Visual Arts

With the benefit of hindsight, developer and arts patron Raymond D. Nasher's visit to Paris last week was a fitting valedictory lap for the visionary who, with his late wife, Patsy, amassed the world's finest collection of 20th-century sculpture and offered it to his adopted hometown in the Nasher Sculpture Center.

FILE 2003/Staff

Raymond Nasher cuts the ribbon at the Nasher Sculpture Center with his grandchildren David and Isabelle Haemisegger. Next to him are daughters Nancy Nasher Haemisegger (left) and Joanie Nasher.

He was memorialized at a private service Monday, and friends offered fresh details of his final days.

Upon his return from Paris on Thursday, Mr. Nasher had planned to attend a Matisse symposium Friday night at the Dallas Museum of Art. Next week, he was supposed to welcome his grandson, David Haemisegger, and 100 classmates to the sculpture center. In June, he would be off to China.

But somewhere over the Atlantic on Thursday, he developed an upset stomach. At Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, he walked off the plane and was taken to a local hospital, where he died Friday morning. He was interred Sunday, and on Monday morning, hundreds of mourners gathered at Temple Emanu-El, where PBS newsman Jim Lehrer eulogized his friend of 40 years.

In Paris, Mr. Nasher, 85, had been ebullient as he and about a dozen supporters of the Nasher Sculpture Center visited venerated art venues. "You can't believe the adulation the people there had for him," said philanthropist Nancy Dedman, who joined the group with her daughter, Patty. Other travelers included Susan Marcus, Jeanne Marie Clossey, Pat Patterson, Rob Kendall, former Dallas Museum of Art director Rick Brettell and Mr. Nasher's close friend Joanne Bilby.

Mr. Nasher and the group visited Renzo Piano, architect of the Nasher Sculpture Center, in his Paris studio. On Wednesday they all headed to the Louvre, where Mr. Nasher spoke at a symposium on urban sculpture gardens.

"He was wonderful," Ms. Clossey said of the Louvre presentation.

That evening, Mr. Nasher, Ms. Bilby and the others dined with U.S. Ambassador Craig Stapleton at the ambassador's Paris residence, a former Rothschild mansion on the Rue Faubourg St.-Honoré.

The travelers report that Thursday morning, Mr. Nasher was in high spirits as they checked out of the Hotels de Sers, telling friends he wasn't ready to leave.

His death was startling news to those close to him. "He was about as young an 85 as any 85-year-old could be," said Rabbi David Stern , who presided at his memorial service at Temple Emanu-El.

Monday evening, Rabbi Stern conducted a final outdoor service in the garden of the Nasher Sculpture Center. Afterward, Mr. Nasher's family received several hundred guests including Mayor Laura Miller and her husband, Steve Wolens; art collectors Margaret McDermott and Howard Rachofsky; and African American Museum president Harry Robinson.

"He was a man of all seasons, a man of all reasons, a man of vision and man of risk," Mr. Lehrer said at the morning service. "In politics, he had no problem going against any kind of grain."

In the years when Dallas was a stronghold of the far right, Mr. Nasher was an unapologetic Democrat. When U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was famously conked by a Dallas protester's placard in 1963, the former Democratic presidential candidate was a houseguest of the Nashers'.

One night when their daughter Nancy was a child, she awoke and wandered into the living room. She was soon scooped into the lap of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Mrs. Roosevelt was by no means the last White House habitué to dine at the Nasher home. When President Bill Clinton came in 1998, Mr. Nasher welcomed him in an air-conditioned tent built over his beloved tennis court. Table centerpieces were sculptures such as Degas' Ballerina, Matisse's Tiara, Duchamp-Villon's Horse and Rider and – at the president's table – David Smith's The Head.

In a written release, President Bush said Mr. Nasher "represented the best of his country and his home state of Texas."

Mr. Nasher lived to see NorthPark be the success no one but him seemed to believe it would be, he lived to see the Nasher Sculpture Center completed, but perhaps most important, he lived to see his three grandchildren. When the eldest, Sarah, was still an only child, Mr. Nasher developed a now-famous dictum: "Nobody touches the art except me and my granddaughter."

Not long ago, Mr. Nasher sat proudly at Temple Emanu-El, site of his memorial service, for Sarah's bat mitzvah.{WebDesk} Resources: Read previous articles on Mr. Nasher, see photos from his life and legacy, watch his appearance on TXCN's Texas Legends and share your memories.