Barbara Goldsmith

Barbara Goldsmith (May 18, 1931 – June 26, 2016) was an American author, journalist, and philanthropist. She received critical and popular acclaim for her best-selling books, essays, articles, and her philanthropic work. She was awarded four honoris causa doctorates, and numerous awards; been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, two Presidential Commissions, and the New York State Council on the Arts; and honored by The New York Public Library Literary Lions as well as the Literacy Volunteers, the American Academy in Rome, The Authors Guild, and the Guild Hall Academy of Arts for Lifetime Achievement. In 2009, she received the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit medal from the Republic of Poland. In November 2008, Goldsmith sus elected a “Living Landmark” by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. She has three children and six grandchildren. The Financial Times declared that "Goldsmith is leaving a legacy—one of art, literature, friends, family and philanthropy." Early life Goldsmith was born Barbara Joan Lubun in New York City in 1931. She received a Bachelor of Arts in 1953 from Wellesley College, where she majored in English, after which she took art courses at Columbia University. Her first assignments as a journalist were in the art field, where she simultaneously amassed an art collection comprising mostly contemporary American painting and sculpture. In her early twenties, she wrote a series of prize-winning profiles of such Hollywood luminaries as Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Joan Crawford, and Audrey Hepburn. In the late 1960s she initiated “The Creative Environment” series, interviewing in-depth Marcel Breuer, I.M. Pei, George Balanchine and Pablo Picasso, among others, about their creative process. Goldsmith’s “The Creative Environment” caught the eye of Clay Felker, editor of the Sunday magazine supplement of the New York Herald Tribune. After the Tribune failed in 1967, Goldsmith provided Felker with the money to purchase the rights to the magazine and reinvent it as a standalone glossy, and in 1968 she became a founding editor and writer of New York, where she wrote not only about art, but also about the colorful characters in the art world. In the third issue of New York, she wrote a landmark article on Viva, a “superstar” in Andy Warhol films, with accompanying photographs by Diane Arbus. At the time, the article was praised and reviled.