Kay Kimbell

Who was Kay Kimbell?

Kay Kimbell was an entrepreneur and philanthropist, especially as benefactor of the Kimbell Art Museum.

Born to Benjamin B. and Mattie Kimbell, he attended the public schools in Whitewright, Texas, but quit school in the eighth grade to work as an office boy in a grain-milling company there, where he later founded the Beatrice Milling Company. This firm grew into Kimbell Milling Company, the pilot organization of diverse interests that Kimbell later founded or directed.

At the time of his death he was the head of more than seventy corporations, including flour, feed, and oil mills, grocery chains, an insurance company, and a wholesale grocery firm. In addition to pursuing business interests, Kimbell collected art.

He established the Kimbell Art Foundation in Fort Worth in 1935 and at his death left his fortune to the foundation, with directions to build a museum of the first class in Fort Worth. The collection of art that Kimbell and his wife amassed included many fine works by late Renaissance, French nineteenth-century, and American nineteenth-century artists, with a special emphasis on eighteenth-century English painters such as Leighton and Gainsborough.