Anson Goodyear

Anson Conger Goodyear (June 20, 1877 – April 24, 1964) was an American manufacturer, businessman, author, and philanthropist and member of the Goodyear family. He is best known as a founder and first president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Goodyear was born in Buffalo, New York on June 20, 1877. Conger was the son of Charles W. Goodyear (1846-1911) and Ella Portia Conger (1863-1940), members of the prominent Western New York Goodyear family who resided at the 888 Delaware Avenue in Buffalo.

He was educated at the Nichols School in Buffalo and graduated from Yale University in 1899. While at Yale, he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi and the Wolf's Head Society and began collecting limited and first editions of books. He expanded the collection later, obtaining most of the letters of William Makepeace Thackeray to Jane Octavia Brookfield.

Business career

Goodyear was president of the Great Southern Lumber Company in Bogalusa, Louisiana (1920–38); served as vice-president of the Marine National Bank and vice-president of the Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad (1907–10); and was president of the New Orleans Great Northern Railroad Company (1920–30). He served as chairman of the board of directors of Gaylord Container Corporation, director of Paramount Pictures, director of the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad, and as an executive or director of several other corporations.

Public service and military career

Active in the New York National Guard, Goodyear served as a Colonel in World War I and was the executive officer of the Field Artillery Central Officers Training School at Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky.

In the 1930s, Goodyear became president and later chairman of the board of the American National Theater and Academy. After World War I, Herbert Hoover, as director general of relief of the Supreme Economic Council, appointed Goodyear president of the council's coal mission, putting him in charge of coal distribution from Austria, Hungary and Poland.

During World War II, he was commander of the Second Brigade of the New York Guard, with the rank of Major General. Later in World War II, he was a Deputy Commissioner for the Pacific Ocean area, including Hawaii, of the American Red Cross. In this capacity, he toured the Pacific battlefronts, covering 50,000 miles. Later, as a military observer, he was at the front in Okinawa with New York's 27th Division and reported to the Secretary of War on conditions in the field and troop morale.

Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo & Anson Goodyear

A noted philanthropist and avid collector of late-19th- and early-20th-century American and European art. He was invited by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Mary Quinn Sullivan, and Lillie P. Bliss to help establish the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He served as its first president (1929–39) as well as a member of the board of trustees of the Museum of Modern Art after moving to New York City.

Goodyear traveled to Europe at his own expense to collect paintings for the museum's first showing. While there, he visited England, France, the Netherlands and Germany and borrowed 25 paintings valued at $1.5 million (equivalent to $20,922,000 in 2016). In 1939, on the eve of the opening of the museum building on 53d Street, Nelson A. Rockefeller, later the Governor of New York, succeeded Goodyear as its chief executive. His personal collection contained several important works by Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin's "Spirit of the Dead Watching." Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, George Seurat, Honoré Daumier, and Edgar Degas.

Novels

Goodyear also wrote several novels including:

• A Memoir: John George Milburn, Jr. (1938), with John George Milburn, Jr., about the well-known athlete who was the son of prominent lawyer John G. Milburn and brother of polo player Devereux Milburn
• American Art Today: Gallery of American Art Today, New York World's Fair (1939), with Grover A. Whalen
• The Museum of Modern Art. The first ten years (1943), about the first ten years of the Museum of Modern Art

A. Conger Goodyear House in Old Westbury, NY

On June 29, 1904, Goodyear married Mary Martha Forman (1879–1973), the only daughter of George V. Forman (1841–1922), also of Buffalo, NY. George Forman was prominent banker and the founder of VanderGrift, Forman & Company, which later became part of the Standard Oil Company, and the "The Fidelity Trust and Guaranty Company" which later became M&T Bank. Before they divorced, Goodyear and Forman had four children:

• George Forman Goodyear (1906–2002), who married Sarah Norton (1911-1979) in 1932. After Sarah's death, he married Marion Gurney (née Spaulding) (1908–2001), the mother of his son-in-law. George was one of the founders of WGRZ-TV in Buffalo.
• Mary Goodyear (1907–1977), who married Theodore G. Kenefick (1898–1972)
• Anson C. Goodyear, Jr. (1911–1982)
• Stephen Goodyear (1915–1998), who first married Aline Fox in 1942. She died in 1943 and he then married Mary Van Rensselaer Robins (1919-2006), the granddaughter of Thomas Robins Jr., in 1944. Robins was the granddaughter of Mary Van Rensselaer Cogswell (1839-1871) and Andrew K. Cogswell (1839-1900). Goodyear and Robins divorced and in 1964, Robins married Julien D. McKee (1918-2006)

In 1950, he married Zaidee C. Bliss (née Cobb) (1881–1966), widow of Cornelius Newton Bliss Jr. (1875–1949) a financier who was the son of Cornelius N. Bliss (1833–1911), the former Secretary of the Interior and director of the Metropolitan Opera Company.

His home in Old Westbury, New York, the A. Conger Goodyear House (built in 1938 by Edward Durell Stone), is on the National Register of Historic Places. Goodyear died in Old Westbury, New York on April 24, 1964 and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo. After his death, his art collection was bequeathed to the Buffalo Academy of Fine Arts.

Descendants

Through his eldest son, George Forman Goodyear, he was the grandfather of Mary "Molly" Forman Goodyear (b. 1935), who married Albert Ramsdell Gurney, Jr. (b. 1930), a prominent playwright, Anne Goodyear, who married William H. Hudnut III (1932–2016), and Sarah C. Goodyear.

Philanthropy

He was a close friend of actress and theater producer Katharine Cornell, also from Buffalo. Upon her death in 1974, she bequeathed part of her foundation's assets to MoMA in his honor. Goodyear was also a director of the Buffalo Academy of Fine Arts, an honorary governor of the New York Hospital, and a donor to Dartmouth College. He was also a member of the Saturn Club in Buffalo. A friend of Ernest N. Harmon, Conger also made donations to Norwich University, and Norwich's Goodyear Hall is named for him.