Agnes Gund at her home in Manhattan. Credit Brad Ogbonna for The New York Times.

The death of David Rockefeller in 2017 at the age of 101 also helped fortify Ms. Gund’s legend. With him gone, she has become the good witch of Park Avenue, torchbearer for the obligation of the rich in an era dominated by vanity and hypocrisy.

“With a lot of these philanthropists, you don’t know what the motives are or whether they’re going to be indicted in the next week,” said James Reginato, a writer at large at Vanity Fair. “Aggie personifies class in the old sense of the word. She’s unbesmirched by any kind of taint like so many of them….”

(Jacob Bernstein, “Is Agnes Gund the Last Good Rich Person?” NYTimes, 11-3-18)

(c) 2018 JMN.