Northwest art world loses benefactor
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John Hauberg, founder of one of the world's leading glass-art schools and former president of the Seattle Art Museum, died yesterday at age 85.
Doctors said he had suffered from a bacterial infection that led to a heart attack.
For the past 50 years, Mr. Hauberg was the face of Northwest art, owning one of the world's finest collections of Northwest Coast Indian art, raising thousands of dollars for local artists and programs, and helping save numerous art projects, including the four columns from the old Plymouth Congregational Church, which now stand in a First Hill park overlooking Interstate 5.
He was perhaps best known for starting the Pilchuck Glass School, situated on a portion of his family's 16,000-acre farm near Stanwood. Started in 1971 as a summer-study project, the school has become a leading art center, with an international faculty teaching courses such as hot-glass design, casting, engraving, stained-glass painting and glass blowing. The school has drawn Northwest artists such as Sonja Blomdahl, Paul Marioni, William Morris, Richard Royal, Joey Kirkpatrick and Flora Mace.
Growing up in Rock Island, Ill., Mr. Hauberg learned about the arts from his father, John Hauberg Sr., a philanthropist and avid collector of Indian art who started the Hauberg Indian Museum in Rock Island.
In 1955, he became the Republican state finance chairman, a post he held until 1964. He helped found the Northwest Hardwoods Association, the Child Development and Mental Retardation Center at the University of Washington, and the Foundation for the Handicapped, a residential training center now known as Lifetime Advocacy Plus.
"When he saw a problem, he worked to solve that problem. I think that's what made him so successful in the community," said his daughter Fay Hauberg Page. "He was a man of great integrity and dignity."
And a man who loved the arts. He filled his three houses in Seattle and Bainbridge Island with pre-Columbian art, Northwest Indian art and contemporary Northwest art.
Few were surprised when he succeeded the Seattle Art Museum's founder, Richard Fuller, as museum president from 1973 to 1978. Mr. Hauberg, who was the first chairman of the museum board, was a key player in securing a downtown location for the museum.
In 1991, Mr. Hauberg donated more than 200 pieces of Northwest coastal art to SAM, including four massive 1907 potlatch-house posts carved by Arthur Shaughnessy. His gift in honor of the museum's downtown opening has been called one of the world's finest collections of Native American work.
He also donated a 44-piece collection of the photography of Imogen Cunningham and a 15-piece collection of Mesoamerican ceramic pieces from the preclassic period of Mexican culture.
"I have felt from the first that I was a custodian for this material, that it was not for my private pleasure," he said in 1991.
The Times and the Museum of History & Industry last year named Mr. Hauberg among the 150 most influential people who shaped Seattle. A 1949 graduate of the UW, Mr. Hauberg also was named an outstanding UW graduate in 1987.
Before he died, Mr. Hauberg completed his memoirs, which the family plans one day to publish.
He is survived by his wife, Ann Hauberg; daughters Fay Hauberg Page and Sue Bradford Hauberg; stepson, James Brinkley III; stepdaughters Marion Brinkley Mohler, Elizabeth Brinkley Rosane and Alison Brinkley Kingsley; and several step-grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements have not been completed, but memorial contributions may be made to the Hauberg Scholarship at the Pilchuck Glass School, 430 Yale Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109-5431, and the Seattle Art Museum's Native Art Collection, 100 University St. Seattle, WA 98101.
Tan Vinh can be reached at 206- 515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com.