Quiet woman’s voice heard in cultural arts
Joann Phillips never said much when she was serving on the boards of various arts and cultural groups over the course of some 40 years in Santa Fe.
But when she spoke, people listened.
“She was a life force, which made her a fabulously rounded board member, one who worked hard, brought in good people, was very generous with financial support and had a good vision,” said Andrew Wallerstein, the former chair of the board of SITE Santa Fe, which Phillips helped co-found in the mid-
1990s. “Even when she was old and frail she would state her opinions. You noticed her, even when she was very quiet, and when she spoke, it was with force and vitality and humor.”
Phillips died at her Santa Fe home surrounded by friends and family members on Oct. 26. She was 90 years old.
The Portland, Ore., native, who moved to Santa Fe with her late husband, Gifford Phillips, around 1990, played a driving role as both a founding member and board member for SITE Santa Fe, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and the Museum of New Mexico Foundation. She was involved with the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
She and her husband also founded the Chamiza Foundation in 1989, an organization that preserves and enriches the cultural heritages of the pueblos of New Mexico.
And perhaps there was much, much more that she did, according to one of her daughters, Marjorie Phillips Elliott, who is now discovering documents that her mother left behind. “She never tooted her own horn, never talked about the past, so as we are reading all this stuff now, we’re going, ‘Oh, wow, when I was going to grammar school there she was serving in all these councils and on the Urban League and on woman’s Democrat club boards and president of the women’s division of the University of California Los Angeles’ (UCLA) union the year I was born,” said Elliott. “She was always moving forward.”
Joann Phillips was born in Portland to parents Fritz and Alta Kocher on Aug. 3, 1928. She displayed an affinity for athletics, particularly tennis, and studied social welfare at UCLA, though she never pursued a career in that field. She met Gifford at a fundraiser for then Democrat presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, after which she and Gifford fell in love almost immediately, marrying within six weeks.
She was not a sentimental woman, her daughter Marjorie said. “There’s a story that when they arranged their wedding date, they set Saturday, but it was Feb. 14, and she thought it was too corny to get married on Valentine’s Day so they moved it to Sunday,” she said.
The couple began visiting Santa Fe and New Mexico in the 1950s, buying a house in the city in the early 1970s and eventually becoming full-time residents between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Both developed a love for visual art.
“She was very interested in new movements in art and the impact it could have on society,” said her son, Jim Phillips. “At the same time both of my parents were very interested in the living culture of Pueblo life.”
“She and her husband loved Santa Fe, and part of loving Santa Fe was bringing their love of the arts, especially contemporary art, to the community,” said Wallerstein.
That’s one reason she backed the creation of SITE Santa Fe, Wallerstein and Jim Phillips said. She also had a sweet tooth, Elliott said. “She told us to put that in her obituary,” said Elliott. “She said, ‘Tell them how much I enjoyed playing tennis and eating See’s candies.’ ” Gifford Phillips died in 2013. Joann Phillips is survived by her son Jim and his wife Marjorie, plus daughter Alice Phillips Swistel as well as eight grandchildren. The family plans a memorial gathering in Santa Fe in January.