Evelyn Nef, 96; arts patron and author
By Adrian Higgins
Washington Post staff writer
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Evelyn Nef, an arts patron whose storied life is embodied in a monumental mosaic by the celebrated artist Marc Chagall, died of cancer Dec. 10 at her home in Georgetown. She was 96.
Chagall met Mrs. Nef through her late husband, John Nef, and while staying at the Nefs' house in 1968, he declared his intention to create an artwork for them. Two days later, he said: "The house is perfect as it is. I will do something for the garden, a mosaic."
Three years later, the 10-by-17-foot mosaic was unveiled on a mild November evening. Embedded in a purpose-built brick wall, it is rich in mythological imagery juxtaposed with a New World skyline and huddled immigrants.
The symbolism was not lost on the former Evelyn Schwartz, whose parents were Hungarian Jews who immigrated to New York in the early years of the 20th century. What began as a comfortable childhood went awry when her father died suddenly at 48, leaving a mentally fragile mother in a state of mute grief and unable to care for her four children.
"I remember how silent the house became--the absence of people, the sudden cessation of music, noise and laughter," Ms. Nef wrote in her 2002 memoir, "Finding My Way: the Autobiography of an Optimist."
Ms. Nef overcame the emptiness of her childhood to become, in various incarnations, a puppeteer, an entertainer who could recall 1,000 songs, an expert on polar exploration, a psychotherapist and a benefactor of some of Washington's leading cultural institutions, including the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Opera and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
The Chagall mosaic, the only one of its kind in a private garden in the Western Hemisphere, has been bequeathed to the National Gallery of Art.
In 1930, at 17, Ms. Nef became a frequent visitor to a bohemian restaurant in Greenwich Village that became a hangout for artists, writers, dancers and actors, who would often perform or entertain. One of the regulars was the architect R. Buckminster Fuller, with whom Ms. Nef had a brief and eventually unhappy affair.
On the rebound, she met and married the puppeteer Bil Baird, and together they made marionettes and performed, prone on an 18-inch-wide plank 50 feet above the stage. Baird, she wrote, could hold a room "spellbound with a single marionette, walking it around the room, without any dialogue, making the marionette climb up on someone's knee or look under a woman's dress."
She found Baird less attentive as a husband, and they divorced.
Mrs. Nef credited her intellectual development to her second husband, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a renowned arctic explorer more than 30 years her senior.
"The polar world was completely foreign to me, but I made it my own. I fell in love with the idea of learning everything about everything, and Stef, with his encyclopedic storehouse of knowledge, was a rich source of wisdom during this intellectual awakening," she wrote. She became president of the Society of Women Geographers.
During their 21-year marriage, which ended with Stefansson's death in 1962, Ms. Nef wrote books on polar geography and acted as her husband's secretary and research assistant. She had administered her husband's library at Dartmouth College, but widowed at 49 in a college town, she felt alone. She was offered a job at the American Sociological Association's new headquarters in Washington, and she moved to the capital city in 1963.
The next year, she met John Nef, an economic historian and University of Chicago professor, and they soon married. John Nef headed a program that brought artists, writers and other thinkers in contact with doctoral students, and his retinue included writer and future Nobel laureate Saul Bellow and Chagall, who died in 1985. The Nefs vacationed with Chagall and his second wife, the former Valentina "Vava" Brodsky, in the south of France during the 1960s.
"In time the four of us became a little family," she wrote.
Diminutive and with close-cropped gray hair, Ms. Nef had a sprightly appearance that seemed to negate her advancing years, and she worked out regularly. Her husband died in 1988, and she had no immediate survivors.
The mosaic contains in its lower right corner the image of two lovers under a tree, prompting her to ask the artist, "John and me?"
ad_icon
"If you wish," Chagall said.
"I wish," she replied.
------------
Washington Post obituary:
Evelyn Stefansson Nef, 96, an author, lecturer, patron of the arts and philanthropist, died on Thursday, December 10, 2009 at her home in Washington, DC. Mrs. Nef was born Evelyn Schwartz in New York City on July 24, 1913. After an early marriage to puppeteer Bil Baird which ended in divorce, she married Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a noted artic researcher and explorer, in 1941 and from then until his death in 1962, she worked with him as a researcher and librarian of his extensive polar library. She was active in the Polar Studies Program at Dartmouth College and for two years taught the Arctic Seminar. Following Stefansson''s death in 1962, Evelyn moved to Washington and in 1964 she married John Ulric Nef, a historian, professor and founder of the University of Chicago''s Committee on Social Thought, a multidisciplinary post graduate program. At age 60, Evelyn Nef earned a degree in psychotherapy and started her own practice. She became a board member of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Opera, the Paget Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Lourie Center for Infants and Young Children and the International Longevity Center. She is a long time member of the Society of Woman Geographers and its National President from 1969-1971. She is President of the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Foundation and on the Advisory Council of the Gerontology Department of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. In 1998 the University of Alaska conferred an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree on her and the Corcoran School of Art awarded her the degree of Doctor of Fine Arts Honoris Causa in May 2000. In 2001 she received the Icelandic Order of the Falcon Medal of Honour and in 2002 Dartmouth College bestowed on her an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. Her autobiography was published by Francis Press, Washington, DC, in May 2002 and is entitled Finding My way, the Autobiography of an Optimist. Mrs. Nef was predeceased by her husband, John Ulric Nef, a brother and two sisters. She is survived by four nieces, two nephews and several grand nieces and nephews. Interment will be at Pine Knoll Cemetery in New Hampshire and a memorial service will be held at a later date.
By Adrian Higgins
Washington Post staff writer
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Evelyn Nef, an arts patron whose storied life is embodied in a monumental mosaic by the celebrated artist Marc Chagall, died of cancer Dec. 10 at her home in Georgetown. She was 96.
Chagall met Mrs. Nef through her late husband, John Nef, and while staying at the Nefs' house in 1968, he declared his intention to create an artwork for them. Two days later, he said: "The house is perfect as it is. I will do something for the garden, a mosaic."
Three years later, the 10-by-17-foot mosaic was unveiled on a mild November evening. Embedded in a purpose-built brick wall, it is rich in mythological imagery juxtaposed with a New World skyline and huddled immigrants.
The symbolism was not lost on the former Evelyn Schwartz, whose parents were Hungarian Jews who immigrated to New York in the early years of the 20th century. What began as a comfortable childhood went awry when her father died suddenly at 48, leaving a mentally fragile mother in a state of mute grief and unable to care for her four children.
"I remember how silent the house became--the absence of people, the sudden cessation of music, noise and laughter," Ms. Nef wrote in her 2002 memoir, "Finding My Way: the Autobiography of an Optimist."
Ms. Nef overcame the emptiness of her childhood to become, in various incarnations, a puppeteer, an entertainer who could recall 1,000 songs, an expert on polar exploration, a psychotherapist and a benefactor of some of Washington's leading cultural institutions, including the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Opera and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
The Chagall mosaic, the only one of its kind in a private garden in the Western Hemisphere, has been bequeathed to the National Gallery of Art.
In 1930, at 17, Ms. Nef became a frequent visitor to a bohemian restaurant in Greenwich Village that became a hangout for artists, writers, dancers and actors, who would often perform or entertain. One of the regulars was the architect R. Buckminster Fuller, with whom Ms. Nef had a brief and eventually unhappy affair.
On the rebound, she met and married the puppeteer Bil Baird, and together they made marionettes and performed, prone on an 18-inch-wide plank 50 feet above the stage. Baird, she wrote, could hold a room "spellbound with a single marionette, walking it around the room, without any dialogue, making the marionette climb up on someone's knee or look under a woman's dress."
She found Baird less attentive as a husband, and they divorced.
Mrs. Nef credited her intellectual development to her second husband, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a renowned arctic explorer more than 30 years her senior.
"The polar world was completely foreign to me, but I made it my own. I fell in love with the idea of learning everything about everything, and Stef, with his encyclopedic storehouse of knowledge, was a rich source of wisdom during this intellectual awakening," she wrote. She became president of the Society of Women Geographers.
During their 21-year marriage, which ended with Stefansson's death in 1962, Ms. Nef wrote books on polar geography and acted as her husband's secretary and research assistant. She had administered her husband's library at Dartmouth College, but widowed at 49 in a college town, she felt alone. She was offered a job at the American Sociological Association's new headquarters in Washington, and she moved to the capital city in 1963.
The next year, she met John Nef, an economic historian and University of Chicago professor, and they soon married. John Nef headed a program that brought artists, writers and other thinkers in contact with doctoral students, and his retinue included writer and future Nobel laureate Saul Bellow and Chagall, who died in 1985. The Nefs vacationed with Chagall and his second wife, the former Valentina "Vava" Brodsky, in the south of France during the 1960s.
"In time the four of us became a little family," she wrote.
Diminutive and with close-cropped gray hair, Ms. Nef had a sprightly appearance that seemed to negate her advancing years, and she worked out regularly. Her husband died in 1988, and she had no immediate survivors.
The mosaic contains in its lower right corner the image of two lovers under a tree, prompting her to ask the artist, "John and me?"
ad_icon
"If you wish," Chagall said.
"I wish," she replied.
------------
Washington Post obituary:
Evelyn Stefansson Nef, 96, an author, lecturer, patron of the arts and philanthropist, died on Thursday, December 10, 2009 at her home in Washington, DC. Mrs. Nef was born Evelyn Schwartz in New York City on July 24, 1913. After an early marriage to puppeteer Bil Baird which ended in divorce, she married Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a noted artic researcher and explorer, in 1941 and from then until his death in 1962, she worked with him as a researcher and librarian of his extensive polar library. She was active in the Polar Studies Program at Dartmouth College and for two years taught the Arctic Seminar. Following Stefansson''s death in 1962, Evelyn moved to Washington and in 1964 she married John Ulric Nef, a historian, professor and founder of the University of Chicago''s Committee on Social Thought, a multidisciplinary post graduate program. At age 60, Evelyn Nef earned a degree in psychotherapy and started her own practice. She became a board member of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Opera, the Paget Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Lourie Center for Infants and Young Children and the International Longevity Center. She is a long time member of the Society of Woman Geographers and its National President from 1969-1971. She is President of the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Foundation and on the Advisory Council of the Gerontology Department of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. In 1998 the University of Alaska conferred an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree on her and the Corcoran School of Art awarded her the degree of Doctor of Fine Arts Honoris Causa in May 2000. In 2001 she received the Icelandic Order of the Falcon Medal of Honour and in 2002 Dartmouth College bestowed on her an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. Her autobiography was published by Francis Press, Washington, DC, in May 2002 and is entitled Finding My way, the Autobiography of an Optimist. Mrs. Nef was predeceased by her husband, John Ulric Nef, a brother and two sisters. She is survived by four nieces, two nephews and several grand nieces and nephews. Interment will be at Pine Knoll Cemetery in New Hampshire and a memorial service will be held at a later date.
Evelyn Nef, 96; arts patron and author
By Adrian Higgins
Washington Post staff writer
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Evelyn Nef, an arts patron whose storied life is embodied in a monumental mosaic by the celebrated artist Marc Chagall, died of cancer Dec. 10 at her home in Georgetown. She was 96.
Chagall met Mrs. Nef through her late husband, John Nef, and while staying at the Nefs' house in 1968, he declared his intention to create an artwork for them. Two days later, he said: "The house is perfect as it is. I will do something for the garden, a mosaic."
Three years later, the 10-by-17-foot mosaic was unveiled on a mild November evening. Embedded in a purpose-built brick wall, it is rich in mythological imagery juxtaposed with a New World skyline and huddled immigrants.
The symbolism was not lost on the former Evelyn Schwartz, whose parents were Hungarian Jews who immigrated to New York in the early years of the 20th century. What began as a comfortable childhood went awry when her father died suddenly at 48, leaving a mentally fragile mother in a state of mute grief and unable to care for her four children.
"I remember how silent the house became--the absence of people, the sudden cessation of music, noise and laughter," Ms. Nef wrote in her 2002 memoir, "Finding My Way: the Autobiography of an Optimist."
Ms. Nef overcame the emptiness of her childhood to become, in various incarnations, a puppeteer, an entertainer who could recall 1,000 songs, an expert on polar exploration, a psychotherapist and a benefactor of some of Washington's leading cultural institutions, including the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Opera and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
The Chagall mosaic, the only one of its kind in a private garden in the Western Hemisphere, has been bequeathed to the National Gallery of Art.
In 1930, at 17, Ms. Nef became a frequent visitor to a bohemian restaurant in Greenwich Village that became a hangout for artists, writers, dancers and actors, who would often perform or entertain. One of the regulars was the architect R. Buckminster Fuller, with whom Ms. Nef had a brief and eventually unhappy affair.
On the rebound, she met and married the puppeteer Bil Baird, and together they made marionettes and performed, prone on an 18-inch-wide plank 50 feet above the stage. Baird, she wrote, could hold a room "spellbound with a single marionette, walking it around the room, without any dialogue, making the marionette climb up on someone's knee or look under a woman's dress."
She found Baird less attentive as a husband, and they divorced.
Mrs. Nef credited her intellectual development to her second husband, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a renowned arctic explorer more than 30 years her senior.
"The polar world was completely foreign to me, but I made it my own. I fell in love with the idea of learning everything about everything, and Stef, with his encyclopedic storehouse of knowledge, was a rich source of wisdom during this intellectual awakening," she wrote. She became president of the Society of Women Geographers.
During their 21-year marriage, which ended with Stefansson's death in 1962, Ms. Nef wrote books on polar geography and acted as her husband's secretary and research assistant. She had administered her husband's library at Dartmouth College, but widowed at 49 in a college town, she felt alone. She was offered a job at the American Sociological Association's new headquarters in Washington, and she moved to the capital city in 1963.
The next year, she met John Nef, an economic historian and University of Chicago professor, and they soon married. John Nef headed a program that brought artists, writers and other thinkers in contact with doctoral students, and his retinue included writer and future Nobel laureate Saul Bellow and Chagall, who died in 1985. The Nefs vacationed with Chagall and his second wife, the former Valentina "Vava" Brodsky, in the south of France during the 1960s.
"In time the four of us became a little family," she wrote.
Diminutive and with close-cropped gray hair, Ms. Nef had a sprightly appearance that seemed to negate her advancing years, and she worked out regularly. Her husband died in 1988, and she had no immediate survivors.
The mosaic contains in its lower right corner the image of two lovers under a tree, prompting her to ask the artist, "John and me?"
ad_icon
"If you wish," Chagall said.
"I wish," she replied.
------------
Washington Post obituary:
Evelyn Stefansson Nef, 96, an author, lecturer, patron of the arts and philanthropist, died on Thursday, December 10, 2009 at her home in Washington, DC. Mrs. Nef was born Evelyn Schwartz in New York City on July 24, 1913. After an early marriage to puppeteer Bil Baird which ended in divorce, she married Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a noted artic researcher and explorer, in 1941 and from then until his death in 1962, she worked with him as a researcher and librarian of his extensive polar library. She was active in the Polar Studies Program at Dartmouth College and for two years taught the Arctic Seminar. Following Stefansson''s death in 1962, Evelyn moved to Washington and in 1964 she married John Ulric Nef, a historian, professor and founder of the University of Chicago''s Committee on Social Thought, a multidisciplinary post graduate program. At age 60, Evelyn Nef earned a degree in psychotherapy and started her own practice. She became a board member of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Opera, the Paget Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Lourie Center for Infants and Young Children and the International Longevity Center. She is a long time member of the Society of Woman Geographers and its National President from 1969-1971. She is President of the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Foundation and on the Advisory Council of the Gerontology Department of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. In 1998 the University of Alaska conferred an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree on her and the Corcoran School of Art awarded her the degree of Doctor of Fine Arts Honoris Causa in May 2000. In 2001 she received the Icelandic Order of the Falcon Medal of Honour and in 2002 Dartmouth College bestowed on her an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. Her autobiography was published by Francis Press, Washington, DC, in May 2002 and is entitled Finding My way, the Autobiography of an Optimist. Mrs. Nef was predeceased by her husband, John Ulric Nef, a brother and two sisters. She is survived by four nieces, two nephews and several grand nieces and nephews. Interment will be at Pine Knoll Cemetery in New Hampshire and a memorial service will be held at a later date.
By Adrian Higgins
Washington Post staff writer
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Evelyn Nef, an arts patron whose storied life is embodied in a monumental mosaic by the celebrated artist Marc Chagall, died of cancer Dec. 10 at her home in Georgetown. She was 96.
Chagall met Mrs. Nef through her late husband, John Nef, and while staying at the Nefs' house in 1968, he declared his intention to create an artwork for them. Two days later, he said: "The house is perfect as it is. I will do something for the garden, a mosaic."
Three years later, the 10-by-17-foot mosaic was unveiled on a mild November evening. Embedded in a purpose-built brick wall, it is rich in mythological imagery juxtaposed with a New World skyline and huddled immigrants.
The symbolism was not lost on the former Evelyn Schwartz, whose parents were Hungarian Jews who immigrated to New York in the early years of the 20th century. What began as a comfortable childhood went awry when her father died suddenly at 48, leaving a mentally fragile mother in a state of mute grief and unable to care for her four children.
"I remember how silent the house became--the absence of people, the sudden cessation of music, noise and laughter," Ms. Nef wrote in her 2002 memoir, "Finding My Way: the Autobiography of an Optimist."
Ms. Nef overcame the emptiness of her childhood to become, in various incarnations, a puppeteer, an entertainer who could recall 1,000 songs, an expert on polar exploration, a psychotherapist and a benefactor of some of Washington's leading cultural institutions, including the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Opera and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
The Chagall mosaic, the only one of its kind in a private garden in the Western Hemisphere, has been bequeathed to the National Gallery of Art.
In 1930, at 17, Ms. Nef became a frequent visitor to a bohemian restaurant in Greenwich Village that became a hangout for artists, writers, dancers and actors, who would often perform or entertain. One of the regulars was the architect R. Buckminster Fuller, with whom Ms. Nef had a brief and eventually unhappy affair.
On the rebound, she met and married the puppeteer Bil Baird, and together they made marionettes and performed, prone on an 18-inch-wide plank 50 feet above the stage. Baird, she wrote, could hold a room "spellbound with a single marionette, walking it around the room, without any dialogue, making the marionette climb up on someone's knee or look under a woman's dress."
She found Baird less attentive as a husband, and they divorced.
Mrs. Nef credited her intellectual development to her second husband, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a renowned arctic explorer more than 30 years her senior.
"The polar world was completely foreign to me, but I made it my own. I fell in love with the idea of learning everything about everything, and Stef, with his encyclopedic storehouse of knowledge, was a rich source of wisdom during this intellectual awakening," she wrote. She became president of the Society of Women Geographers.
During their 21-year marriage, which ended with Stefansson's death in 1962, Ms. Nef wrote books on polar geography and acted as her husband's secretary and research assistant. She had administered her husband's library at Dartmouth College, but widowed at 49 in a college town, she felt alone. She was offered a job at the American Sociological Association's new headquarters in Washington, and she moved to the capital city in 1963.
The next year, she met John Nef, an economic historian and University of Chicago professor, and they soon married. John Nef headed a program that brought artists, writers and other thinkers in contact with doctoral students, and his retinue included writer and future Nobel laureate Saul Bellow and Chagall, who died in 1985. The Nefs vacationed with Chagall and his second wife, the former Valentina "Vava" Brodsky, in the south of France during the 1960s.
"In time the four of us became a little family," she wrote.
Diminutive and with close-cropped gray hair, Ms. Nef had a sprightly appearance that seemed to negate her advancing years, and she worked out regularly. Her husband died in 1988, and she had no immediate survivors.
The mosaic contains in its lower right corner the image of two lovers under a tree, prompting her to ask the artist, "John and me?"
ad_icon
"If you wish," Chagall said.
"I wish," she replied.
------------
Washington Post obituary:
Evelyn Stefansson Nef, 96, an author, lecturer, patron of the arts and philanthropist, died on Thursday, December 10, 2009 at her home in Washington, DC. Mrs. Nef was born Evelyn Schwartz in New York City on July 24, 1913. After an early marriage to puppeteer Bil Baird which ended in divorce, she married Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a noted artic researcher and explorer, in 1941 and from then until his death in 1962, she worked with him as a researcher and librarian of his extensive polar library. She was active in the Polar Studies Program at Dartmouth College and for two years taught the Arctic Seminar. Following Stefansson''s death in 1962, Evelyn moved to Washington and in 1964 she married John Ulric Nef, a historian, professor and founder of the University of Chicago''s Committee on Social Thought, a multidisciplinary post graduate program. At age 60, Evelyn Nef earned a degree in psychotherapy and started her own practice. She became a board member of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Opera, the Paget Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Lourie Center for Infants and Young Children and the International Longevity Center. She is a long time member of the Society of Woman Geographers and its National President from 1969-1971. She is President of the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Foundation and on the Advisory Council of the Gerontology Department of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. In 1998 the University of Alaska conferred an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree on her and the Corcoran School of Art awarded her the degree of Doctor of Fine Arts Honoris Causa in May 2000. In 2001 she received the Icelandic Order of the Falcon Medal of Honour and in 2002 Dartmouth College bestowed on her an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. Her autobiography was published by Francis Press, Washington, DC, in May 2002 and is entitled Finding My way, the Autobiography of an Optimist. Mrs. Nef was predeceased by her husband, John Ulric Nef, a brother and two sisters. She is survived by four nieces, two nephews and several grand nieces and nephews. Interment will be at Pine Knoll Cemetery in New Hampshire and a memorial service will be held at a later date.
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