Susan Morse Hilles, 1905-

Susan (Morse) Hilles, art collector and philanthropist, was born in Simsbury, Conn., July 4, 1905, the daughter of Susan (Ensign) and William Inglis Morse. SMH grew up in Lynn, Mass., where her father was an Episcopal minister. Summers were spent in Paradise, Nova Scotia, her father's home, or traveling in Europe. She attended Miss Ethel Walker's School in Simsbury. Simsbury was her mother's home and the location of the Ensign-Bickford Company, manufacturers of safety fuses, which was the basis of the family fortune. SMH was a student at the school of the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, Mass., 1924-1925, and the Sacker School of Design, Boston, Mass., 1926-1929. On June 14, 1930, she married Frederick Whiley Hilles, and they spent the first year of their marriage in England. In 1931, they returned to Yale University where her husband, a scholar of eighteenth-century literature, was instructor and later professor. The Hilleses had two children, Susan Ensign (Hilles) Bush and Frederick Whiley Hilles, Jr. In New Haven, SMH was active in the Birth Control League, the Leila Day Nursery, the Neighborhood Music School, and was vice-president of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. During World War II, she and the children moved to Cambridge, Mass., to stay with her parents, while her husband was on active service with U.S. intelligence, stationed at Bletchley, England.

According to SMH, the 1950s were the happiest period of her life, when her interests in art, which had lain dormant since art school, flourished. She began to assemble a collection of contemporary painting and sculpture, resolving to buy only the works of living artists. She looked, she said, for "design and color in painting, those two qualities plus a third, inner rhythm or soul." Her collection documented the achievements of the post-war generation of mostly American artists and included works by Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, David Smith, Kenzo Okada, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Josef Albers, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, and many more. Her collection was frequently exhibited: at the Yale Art Gallery, Wadsworth Atheneum, and Mount Holyoke College (1964), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1966), and Trumbull College, Yale University (1968).

SMH was active on the boards of many museums: member and treasurer of the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), governor of the Yale Art Gallery Associates, member of the Collectors Committee of the National Gallery of Art, trustee of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the MFA. Her loans and gifts of paintings and sculpture have enriched the collections at Yale, MOMA, the Whitney, and the Harvard University Art Museums. She gave a portion of her collection to the Wadsworth Atheneum in 1990 and 1992.

SMH has been a dedicated supporter of higher education, music, medicine, and the arts. Her philanthropy at Yale included gifts to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the library, art gallery, and Faculty of Medicine. She adopted Radcliffe College as her own, serving as trustee (1962-1974) and giving the Morse Music Library in memory of her mother, the Jordan cooperative dormitories in honor of President and Mrs. Jordan, and contributing to the Cronkhite Graduate Center, Comstock Hall, and Hilles Library, which was named for both Mr. and Mrs. Hilles in recognition of their generosity to the college. She served on the visiting committee of the Harvard University Library and was the first woman trustee of the Boston Athenaeum. Her life-long love of music is seen in her support for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Other projects she supported include the renovation of a French chateau; the gift of 430 acres in Paradise, Nova Scotia, to form the Morse Arboretum; the foundation of the Amy Sacker lectureship in art at Mount Holyoke College; and the establishment of a research fund and laboratory at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Hospital.

Among SMH's honors are honorary degrees from the University of King's College, Canada (1958 and Wheaton College (1967), and the Yale Medal (1966). Susan Morse Hilles died in Boston, Mass., in 2002.

From the guide to the Papers, 1839-2002, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)