decade, she made a gift to the Seattle Art Museum of her art collection, the largest gift received by the museum in its history. She is survived by her sister, Eulalie Schneider, and by four children, ten grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren.


With the recent events surrounding the COVID-19 circumstances in the Seattle King County area, The Wright family have decided to postpone the memorial services originally scheduled for Monday March 9th for Virginia Bloedel Wright until a later date.