Phillips, Duncan

Marjorie Phillips (1895-1985) was a painter and collector from Washington D.C.

Died June 16, 1985. Wife of Duncan Phillips. Social Security Death Index and the Phillips Collection website site her birth date as 1894.

Marjorie Grant Acker (later Phillips) was born in Indiana on October 25, 1894 or 1895, to Alice Beal and Charles Ernest Acker. She grew up in New Jersey and New York. Marjorie had several relatives on her mother's side who were artists, including Gifford Beal, and she started to draw and paint while still a small child. Around 1917, Marjorie began studying at the Art Students League in New York City. In 1921, Marjorie attended a party in New York where she met Duncan Phillips, the founder of the Phillips Memorial Gallery.

Duncan Phillips was born in Pittsburgh in 1886, the son of Eliza Irwin Laughlin and Major Duncan Clinch Phillips; in 1896, the family moved to Washington, D.C. After the deaths of his father and his brother James, the younger Duncan and his mother decided to open two rooms in their home on 21st Street as the Phillips Memorial Gallery. Duncan and Marjorie married in 1921, and she moved into the Phillips home in Washington, D.C., living with his mother and the Memorial Gallery (today known as the Phillips Collection). After marriage, Marjorie continued to paint and became associate director of her husband's museum. With him, she enjoyed traveling and collecting art. After Duncan's death in 1966, she became the museum's director, retiring from that position in 1972. In 1930, the Phillips family moved into a new home on Foxhall Road in Washington. They called the new house "Dunmarlin," a combination of their names, plus that of their children Mary Marjorie and Laughlin. They also had a summer home in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania. Marjorie Acker Phillips died on June 19, 1985.

Painter, collector; Washington D.C.

Died June 16, 1985. Wife of Duncan Phillips.