Anson Conger Goodyear was an American manufacturer, businessman, author, and philanthropist and member of the Goodyear family. He is best known as one of the founding members and first president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
A noted philanthropist and avid collector of late 19th- and early 20th-century American and European art, Goodyear had a personal collection containing several important works by Paul Cezanne and Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin's Spirit of the Dead Watching. He also had works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, George Seurat, Honoré Daumier, and Edgar Degas. He was invited by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Mary Quinn Sullivan, and Lillie P. Bliss to help establish the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He served as its first president, and as a member of the board of trustees of MOMA, after moving to New York City. Goodyear traveled to Europe at his own expense to collect paintings for the museum's first showing. While there, he visited England, France, the Netherlands, and Germany, and borrowed 25 paintings valued at $1.5 million. In 1939, on the eve of the opening of the museum building on 53d Street, Nelson A. Rockefeller, later the Governor of New York, succeeded Goodyear as MOMA's chief executive. Goodyear was also the author of several nonfiction works, including:
A Memoir: John George Milburn, Jr., with Milburn, Jr. Milburn Jr. became a lawyer and was son of prominent New York lawyer John G. Milburn; John Jr's older brother was Devereux Milburn, an internationally known polo player.
American Art Today: Gallery of American Art Today, New York World's Fair, with Grover A. Whalen
The Museum of Modern Art. The First Ten Years
Philanthropy
Goodyear donated a collection of Civil War materials he had compiled to Yale University in 1953. The collection contained correspondence, diaries, proclamations, and other papers relating to the Civil War. He was a close friend of actress and theater producer Katharine Cornell, also from Buffalo. Upon her death in 1974, she bequeathed part of her foundation's assets to MoMA in his honor. Goodyear was also a director of the Buffalo Academy of Fine Arts, an honorary governor of the New York Hospital, and a donor to Dartmouth College. He was also a member of the Saturn Club in Buffalo. A friend of Ernest N. Harmon, Conger also made donations to Norwich University, and Norwich's Goodyear Hall is named for him.
Personal life
On June 29, 1904, Goodyear married Mary Martha Forman, the only daughter of George V. Forman, also of Buffalo. George Forman was prominent banker and the founder of VanderGrift, Forman & Company, which later became part of the Standard Oil Company, and the Fidelity Trust and Guaranty Company, which later became M&T Bank. Before they divorced, Goodyear and Forman had four children:
George Forman Goodyear, who married Sarah Norton in 1932. After Sarah's death, he married Marion Gurney, the mother of his son-in-law. George was one of the founders of WGRZ-TV in Buffalo.
Mary Goodyear, who married Theodore G. Kenefick
Anson C. Goodyear, Jr.
Stephen Goodyear, who first married Aline Fox in 1942. She died in 1943 and he then married Mary Van Rensselaer Robins, the granddaughter of Thomas Robins Jr., in 1944. Robins was the granddaughter of Mary Van Rensselaer Cogswell and Andrew K. Cogswell. Goodyear and Robins divorced and in 1964, Robins married Julien D. McKee
Through his eldest son, George Forman Goodyear, he was the grandfather of Mary "Molly" Forman Goodyear, who married Albert Ramsdell Gurney, Jr., a prominent playwright, Anne Goodyear, who married U.S. Representative William H. Hudnut III, and Sarah C. Goodyear.
