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Lot Essay
About the Collector:
Throughout her long and fruitful life, Frances Hamilton White (1933-2021) made an immeasurable impact both on the people with whom she surrounded herself and those who never knew her. Growing up in West Virginia, it was not long before Frances found her destined home on the West Coast, moving first to La Mesa in Southern California before settling a few miles north in Cardiff. Taking an interest less in any one philanthropic cause and more in humanity as a whole, Frances ensured the existence of the Hamilton Glaucoma Center at the Shiley Eye Institute of UC San Diego, jumpstarted a home-delivered meal service for patients affected by terminal illness, saw to the ongoing educational initiatives of institutions meaningful to her locale and dedicated herself to nature’s healing power through the Nature Collective. In all this, Frances still found time to appreciate visual culture, intentionally supporting artists native to her adopted state and sitting on the board of the Mingei International Museum in San Diego. A faithful patron of the Paul Thiebaud Gallery in San Francisco, Frances collected widely, often buying directly from the artists’ studio, as in the case of the spectacular Thiebauds in her collection. Public donations aside, Frances is remembered as a delightful person, loved by those who had the pleasure of coming into her orbit. Frances’s legacy, thus, is one of committed kindness to a community of creators about which she deeply cared.
Throughout her long and fruitful life, Frances Hamilton White (1933-2021) made an immeasurable impact both on the people with whom she surrounded herself and those who never knew her. Growing up in West Virginia, it was not long before Frances found her destined home on the West Coast, moving first to La Mesa in Southern California before settling a few miles north in Cardiff. Taking an interest less in any one philanthropic cause and more in humanity as a whole, Frances ensured the existence of the Hamilton Glaucoma Center at the Shiley Eye Institute of UC San Diego, jumpstarted a home-delivered meal service for patients affected by terminal illness, saw to the ongoing educational initiatives of institutions meaningful to her locale and dedicated herself to nature’s healing power through the Nature Collective. In all this, Frances still found time to appreciate visual culture, intentionally supporting artists native to her adopted state and sitting on the board of the Mingei International Museum in San Diego. A faithful patron of the Paul Thiebaud Gallery in San Francisco, Frances collected widely, often buying directly from the artists’ studio, as in the case of the spectacular Thiebauds in her collection. Public donations aside, Frances is remembered as a delightful person, loved by those who had the pleasure of coming into her orbit. Frances’s legacy, thus, is one of committed kindness to a community of creators about which she deeply cared.