Duncan Phillips (art collector)

Duncan Phillips (1886–1966) was a Washington, D.C., based art collector and critic who played a seminal role in introducing America to modern art. The grandson of James H. Laughlin, a banker and co-founder of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company, Phillips was born in Pittsburgh and moved with his family to Washington, D.C. in 1895.

Phillips, along with his mother, established the precursor of The Phillips Collection, The Phillips Memorial Gallery, after the sudden deaths of his father, Duncan Clinch Phillips (1838–1917), a Pittsburgh window glass millionaire, and brother, James Laughlin Phillips (May 30, 1884 – 1918).

Beginning with a small family collection of paintings, Phillips, a published art critic, expanded the collection dramatically. From the beginning Phillips conceived of his museum as "a memorial…a beneficent force in the community where I live—a joy-giving, life-enhancing influence, assisting people to see beautifully as true artists see."

Phillips married painter Marjorie Acker in 1921. With her assistance and advice, Phillips developed his collection "as a museum of modern art and its sources," believing strongly in the continuum of artists influencing their successors through the centuries. His focus on the continuous tradition of art was revolutionary at a time when America was largely critical of modernism, which was seen as a break with the past. Phillips collected works by masters such as El Greco, calling him the "first impassioned expressionist"; Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin because he was "the first modern painter"; Francisco Goya because he was "the stepping stone between the Old Masters and the Great Moderns like Cézanne"; and Édouard Manet, a "significant link in a chain which began with Goya and which [led] to Gauguin and Matisse."

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