Abby Weed Grey (d. 1983) was an art collector and patron for whom New York University's Grey Art Gallery is named.[1] Grey had a particular interest in non-Western modern art and art of the Middle East was particularly well-represented in her collection.[2][3]
Grey was a native of Saint Paul, Minnesota and a graduate of Vassar College, and established the Ben and Abby Grey Foundation to sponsor artists.[2] Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Grey undertook curatorial projects such as Fourteen Contemporary Iranians (1962–65) and Turkish Art Today (1966–70), each of which toured the United States; Communication Through Art (1964), which opened simultaneously in Istanbul, Tehran, and Lahore, before traveling throughout the eastern Mediterranean, Asia, and eastern Africa; and One World Through Art.[4][5] By 1979, Grey had become one of American's prominent collectors of Asian and Middle Eastern art.[4]
Grey served on the Board of Trustees of The Minnesota Society of Fine Arts (1967–1973) and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design's Board of Overseers (1964–1983).[1] She endowed the Grey Fellowship in Museum Studies at the Walker Art Center, and in 1979, established and endowed The Grey Fine Arts Library and Study Center, a resource in NYU's Department of Art History (formerly Department of Fine Arts).[6]
Grey was also the author of The Picture is the Window; the Window is the Picture, her autobiography, which was published by New York University Press.[1][7]
