Anne Hendricks Bass

Anne Hendricks was born on October 19, 1941, in Indianapolis, Indiana,[1][2] the daughter of a "golf-champion mother" who was a graduate of Vassar College, and of a father, John Wesley Hendricks, who was a "successful Indianapolis surgeon" and urologist.[3][2][4] She has younger sisters and a brother.[2]

Bass was educated in public schools in Indianapolis until 1957, when she transferred to the Tudor Hall School for Girls, a private girls' school in Indianapolis now known as the Park Tudor School, graduating in 1959.[2] She took ballet lessons as a child.[2] She graduated from Vassar College in 1963, where she majored in Italian literature.[1][3]

After graduation, Bass was an executive trainee at Bonwit Teller in New York City, where she worked as an associate buyer.[3] She later became a contributing editor at Vogue.[1]

Through her divorce settlement, Bass became the owner of over one million shares of The Walt Disney Company.[1] She had been on the Forbes 400 list since 1989,[1] and was worth an estimated US$690 million in 2000.[1]

Bass directed Dancing Across Borders, a documentary about dance released in February 2010.[5][6][7] The documentary shows how Bass sponsored a teenager from Cambodia to attend the School of American Ballet and become a professional ballet dancer for the Pacific Northwest Ballet.[6][7] The film was shown at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan.[7] The New York Times suggested the documentary lacked "an objective voice," as Bass was the one directing and producing a film showcasing her goodwill.[6]

Bass volunteered for the Junior League of Fort Worth.[2] She supported the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.[2][4] She also supported the Texas Ballet Theatre, which she "rescued from bankruptcy".[8] She donated US$300,000 on her own, complemented by a US$250,000 donation from the Sid Richardson Foundation.[8] Additionally, she supported the Van Cliburn Foundation.[2] She made charitable contributions to the Fort Worth Country Day School, where she helped with the landscaping of the grounds.[2] She served on the committee of the Jewel Charity Ball, benefiting the Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas.[2]

Bass served on the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.[2] From 1980 to 2005, she served on the board of trustees of the New York City Ballet.[9] She also supported the School of American Ballet.[2][4] Additionally, she traveled with the World Monuments Fund.[7] She played a critical role in the organizational development and continued success of the Weantinoge Heritage Land Trust in Northwestern Connecticut, the largest land trust in the state.[10]

Bass collected paintings by Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Edgar Degas.[4][11] She was the owner of The Drawing Lesson by Picasso.[5]

Twelve pieces of her collection -- three Degas, two Mark Rothko, three Monet, two Balthus, one Morris Louis and one Vilhelm Hammershoi -- were auctioned by Christie's in New York in May 2022, drawing $363,087,500 in total sales, including buyer's premium. [12]

Bass met her husband, Sid Bass, billionaire heir to a Texas oil fortune, at a birthday party when Anne was visiting her cousins in Fort Worth; she was nine years old.[2] They started dating in college.[2] Their wedding was held on June 26, 1965, in a Presbyterian church in Indianapolis, followed by a reception at the Woodstock Country Club.[2] They honeymooned in Europe.[2] After living in Dallas for a year, and Palo Alto, California, for two years, they moved into a ranch-style estate overlooking the Trinity River in Texas.[2] Later, they moved into a mansion on Deepdale Drive, Westover Hills, Texas, designed in 1970 by architect Paul Rudolph with grounds designed by British landscape architect Russell Page.[2] They also lived in an apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park in Manhattan, designed by Mark Hampton.[2]

Sid and Anne had two daughters: Hyatt Anne Bass, an author, and Samantha Sims Bass, a photographer.[13] When they divorced in 1988,[11] she received US$200 million in the settlement, the largest ever in the state of Texas at the time.[4] She decided to keep her former husband's name.[4]

Bass resided in the 960 Fifth Avenue apartment she received in her divorce settlement, as well as the Rudolph-designed home in Westover Hills.[14] She also owned a 1,000-acre estate in South Kent, Connecticut, with her boyfriend, the painter Julian Lethbridge.[5] In 2007, they were both held hostage at the estate; five years later, in 2012, her Romanian-born butler was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the hostage situation, when he attempted to extort millions from Bass.[15]

Bass was described as "relentlessly private" by Texas Monthly.[2] She enjoyed reading novels by Edith Wharton.[2]

Bass died on April 1, 2020, at the age of 78, from ovarian cancer.[16][17]

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