Anne d'Harnoncourt (d. June 1; age 64)
D’Harnoncourt, the director and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, died unexpectedly of natural causes on June 1. She had served as the museum’s director since 1982 and the CEO since 1997, previously working as the curator of 20th-century art from 1972 to 1982. As the director, she oversaw the reinstallation of the museum’s European collection, the renovation of the modern and contemporary galleries, and a number of major exhibitions. She recently helped the museum win the chance to represent the U.S. at the 2009 Venice Biennale with artist Bruce Nauman, as well as orchestrating the sale of a number of works by Thomas Eakins in order to keep his masterpiece The Gross Clinic in Philadelphia.

Hildy Beyeler (d. July 18; age 86)
Hildy Beyeler was the wife of famed modern art dealer Ernst Beyeler. She played an active role in his business, and the couple also amassed a legendary collection of their own over 50 years. They established the Fondation Beyeler Basel, Switzerland, in 1982 to house it, and in 1997, the foundation opened as a public museum in a new space designed by Renzo Piano. The roughly 200 works in the collection include pieces by Francis Bacon, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, and Vincent van Gogh. The Beyelers were also instrumental in the creation of the Art Basel fair in the 1969.

John Russell (d. August 23; age 89)
Russell, a famed British art critic, began his career writing for British publications Cornhill Magazine and Horizon while working for Naval Intelligence during World War II. Shortly thereafter, he began reviewing books, plays, and music for the Sunday Times of London, and in 1950, he became the paper’s art critic, a role in which he championed emerging British artists Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Bridget Riley, among others. He also organized exhibitions devoted to Modigliani, Georges Rouault, and Balthus at the Tate and co-organized a survey of Pop Art at London’s Hayward Gallery. In 1974, the chief art critic of the New York Times, Hilton Kramer, brought Russell to New York. Russell took over the helm as the paper’s chief art critic from 1982 to 1990. In addition to his writing about art, he published a number of travel books, a biography of conductor Erich Kleiber, and a few translations of modern French novels.

Patricia Faure (d. October 21; age 80)
Faure became a prominent art dealer and fixture on the L.A. art scene in the 1970s, after previous careers as a model and a fashion photographer. She was appointed director of the Nicholas Wilder Gallery in Los Angeles in 1972, after which she partnered briefly with the late collector and dealer Betty Asher to found Asher/Faure Gallery, which ran from 1979 to 1990. Finally, she opened her own space, the Patricia Faure Gallery, in Santa Monica in 1994, although failing health eventually caused her to leave the enterprise; it has since evolved into the Samuel Freeman Gallery. Faure championed such artists as Joel Shapiro, Richard Artschwager, Gwynn Murrill, John M. Miller, Joe Goode, and Margaret Nielsen. She is also acknowledged for launching the careers of Salomon Huerta, the Rev. Ethan Acres, and Mark Bradford.

Jan Krugier (d. November 15; age 80)
International art dealer Jan Krugier opened his first gallery in Geneva in 1962 on the advice of his friend, the artist Alberto Giacometti. In 1987, he opened a branch in New York. He was the exclusive dealer for the Marina Picasso collection, the largest group of Picasso works outside of the Musée Picasso in Paris, and for the Alejandra, Aurelio, and Claudio Torres collection of works by Uruguayan artist Joaquin Torres-Garcia. Krugier was well known for his traveling exhibitions, and the French government presented him with the Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 1996 for his outstanding contribution to French art fairs.

Grace Hartigan (d. November 16; age 86)
Hartigan was an Abstract Expressionist painter who moved to New York in 1945 and found fast fame for her large, boldly colored abstract canvases — although she gradually moved away from pure abstraction and introduced images and figures into her works. In 1953, Alfred H. Barr Jr., the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, made her first museum purchase. Her marriage to Johns Hopkins University scientist Winston Price in 1960 led her to move to Baltimore, which distanced her from the New York art scene. She joined the faculty at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 1964 and founded its graduate school of painting, later called the Hoffberger School. Beginning in 1979, she returned to the public sphere with a MICA exhibition and a series of shows at Baltimore’s C. Grimaldis Gallery. Her work is displayed at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.