ADDISON – Norma Boom Marin, 91, philanthropist, art collector, died peacefully at her home on Cape Split, in Addison, on Feb. 22, 2022. She was born in East Orange, N.J. on May 27, 1930 to Carlos C. Boom and Florence M. Vezzetti Boom who were of Dutch Antillean, Venezuelan, and Italian heritage.

Ms. Marin graduated from Centenary Junior College in 1950, and Glassboro State College in 1952, where she was known as “a top member of the Glee Club who was always willing to help others.” In 1955, she married John Marin Jr., son of the American artist, John Marin.

Norma Marin became a stalwart advocate for the work of her father-in-law. She and her husband worked with galleries and museums around the country to promote Marin’s artwork for almost seven decades. After Marin’s death in 1953, Norma and John Marin Jr. collaborated with Marin’s dealer, Edith Halpert, who had created the Marin Room at her legendary Downtown Gallery in New York. In the 1970s, a major gift of 24 works by John Marin to the Colby College Art Museum in Waterville, secured the artist’s place in the cultural life of Maine and helped launch what had been a small regional museum into an important destination for modern and contemporary art.

In 1986, the couple gave a large group of Marin works to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and supported a major retrospective of Marin’s work, curated by Ruth Fine.

After John Marin Jr.’s death in 1988, Norma became the sole caretaker of her father-in-law’s art and carried on the work she and her husband had begun together. In 2011, she supported John Marin: Modernism at Mid-Century, a groundbreaking exhibition of Marin’s long-overlooked late paintings, which traveled to the Portland Museum of Art, Maine; the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas; and the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass. The same year, she supported an important exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, John Marin’s Watercolors: A Medium for Modernism, curated by Martha Tedeschi. In 2013, her major gift of Marin’s work to the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts (formerly the Arkansas Art Center) in Little Rock, Ark. created a permanent home for the second largest collection of watercolors and drawings by Marin in the world, after the National Gallery. In addition, she was actively engaged with several other museums in New York and Maine, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Portland Museum of Art, Maine, the Zillman Art Museum University of Maine, and the University of Maine at Machias.

Norma’s passion for art and her voracious eye led her to build her own gallery at her home at Cape Split. Norma herself was an enthusiastic collector of American modernist works by Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Gaston Lachaise, Elie Nadelman, and Georgia O’Keeffe, among others. Over the years, her collecting interests expanded to include post-war and contemporary art. She was an early and dedicated collector of women artists and artists of color and was an avid supporter of young and emerging artists. In her later years, Norma focused her collecting on photography and German Expressionist prints, both collections promised to the Colby College Museum of Art as part of her ongoing support of that institution. Norma’s broad range of collecting interests was not limited by medium or period—she bought paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and prints by her own discerning eye and the quality of the work itself. In her collecting, as in her life, Norma was passionate, relentless, and fearless.

Norma’s love of art extended to theater, dance, and especially vocal music, and she cherished her season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. Norma was an avid reader, boater, pet lover, world traveler, and loyal friend and family member. She will be remembered for her great desire to learn from the world around her.

She was preceded in death by her husband; and by her sister, Carmen Boom Howe, and is survived by her daughter, Lisa Marie Marin (Arnie Smith) of Jonesport; two grandchildren, Marie Elena Marin of Cape Elizabeth and Alexander John Thompson of Addison; two great- grandchildren, Evan Zack and Carlee Thompson; nephew, Peter DeShazo of Norwich, Vt., and niece, Jane Johnson of Tampa, Fla.

The entire Marin family extends their gratitude to Norma’s compassionate healthcare nurses: Sarah Collora, Cheryl Cirone, Lisa Bagley, Brooke Hachey, Kelli Sheen, Rachel Stanwood, and Trudy Seavey.

A celebration of life will follow this summer at the Marin home in Cape Split.

Arrangements have been entrusted to the care of Bragdon-Kelley Funeral Home, Machias, where online condolences may be shared at http://www.bragdonkelley.com.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you donate to your favorite charity in honor of Norma Marin.

Copy the Story Link