Sidney and Anne Gerber photograph collection, 1910-2005

Born in 1910, Anne Gerber, née Convisar, was a Seattle art collector (although she preferred the term "artnik"), philanthropist, and civil rights advocate. Her husband, Sidney Gerber, was a Seattle businessman who was a leader in the fight for desegregation, heading up charitable organizations which connected minority buyers with properties for sale in predominantly white neighborhoods and starting a real estate company for the purpose. Anne was an active supporter of these efforts.

The Gerbers collected art starting in 1945. Initially the couple focused solely on contemporary art, purchasing works by Beckman, deKooning, Klee, and Chagall, among others, from New York galleries. In 1950 the Gerbers expanded the scope of their collection efforts to include Northwest Coast American Indian art. Sidney died in a plane crash in 1965, along with Wing Luke, Seattle’s first Asian American City Councilman, and Kate Ladue, the secretary of the Metropolitan Democratic Club of Seattle, but Anne would continue to be a patron of the arts, collecting modernist and traditional Native works alike and serving repeatedly on the Seattle Arts Council, until her own death in 2005. Much of the Gerbers’ collection of Northwest Coast American Indian art was donated to the Burke Museum of Natural History, and much of their collection of modern art went to the Seattle Art Museum. In addition, the Anne Gerber Fund continues to accept donations and support the display of experimental and “risk-taking” art at the Seattle Art Museum.