Philanthropist Carlotta Kirkeby Dies

Carlotta Kirkeby, a philanthropist who with her late husband owned or once owned a string of 25 hotels including the Beverly Wilshire, is dead of cancer.

She died Nov. 19 at home in Bel-Air and was believed in her late 60s or early 70s.

A founder of both the Music Center and a charitable group called the Colleagues, she was known for the charity sales she staged at her palatial six-acre home on Bel-Air Road which was filled with such modern French master artists as Monet, Cezanne and Matisse.

With her husband, Arnold, who died in a 1962 plane crash, she founded Kirkeby Center, which was a major donor to many charities, among them St. John’s Medical Center, the Boy Scouts and the California Institute of Cancer Research at UCLA.

Her survivors include a son, Arnold, and daughter, Carla.