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Nasher had become ill the day before on an airplane while returning home from a business trip to Europe, according to the Times.

Nasher, along with his wife, Patsy, had built one of the world’s most recognized collections of Modern and contemporary sculpture. The couple also created a public home for their collection, the Nasher Sculpture Center—an outdoor “roofless” museum that Nasher envisioned as both a retreat for reflection on art and a lasting legacy—which opened in 2003 in downtown Dallas.

The collection, which the Nashers began amassing more than 50 years ago, includes works by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Joseph Beuys, Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Jean Dubuffet and Mark di Suvero.

In 1971, when Nasher commissioned the sculptor Beverly Pepper to make a work for NorthPark Center, a sprawling mall complex he built in Dallas, he became one of the first developers to regularly include art in commercial and retail buildings.

Nasher also gave $7.5 million to his alma mater, Duke University, for the construction of a new museum there, which opened in 2005. In addition, he established a long-term association that enabled the Guggenheim to exhibit some of his works at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

The New York Times: Raymond D. Nasher, 85, Dallas Art Collector Who Built a Museum, Dies