Mary Quinn Sullivan | |
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| Born | Mary Josephine Quinn November 24, 1877 |
| Died | December 5, 1939 (aged 62) |
| Resting place | Holy Cross Cemetery, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA |
| Education | Pratt Institute, Slade School of Fine Art, London |
| Known for | modern art collector, founding trustee of the Museum of Modern Art |
| Spouse(s) | Cornelius J. Sullivan (1917–1932; his death) |
| Parent(s) | Thomas F. Quinn Anne E. (Gleason) Quinn |
Mary Quinn Sullivan (November 24, 1877 – December 5, 1939), born Mary Josephine Quinn, was a pioneering collector of European and American modern and contemporary art and gallerist, and a founding trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, which opened in rented space in New York City in November 1929. She also led a small group of Indianapolis, Indiana, art patrons who called themselves the Gamboliers and between 1928 and 1934 selected artworks of for the group that brought some of the first modern and contemporary works to the collections of the John Herron Art Institute, which later became the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Mary and Cornelius J. Sullivan, her husband, amassed a significant private collection of art during the 1920s and 1930s that included Modigliani's Sculptured Head of a Woman, Paul Cézanne's Madame Cézanne, Georges Rouault's Crucifixion, and a Hepplewhite desk that once belonged to Edgar Degas, as well as works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre Bonnard, Pablo Picasso, and others.
The Indiana native trained for a career as an artist at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and in 1909 she studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, England, for a semester. Sullivan became an art teacher in the New York City public schools and a member of the faculty at Pratt Institute's School of Household Science and Arts. She also authored a textbook, Planning and Furnishing the Home: Practical and Economical Suggestions for the Homemaker (1914). Sullivan operated an art gallery in New York City in her later years, but the Great Depression and financial difficulties in the 1930s subsequently led to the decision to sell her private art collection at auction.