Amelia Marks

Amelia Marks, known as Lee, was born in Boston, MA, April 25, 1948, daughter of Emily Howe Marks and George Aaron Marks, MD and the youngest of four children, died after a brief battle with leukemia at Franciscan Health Indianapolis, Nov. 15, 2025.

Lee attended Walnut Hill School, Natick, MA and Connecticut College, New London, CT majoring in art history and earning a BA in 1970. Seeking to work in the art world, Lee moved to New York City, taking a job with the Bertha Schaefer Gallery. She spent the next seven years working at the Marlborough Gallery in sales of prints, drawings and photographs. In 1978 Lee joined with Loretta Baum to establish Baum/Marks Fine Art, NY, focusing on fine-art photography. Later, Lee established Lee Marks Fine Art, LLC, for photography sales and consulting.

In her new advisory role, Lee became a consultant to Pierre Apraxine, Curator of the world-renowned Gilman Paper Company Collection in 1980, and catalogued the Gilman collections of photography, minimalist paintings and sculpture, and visionary architectural drawings. She also contributed the extensive plate notes for the mammoth Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company (White Oak Press, 1985). This collection was eventually acquired by New York's Metropolitan Museum.

On Oct. 7, 1990 Lee married John C. DePrez, Jr. at St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Shelbyville, IN and eventually moved to where John was publisher of The Shelbyville News. Over the next thirty-five years Lee became a important contributor to the civic life of her adopted community, serving on the boards of Girls Incorporated of Shelbyville/Shelbyville (to which she also served as president), the Girls Incorporated national organization, the Indiana Arts Commission, the iMOCA Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Shelby County Players, and the Blue River Community Foundation. In Shelbyville, she also was a member of Merrill Circle and a founding member of Dinner and a Stone.

At the same time, Lee travelled back-and-forth to NYC as consulting curator to the collector and former Dreyfus CEO, Howard Stein, and his foundation, Joy of Giving Something. The collection spanned the history of photography, from the 1840s into the twentieth century and has now been dispersed among several major museums in the US. On Dec. 11-12 2014, 175 photographs from that collection sold at auction at Sotheby's in NYC setting the one and two-day records for the medium.

Lee was also very involved in promoting the field of photography as a fine art. She was a founding member of The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD), and served for many years on its board and as its president. She also co-authored photography publications with accompanying traveling exhibitions, including The Horse: Photographic Images, 1839 to the Present (Harry Abrams, 1991); New Realities: Hand-Colored Photography, 1839 to the Present (University of Wyoming Art Museum, 1997-98); Hope Photographs (Thames & Hudson, 1998), a book and exhibition of contemporary photographs circulated to ten US museum venues, 1998 through 2001; The Hidden Presence (Ceros / Librairie Plantureux, Paris, 2005), a collection of "hidden mother" tintypes; and "The Office/In and Out of the Box," shown at the Dorsky Gallery, New York City.

She and her husband contributed the bulk of their photography collection to the IU Eskenazi Museum of Art in Bloomington, IN, where The Photographic Reflex: The Lee Marks and John C. DePrez Jr. Collection, celebrating more than 100 works by 80 artists, will open Sept. 10, 2026. They also made photography gifts to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Columbus (Ohio) Museum of Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art and others

She leaves behind her husband, John, sister Anne Morgan, Needham, MA, brother George A. Marks, Jr., Chatham, MA, her nephew George C. Knight, Wellesley, MA and nieces Laurie A. Knight, Santa Fe, NM, and Elizabeth K. Hayes, Weston, MA. A brother, Frederick H. (Ted) Marks, Phippsburg, ME, predeceased her. She is also survived by her adoptive family John C. DePrez IV, Jean HD Babbitt, Sara D. Lewis and Cole West, all of Shelbyville, and Capt. Hayden DePrez, Eagle River, AK.

Contributions may be made to Lee Marks Community Fund, Blue River Community Foundation, 54 W Broadway St., Suite 1, Shelbyville IN 46176 (www.blueriverfoundation.com).

Services have been entrusted to Freeman Family Funeral Homes and Crematory, 819 S. Harrison St. in Shelbyville.

Online condolences may be shared with Lee's family at www.freemanfamilyfuneral homes.com.