Curator, Romy Silver-Kohn: When I think about Lillie P. Bliss, it was a life that held many contrary things at once.
Writer, Kate Walbert: She was, on the one hand, this dutiful daughter, and on the other, she had a fierce life of the mind.
Romy Silver-Kohn: She never married. She lived with her parents until they died.
Kate Walbert: She had many friends, and the friends described her as self-effacing, gracious, shy, courageous.
Romy Silver-Kohn: But also she lived a very private life. Much of the information that we have from her comes from her niece, Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson Cobb.
Narrator: Here’s Bliss’s niece speaking in a 1978 interview.
Bliss’s Niece, Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson Cobb: My aunt was the most typical Victorian daughter. There were four children in the family. There were two in between my father and Lillie Bliss, but they died.
Romy Silver-Kohn: Her mother experienced the trauma of losing children and spent the rest of her life basically homebound.
Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson Cobb: I can only remember my grandmother lying on a couch. And Lillie did absolutely everything for her. She ran the house. She did the shopping. After lunch, she read to her mother, and then they took a drive in a car chauffeured.
What time Lillie had to herself, I don't know, excepting that she was a very fine pianist and she practiced every day. And her life was just utterly disciplined in this way. But the interesting thing is how much grew out of this disciplined life. Because I think the Modern Museum really, ultimately, were very much the result of this life.
Archival audio of Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson is excerpted from an Oral History produced by the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art on January 3, 1978