Using $350 that his father had given him as a birthday present, Chrysler purchased a small watercolor landscape that featured an inch-high nude, and he brought the painting to his room at school.
[1] Leaving Dartmouth after his junior year in 1931, Chrysler embarked on a grand tour of Europe and met Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, and other avant-garde artists in Paris.
[2] He also bought works by significant American artists such as Charles Burchfield, John Marin, and Thomas Hart Benton.
[2] Chrysler assisted in the development of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, serving as the first chairman of its library committee and contributing resources on Dadaism and Surrealism.
He produced the Broadway plays The Strong Are Lonely[8] and New Faces of 1952, the latter helping to launch the careers of Eartha Kitt and Mel Brooks.
[10] That same year, at Picasso's 80th birthday exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, the artist himself was shown photographs of six of his works owned by Chrysler, and he wrote faux ("false") across two of them.
[13] While stationed in Norfolk during World War II, Chrysler met Jean Esther Outland, and they married on January 13, 1945.
[16] Chrysler maintained a residence in New York and a home in Key West, but he died near his museum in Norfolk after a long struggle with cancer.