Elizabeth Willis, 101; Museum Curator, Folk Art Collector, Dealer
Elizabeth Bayley Willis, 101, a folk art collector, dealer and curator at museums in San Francisco and Seattle, died Monday at a health-care facility in Bainbridge Island, Wash.
A native of Sommerville, Mass., she was raised in Seattle and earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Washington.
After college she married and brought up four daughters. When the marriage fell apart, she turned to art for occupation and inspiration. She traveled extensively through Asia and made many purchases of folk art.
Works she collected form the core of the Japanese ceramics and textile collections at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she worked as a curator from 1946 to 1948.
Willis also did curatorial work at the San Francisco Museum of Art in the late 1940s, and was acting assistant director of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in the early 1950s.
Much of her collection of artifacts, textiles and pottery from around the world is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution.
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