Morton David May (25 March 1914 – 13 April 1983) (known as Buster to his friends and colleagues) was an American philanthropist and art collector.
He was also at various times director, chairman of the board, and chief executive officer of the May Department Stores Company.
[2][3] He was the grandson of David May, who started the family in merchandising from a canvas-roofed makeshift shop, in the then-populous city of Leadville, Colorado, during a gold strike in 1877.
He opened a store there and later bought out the William Barr Dry Goods Co., merging it with the Famous Shoe & Clothing Co. — and Famous-Barr was created.
[7] May became interested in collecting art through his uncle by marriage Samuel Abraham Marx in the early 1940s but was interrupted by World War II.
When the war was over he traveled to galleries in New York and began investigating the paintings of American artists and Cubists, but soon his interests drifted elsewhere.
In the 1930s May visited the home in Chicago of the architect Samuel Marx, to whom his aunt was married, and from whom he would later commission a house.
When interviewed in 1980, he spoke of the visit: I was there discussing the plans (for the house), They (the Marxes) owned wonderful art, including a magnificent collection of the work of the School of Paris artists.
But what really stunned me was not the French art but some Mexican figures I learned were from the west coast of Mexico, between 1,600 and 1,900 years old.
I knew then and there that I wanted to own similar objects.He bought some Pre-Columbian artwork immediately following the war, but mostly between 1945 and the mid-1950s he gave his attention to acquiring German Expressionist works, a movement which were virtually unknown in the United States at the time.
In 1948 May asked his friend, the painter Maurice Freedman, if he knew of any artists who were doing good work but weren't very well known.
[9] Some of these include Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Lovis Corinth,[11] Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Erich Heckel[12] and Oskar Kokoschka.
[9] In the 1950s, when prices for German Expressionist paintings began to rise, May directed his attention to the expansion of his other collection, the works of art that he had liked so much in the Marx's apartment.
He detailed his experience in an introduction to a catalogue for a show of his collection at the Saint Louis Art Museum.
I happened to visit the Carleback Gallery in New York and found it full of beautifully carved objects, which were strong, expressive, and aesthetically satisfying.
[1] May was also a great collector of the artist and professor of Washington University of St. Louis Edward E. Boccia whose studio he would visit annually from and purchase work.
In 1934, during his studies at Dartmouth, he had a rare opportunity to travel to Russia with the free-lance photographer, Julien Bryan.
When May returned from the service, he found the ten-year-old plans for the Gateway Arch National Park languishing.
He was instrumental in the acquisition and development of the St. Louis Council's Beaumont Reservation near Eureka, Missouri and the S-F Scout Ranch near Knob Lick, MO.