Occupation Heiress Name Karen Boyd | Children 4 Spouse(s) William Boyd | |
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Net worth $2.7 billion (August 2015) Relatives Samuel Curtis Johnson, Jr. (brother)
Samuel Curtis Johnson, Sr. (great-grandfather) Parents Herbert Fisk Johnson, Jr., Irene Purcell Great-grandparents Samuel Curtis Johnson, Sr. | ||
Grandparents Herbert Fisk Johnson, Sr. | ||
Karen Johnson Boyd (May 16, 1924 – January 29, 2016) was an American art dealer, collector and billionairess heiress.
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Early life
She was the daughter of Herbert Fisk Johnson, Jr., and Gertrude Brauner Johnson. As a teenager, she lived at Wingspread, a house designed for her father by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, built in 1938–1939 in the village of Wind Point near Racine, Wisconsin.
Career
She had been an art dealer who had particularly supported craft art. She opened Perimeter Gallery in Chicago in 1982, which has promoted craft and other contemporary artists. She contributed more than 1,750 works to the Racine Art Museum and made an additional gift of 200 artworks in 1991. She was actively involved in the creation of the new RAM building in downtown Racine, Wisconsin in 2003, and the galleries were named after her. She was a board member emerita of the Racine Art Museum.
Personal life
She was married to Willard H. Keland from 1945 to 1965, and they had four children. They also commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build a home for them, Keland House (now Boyd House) in 1954 in Racine, which she continued to live in after the divorce and for the rest of her life. She married William B. Boyd in 1982.
Boyd died on January 29, 2016, at her home in Racine, Wisconsin, aged 91. She was survived by three children, a granddaughter; and two stepdaughters.