Biography
Catherine Gamble Curran (b. Beijing, China 1926 - d. Manhattan, New York, USA 2007), a philanthropist and patron of the arts and education, graduated from Riverdale Country School, New York and Mount Holyoke College, Massuchusets, USA and lived in India, London, England, UK, Manhattan, New York and Harbor Point, Michigan, USA. Whilst in London, Curran was a Contemporary Art Society Committee Member (1975-83) and was its designated buyer in 1978, purchasing over 20 works including by artists such as Boyd and Evans, Prunella Clough, Bernard Cohen, William Delafield Cook, Ken Draper, Nicholas Evans, Helene Fesenmaier, John Golding, Howard Hodgkin, David King, Kenneth Martin, Anne Norwich, Tom Phillips, Lawrence Preece, William Pye and Gary Wragg and she gifted 8 works through the British American Arts Association in 1983, all of which were donated to public museums throughout the UK.
As President of the Sidney Gamble Foundation for China Studies she had overseen a collection of early photographs of China taken by her father, co-curating the exhibition which toured the US and China and is now archived at Duke University. She was a Trustee of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Princeton-in-Asia, Young Concert Artists, and the Little Traverse Conservancy of Northern Michigan, and also served on the Boards of Mount Holyoke College, the New York City Ballet, the National Dance Institute, the American Federation of Arts, the American Friends of Covent Garden and the Royal Ballet. She was a Fellow of the Frick Collection, the Morgan Library, and the Royal Society of Arts, London, and a member of the visiting Committee to the Department of Drawings and Prints of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and of the Drawings Committee of the Morgan Library. She was on the Advisory Councils of the National Dance Institute and the School of American Ballet.
