Levine, Barbara

Aaron Levine, a retired trial lawyer, who with his wife, Barbara, amassed one of the most significant private holdings of work by Marcel Duchamp, died on Tuesday morning at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. He was 88. Aaron M. Levine was born in 1934 in Brooklyn, New York. His father ran an optometry shop in Bushwick; Barbara’s father ran a pharmacy down the street. They met as teenagers after Aaron’s family moved onto the same floor of the apartment building where Barbara’s family lived. He attended law school at George Washington University. A week after she graduated from Skidmore College in Upstate New York, Barbara moved to D.C. and the two married. In 1971, he founded his eponymous law firm, which focused on various forms of consumer rights lawsuits as they related to dangerous drugs, defective devices, and medical malpractice.