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Health

John Magufuli, Tanzania Chief Who Performed Down Covid, Dies at 61

John Magufuli, Tanzania Leader Who Played Down Covid, Dies at 61

NAIROBI, Kenya – President John Magufuli of Tanzania, a populist leader who downplayed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and diverted his country from democratic ideals, died on Wednesday in the port city of Dar es Salaam. He was 61 years old.

Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan said in a short televised address that Mr Magufuli died of heart complications while being treated at Mzena Hospital. The announcement followed more than a week of intense speculation that Mr Magufuli was seriously ill with Covid-19 – reports that senior government officials had repeatedly denied.

Ms. Hassan did not disclose Mr. Magufuli’s underlying condition, but said he had suffered from chronic atrial fibrillation for more than a decade. She announced 14 days of national mourning and said flags would be flown nationwide on half employees.

Under the Tanzanian Constitution, Ms. Hassan will be sworn in as President to serve the remainder of the five-year term that Mr. Magufuli began when he won re-election last October. The move will make her the first female leader in Tanzania.

Mr. Magufuli, a trained chemist, was first elected on an anti-corruption platform in October 2015. He was initially praised for his efforts to strengthen the economy, curb wasteful spending, and improve Tanzania’s infrastructure.

But the Führer, popularly known as “the Bulldozer”, was soon accused of silencing dissent, suppressing freedom of expression and association, and enforcing laws that strengthened his Party of Revolution’s influence in power.

This was a sharp departure from the policies of its two immediate predecessors, who had promoted their East African nation as a peaceful, business-friendly democracy.

During his first term in office, Mr Magufuli’s government banned opposition rallies, revoked licenses from non-governmental organizations, and introduced laws that critics said suppressed independent reporting. He also said that pregnant girls are not allowed to go to school.

Right-wing groups accused his government of failing to conduct a credible investigation into the murders, kidnappings and persecution of journalists criticizing the government and opposition officials.

When Mr Magufuli was seeking a second term last fall, the authorities made it difficult for the opposition parties to campaign, froze the bank accounts of civil society groups, refused accreditation to election observers and journalists and refused to allow opposition representatives to polling stations.

Updated

March 19, 2021, 8:12 p.m. ET

At least 10 people were killed on election day when violence broke out in the semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar after citizens said they saw soldiers casting marked ballots.

Mr Magufuli won this election with 84 percent of the vote on charges of widespread fraud and irregularities. Tundu Lissu, the main opposition candidate who ran against him, was accused of trying to overthrow the government and had to leave the country. He remains in exile in Belgium.

Last year, Mr Magufuli was heavily criticized at home and abroad for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. He railed against masks and social distancing, promoted unproven remedies as cures, and said God helped the country eradicate the virus.

Tanzania has not disclosed any data on the coronavirus to the World Health Organization since April, reporting only 509 cases and 21 deaths, numbers that have been widely viewed with skepticism.

When the global introduction of vaccines began, Mr Magufuli stopped the Ministry of Health from securing doses for Tanzania.

“Vaccines don’t work,” he said in a speech to a maskless crowd in late January. “If the white man could develop vaccinations, vaccines against AIDS would have been brought. Vaccines against tuberculosis would have made it a thing of the past. Vaccines against malaria would have been found. Cancer vaccines would have been found. “

Such statements have been condemned by both the World Health Organization and the Roman Catholic Church in Tanzania. Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, urged the Tanzanian government to prepare the infrastructure for the distribution of the cans, and wrote on Twitter: “Science shows that #VaccinesWork.”

In February, the US Embassy in Tanzania warned of a “significant increase in the number of Covid-19 cases”, saying that “limited hospital capacity across Tanzania could lead to life-threatening delays in emergency medical care”.

Mr Magufuli’s death came just days after speculation that he was sick with the virus. Rumors began to swirl after the opposition person in exile, Mr Lissu, said the president had Covid-19 and was being treated at a hospital in neighboring Kenya.

Mr Lissu asked the authorities to reveal the whereabouts of the president, who had not been seen publicly for almost two weeks. Mr. Magufuli did not attend a virtual summit for leaders of the East African regional bloc on February 27.

Tanzanian officials rejected the speculation, saying that Mr. Magufuli was working as usual.

After the death of Mr Magufuli was announced on Wednesday, the leader of the opposition party, Act Wazalendo, urged Tanzanians to show “patience and understanding” as the country undergoes a critical transition period.

“This is an unprecedented moment,” said opposition party leader Zitto Kabwe in a statement, “one that will undoubtedly move us all in a very personal way.”

John Pombe Joseph Magufuli was born on October 29, 1959 in the Chato district in what is now northwestern Tanzania and was then known as Tanganyika. He earned a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Dar es Salaam and a PhD in chemistry from the same university in 2009, as stated on the website of the President’s Office.

Before he became president, he was a member of the Tanzanian parliament and held a number of cabinet positions. He developed a reputation for fighting corruption while serving in cabinet positions including Minister for Land, Fisheries and Public Works.

Mr. Magufuli is survived by his wife, Janet, an elementary school teacher; and two children.

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Health

Greg Steltenpohl, Pioneer in Plant-Based mostly Drinks, Dies at 67

Greg Steltenpohl, Pioneer in Plant-Based Drinks, Dies at 67

“Steve encouraged him to think outside the box and see the moment as an opportunity for innovation and progressive thinking rather than a failure,” said Eli Steltenpohl. “That certainly gave my father the fire he needed to get through.”

Odwalla never fully recovered. With the company on the verge of bankruptcy, its founders had to sell a majority stake in private equity firms.

The Coca-Cola Company acquired Odwalla in 2001 for $ 181 million and closed it last year. In doing so, Coke cited the need for business efficiency and a consumer preference for less sugary beverages, although Steltenpohl told The Times in 2016 that Coke had never maximized the brand’s potential.

“My father didn’t imagine that for Odwalla,” said his son. “But that made the success of Califia all the sweeter.”

In 2010, Mr. Steltenpohl planned to found another juice company, but changed gear when he saw the coming wave of non-dairy milk alternatives made from nuts, coconut, oats and soy. While he was recovering from his liver transplant, the hospital gave him a protein drink; he found it so uncomfortable, he told the Times, that he was inspired to do better and he was soon producing premium almond milk, ready-to-drink coffee and barista blends.

He named the new company after Queen Califia, a character in a 16th century Spanish novel who became the spirit of colonial California. After learning hard lessons from Odwalla, he insisted on strict quality control, less sugar and more nutrition, and an independent ethos. Until 2017, California’s bottled coffee was number 1 in the United States.

Greg Andrew Steltenpohl was born on October 20, 1954 in Homestead, Florida. His mother, Benita (Desjardins) Steltenpohl, was a culinary entrepreneur and cook. His father Jerome was a civil engineer who moved the family to Southern California in the 1950s, where he worked for defense companies. Greg grew up in the San Bernardino area.

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Health

Carola Eisenberg Dies at 103; Helped Begin Physicians for Human Rights

Carola Eisenberg Dies at 103; Helped Start Physicians for Human Rights

The medical group and another advocacy group, Human Rights Watch, exposed the threats to public health, especially children, from anti-personnel landmines in Cambodia. In a report she called for an international ban on these weapons. The group of doctors then teamed up with five other organizations to form the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.

In a statement by Dr. Eisenberg’s death praised Alan Jones, chairman of the board of Physicians for Human Rights, for “the unfathomable number of lives she could touch, improve, ease and save”.

Caroline Blitzman was born on September 15, 1917 in Buenos Aires, the second of three daughters. Her father, Bernardo Blitzman, had emigrated to Argentina from Russia as a baby; Her mother, Teodora (Kahn) Blitzman, came from the Ukraine. Caroline grew up across the street from a slaughterhouse where her father was an executive hides.

After graduating from high school, she trained as a psychiatric social worker at the Hospicio de las Mercedes (now José Tiburcio Borda’s municipal hospital) in Buenos Aires before embarking on a medical career.

“I had to go into medicine to do more than just give the families tickets at Christmas time to get a turkey,” she said in a 2008 interview with the Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine.

In 1944 she graduated from the University of Buenos Aires with a degree in medicine.

Dr. Eisenberg was trained instead at Johns Hopkins University under the guidance of Dr. Leo Kanner, who recently coined the term autism. She worked with him at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

She then moved to the Johns Hopkins Medical School and practiced psychiatry until 1968 when she became a psychiatrist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Student Health Service.

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Health

Baby Dies in Accident Involving Peloton Treadmill

Child Dies in Accident Involving Peloton Treadmill

An accident with a peloton treadmill killed a child, the company’s managing director said on Thursday.

In a letter posted on the company’s website, John Foley, CEO and co-founder of Peloton, said the company, known for its hugely popular interactive stationary bikes, recently learned of the fatal accident and “a small handful of incidents” along with it Children injured by the treadmill + treadmill.

“While we have known only a small handful of Tread + -related incidents that have injured children, everyone in Peloton is devastating and our hearts go out to the families affected,” said Foley.

The company urged Peloton users to adhere to the safety warnings regarding Peloton products, encouraging members to keep them where children cannot reach them and keep safety keys out of reach of children when the machines are not in use .

“There are no words to express the shock and sadness everyone at Peloton feels as a result of this terrible tragedy,” a spokesman said in a statement.

Details of the accident that led to the child’s death were still unclear. The company said it would not release any further details, such as when and where it took place, “out of respect for family and their privacy.”

The Tread + works similarly to a standard treadmill, but has a 32-inch touchscreen that allows users to exercise with the help of peloton instructors and exercise with others in real time. The price starts at $ 4,295, according to the company’s website.

A spokesman said the equipment was “designed and tested” to be used by people who are at least 16 years old and weigh more than 105 pounds.

A 2020 study by the American Journal of Emergency Medicine found that most home treadmill injuries occurred in children under the age of 16 and that the coronavirus pandemic posed a unique risk of injury as more adults worked from home and children participated in distance learning . The study found that common injuries included hand and finger damage such as frictional burns or degloving, in which some of the skin tissue becomes detached from the muscle below.

During the pandemic, Peloton’s popularity has boomed. The company’s value rose to more than $ 40 billion during the pandemic as physical gyms closed and people’s exercise habits disrupted.

On Thursday, the company’s share price closed 4.6 percent on news of the fatal treadmill accident.

Last year the company suffered another setback when it recalled pedals on about 27,000 of its stationary bikes after receiving reports that clip-in pedals caused injuries that required stitches or other medical care.

Susan Beachy contributed to the research.

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Business

Bhaskar Menon, Who Turned Capitol Information Round, Dies at 86

Bhaskar Menon, Who Turned Capitol Records Around, Dies at 86

In 1970, Capitol Records’ business was in trouble. The Beatles, the company’s top act, had passed away. Hits were rare in the remaining list. That year the company lost $ 8 million.

It needed a savior, and it found one in Bhaskar Menon, an Indian-born, Oxford-trained manager at EMI, the British conglomerate that owned the Capitol majority shareholder. He became the label’s new head in 1971 and quickly turned his finances around. In 1973 he achieved a gigantic hit with Pink Floyd’s album “The Dark Side of the Moon”. He later headed EMI’s global music business.

Mr. Menon, who was also the first Asian man to run a major Western record label, died on March 4th at his home in Beverly Hills, California. He was 86 years old.

The death was confirmed by his wife Sumitra Menon.

“Bhaskar Menon is committed to excellence and has made EMI a music powerhouse and one of our best-known global institutions,” said Lucian Grainge, general manager of Universal Music Group, which owns the Capitol label and EMI’s music recording business , in a statement following the death of Mr Menon.

Vijaya Bhaskar Menon was born on May 29, 1934 to a prominent family in Trivandrum, southern India (now Thiruvananthapuram). His father, KRK Menon, was the finance secretary under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru; The first one rupee notes issued after India gained independence from Great Britain bore his signature. Mr. Menon’s mother, Saraswathi, knew many of India’s leading classical musicians personally.

Mr. Menon studied at Doon School and St. Stephen’s College in India before obtaining a Masters degree from Christ Church, Oxford. His tutor at Oxford recommended him to Joseph Lockwood, chairman of EMI, and Mr. Menon began working there in 1956.

As a proud British institution, EMI controlled a vast musical empire with divisions in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America. There, Mr. Menon assisted producer George Martin, who later became the Beatles’ chief collaborator.

In 1957, Mr. Menon joined the Gramophone Company of India, an EMI subsidiary. In 1965 he became managing director and 1969 chairman. Later in 1969 he was appointed Managing Director of EMI International.

Capitol, the Los Angeles label where Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee lived, has been hit by business missteps and declining sales, and EMI has appointed Mr. Menon as President and CEO. He has slashed Capitol’s list of artists, slashed budgets and pushed for more aggressive advertising for the label’s artists.

In 1972, Mr. Menon learned that Capitol was in danger of losing Pink Floyd’s next album, blaming the company for the poor sales of its previous albums in the United States. Mr Menon flew to the south of France, where Pink Floyd was performing, and after a nightly round of negotiations, they agreed on a deal. Mr. Menon thought of the terms on a cocktail napkin and brought it back to the Capitol Legal Department in Los Angeles, said Rupert Perry, a longtime manager at EMI and Capitol.

“The Dark Side of the Moon”, published by Capitol with a huge advertising campaign, was one of the biggest blockbusters in music history. It stayed on Billboard’s album list for 741 consecutive weeks and sold more than 15 million copies in the US alone.

Under the direction of Mr. Menon, Capitol continued to enjoy success with Bob Seger, Helen Reddy, Steve Miller, Linda Ronstadt, the Grand Funk Railroad, and others through the 1970s.

In 1978 EMI put its music departments under unified management as EMI Music Worldwide and appointed Mr. Menon as chairman and managing director. He stayed in this position until he left the music industry in 1990. From 2005 to 2016 he was a member of the board of directors of NDTV, an Indian news broadcaster. In 2011, a troubled EMI was sold to Sony, which bought its music publishing business, and Universal Music.

In a way, Mr. Menon was an outsider in the Southern California music scene.

“I was a very unusual and unlikely person who was sent here to take full command of Capitol under the circumstances,” Menon said in “Music Business History: The Mike Sigman Interviews,” 2016, citing industry magazine Hits collection.

Mr. Menon’s wife recalled in a telephone interview that Mr. Menon told her in 1972 when they were married, “There are only two Indians in LA: Ravi Shankar and me.” She told stories of the two men – old friends from India – who vainly searched the exclusive west side of the city for good Indian food.

In addition to his wife, two sons, Siddhartha and Vishnu, and a sister, Vasantha Menon, survive Mr. Menon.

Although known primarily as the manager of the business side of the labels he ran, Mr. Menon had the respect of many musicians. In the 2003 documentary, Pink Floyd: The Making of the Dark Side of the Moon, Nick Mason, the band’s drummer, recalled Mr. Menon’s efforts to promote the band’s breakthrough album and called him “absolutely great.”

“He decided he was going to do this job and get the American company to sell this record,” Mason said. “And he did.”

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Entertainment

Yaphet Kotto, James Bond Villain and ‘Alien’ Star, Dies at 81

Yaphet Kotto, James Bond Villain and ‘Alien’ Star, Dies at 81

Between these stage appearances, two film roles in the 1970s raised Mr Kotto’s profile in particular. The first was in 1973 in Live and Let Die, Roger Moore’s debut as James Bond. Mr. Kotto played his main enemy, a dual role in which he was both a corrupt Caribbean dictator and the drug dealer Mr. Big.

1979 came “Alien”, Ridley Scott’s space horror classic, in which Mr. Kotto’s character Parker was part of a spaceship crew that fought against an evil alien creature.

“The combination of ‘Live and Let Die’ and ‘Alien’ for my career was like wham, bam!” He told The Canadian Press in 2003, adding that these completely different roles showed his versatility. “I think the only other person who has that combination is Harrison Ford.”

Yaphet Frederick Kotto was born in Harlem on November 15, 1939 and grew up in the Bronx. His father, he told the Baltimore Jewish Times in 1995, was from Cameroon and jumped as a merchant on a ship that landed in New York. His mother is of Panamanian and West Indian descent. His father had adopted Judaism and his mother was a Roman Catholic. The couple separated when Mr. Kotto was a child and he was raised by his maternal grandparents.

Mr Kotto said his career path was determined by a fateful trip to the cinema.

“One day when I was around 16 I went to this theater and showed ‘On the Waterfront’. I saw Marlon Brando for the first time,” he told the Orange County Register of California in 1994. It was like someone punched me in the stomach. It was like someone crashed pelvis in both ears. I was blown out of the theater. I knew from that moment that I wanted to be an actor. “

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Entertainment

Sally Grossman, Immortalized on a Dylan Album Cowl, Dies at 81

Sally Grossman, Immortalized on a Dylan Album Cover, Dies at 81

Along the way, she met Mr. Grossman, who made a name for himself as a manager of folk music acts that played in such places, including Peter, Paul and Mary, which he brought together.

“The office was always full of people,” Ms. Grossman recalled in an interview in 1987. “Peter, Paul and Mary of course, but also Ian and Sylvia, Richie Havens, Gordon Lightfoot, other musicians, artists, poets.”

The couple, who married in 1964, settled in Woodstock, where Mr. Grossman had acquired land and which Mr. Dylan had discovered around the same time, and settled there with his family.

In due course, the photo shoot for the album cover came.

“I took 10 recordings,” Mr. Kramer told The Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2014. A picture of Mr. Dylan holding a cat was a keeper. “This was the only time that all three subjects looked at the lens,” said Kramer.

The photo, staged by Mr. Kramer with Mr. Dylan’s input, was an early example of a mini-trend in loading covers with images that invite insight into the music. The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ”(1967) might be the best-known example.

The album itself was a breakthrough for Mr. Dylan, marking his transition from acoustic to electric. One of his tracks was “Mr. Tambourine Man ”,“ Subterranean Homesick Blues ”and“ Maggie’s Farm ”.

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Entertainment

Leon Gast, Director of ‘When We Had been Kings,’ Dies at 84

Leon Gast, Director of ‘When We Were Kings,’ Dies at 84

Mr. Gast couldn’t even get to grips with the 300,000 feet of footage he’d been shooting. The London-based company, which King said would fund the project, turned out to be backing a Shell company in the Cayman Islands owned by Liberian Treasury Secretary Stephen Tolbert. Mr Gast flew to Liberia to arrange more money, but before they could make a deal, Mr Tolbert died in a plane crash.

Mr. Gast’s attorney David Sonenberg sued in a UK court, and after a year, Mr. Gast had his film and hours and hours of audio piled up in the bedrooms and hallways of his apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

What he didn’t have was money, so he took on a number of side projects. At one point the Hells Angels hired him to make a film that would counter their reputation as a violent criminal – though they undercut their own case when several of them beat up Mr. Gast (without seriously injuring him) for refusing to give them the to give editorial control. (The movie “Hells Angels Forever” was popular.)

Not all of Mr. Gast’s monetary efforts have been film-related or legal. One night in June 1979, he and at least four other men were waiting at an airport near Charleston, West Virginia, for a plane carrying about 10 tons of marijuana that they smuggled out of Colombia. But the plane crashed on landing and spilled its contents down a slope. Mr. Gast was arrested, found guilty, and fined $ 10,000 and given a five-year suspended sentence.

In 1989, after years of struggling, Mr. Gast reunited with Mr. Sonenberg, who had since become a successful music manager. Mr. Gast persuaded him to take over the rest of the production process and even let him use a room in his Manhattan townhouse as a studio.

Mr. Gast was still keen to focus the film on the festival. But one day one of Mr. Sonenberg’s clients, hip-hop star Wyclef Jean, was in the studio when Mr. Gast was editing a clip of Ali. Mr. Jean was delighted and asked to see more and more of the footage.

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Entertainment

Patrick Dupond, French Ballet Virtuoso, Dies at 61

Patrick Dupond, French Ballet Virtuoso, Dies at 61

At the age of 16, Mr. Dupond was inducted into the Paris Opera Ballet, and Mr. Bozzoni proposed to enter the Varna competition. After winning the gold medal, he steadily rose to the Paris Opera – although his virtuoso technique and philanthropic style were not to everyone’s taste.

“Of course you don’t want to put out the fire, the furnishings, or the excitement,” said Violette Verdy, then director of the Paris Opera Ballet, upside down in a 1977 interview with The Times, explaining to him that what he sometimes does is like that What is tasteless is that it belongs more to the Moulin Rouge than to the Paris Opera. “

“Because I like him so much,” added Ms. Verdy, “I’m especially tough on him.”

Mr. Dupond’s star quality and charisma made him a crowd favorite even after leaving the opera in 1997. In 2000, after a serious car accident, he had 134 fractures, constant pain, and a morphine addiction that he had to overcome for a year. But he returned to the studio and worked with Mr. Bozzoni to regain his strength. Less than a year after the accident, he appeared in a musical entitled “Un Air de Paris”.

In 2004 he met Leila Da Rocha, a former professional basketball player who had trained as a dancer and choreographer. Although Mr. Dupond was always open about his homosexuality, particularly in an autobiography, “Étoile” (2000), he described their encounter as love at first sight.

Ms. Da Rocha encouraged him to appear on several reality television shows, most recently as a judge on the French edition of Dancing With the Stars. Together they taught and staged works at their dance school in Soissons.

In addition to Mrs. Da Rocha, Mr. Dupond is survived by his mother.

In an interview with the Liberation newspaper in 2000, Mr. Dupond presented his credo as an artist: “To please, to seduce, to distract, to enchant; I feel like I’ve only ever lived for it. “

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Business

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, Whose Artwork Museum Promoted Ladies, Dies at 98

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, Whose Art Museum Promoted Women, Dies at 98

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, who used her social relationships, organizational acumen, and personal collection of hundreds of works by women painters to build the country’s first museum dedicated to women in the arts, died Saturday at her Washington home. She was 98 years old.

Her death was confirmed by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, which she opened in 1987 and until recently chaired it and held weekly meetings with the museum’s director at her Georgetown home.

Ms. Holladay, known to her friends as Billie, was a skilled networker from Washington who understood how to use party invitations and nonprofit committee seats to create an agenda. But where others might have used those talents to solicit clients or gain power for their own sake, she had a different goal in mind: to include women in art history who she believed had ignored their contributions for too long .

A patrician with impeccable taste and sense of decency, she rubbed her shoulders with First Ladies, had lunch with Mellons and Gettys, and supported herself in the six years it took to open the museum, housed in a former Freemason , to those associations and others in Washington’s cultural establishment temple three blocks from the White House.

Under the direction of Ms. Holladay, the museum grew to include more than 5,500 works by more than 1,000 artists with an endowment of $ 66 million and a network of support committees in 13 states and 10 countries.

“No player in the art scene has a deeper understanding of power and money and how our system works,” wrote Paul Richard, Washington Post critic, when the museum opened. “Despite her white-gloved friendliness, hardworking Billie Holladay is a warrior and a winner.”

Wilhelmina Cole was born on October 2, 1922 in Elmira, New York State. Her father, Chauncey Cole, was a businessman; Her mother, Claire Elisabeth (Strong) Cole, was a housewife. She was particularly close to her maternal grandmother, who lived across the street and owned a print by French artist Rosa Bonheur.

She moved to Washington shortly after graduating from Elmira College in 1944. She got a job as a social secretary for the Chinese embassy; For a while she worked for Madame Chiang Kai-shek, China’s first lady, who had temporarily moved to the United States to campaign for international support against the Chinese communists.

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Ms. Holladay left the embassy after Wallace Jr. was born and shortly before the fall of the Chinese government. The family moved to the suburbs of McLean, Virginia and later to Georgetown.

She worked for a while in the National Gallery and later joined several museum and non-profit bodies. She and her husband also began collecting art: their first work was a painting they bought for $ 100 at a high school art fair.

On a trip to Europe in the 1970s, the Holladays were impressed by a still life by the Flemish artist Clara Peeters from the 17th century, which they experienced in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. They saw another Peeters in Madrid working at the Museo del Prado. But at home they couldn’t mention her in her many art-historical volumes.

“If Peeters was enough to hang in two of the greatest museums in the world, how was it that we didn’t know them?” Ms. Holladay wrote in her memoir “A Museum of Our Own” (2008).

She and her husband focused on female artists and ended up collecting 500 works by 150 painters and sculptors. But buying the works was one thing; What bothered Ms. Holladay was a general lack of awareness among women artists.

At dinner parties, she asked if anyone could name five female artists since the Renaissance. She would hear the names Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe. Someone could mention Helen Frankenthaler. Nobody ever turned five.

Mrs. Holladay had planned to donate her collection to a museum. But one day at lunchtime, her friend Nancy Hanks, the first woman to run the National Foundation for the Arts, suggested going further. Not everyone had the skills and connections to open their own museum, Ms. Hanks said. But Mrs. Holladay did.

She turned out to be adept – and happy – at fundraising. Her neighbor was a granddaughter of J. Paul Getty; She gave $ 1 million. Ms. Holladay’s first gala in 1983 was directed by philanthropist Rachel Lambert Mellon, known as Bunny, and fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy. While she was working to save money on buying a building, she opened her home and collection to visitors, with her family and friends serving as lecturers.

“She was the master of the possible,” said Winton Holladay, her daughter-in-law, the museum’s vice-chairwoman. “She just had this incredible confidence, and her confidence permeated everyone else.”

For the location of the museum, Ms. Holladay chose the former national headquarters of the Masons, a looming neoclassical building on New York Avenue. The neighborhood was shabby; There was an adult bookstore next door. But she reveled in the irony: a “bastion of a male secret society,” she said of the Freemasons, would now be used to promote women in the arts.

The museum opened on April 7, 1987 in the presence of Barbara Bush, then the second lady. Despite the support of the Washington establishment, the institution was immediately criticized from all sides: feminists claimed that artists were being ghettoized, while conservatives claimed that the museum politicized art.

Mrs. Holladay was unmoved. When raising funds for the museum, she pointed out that only 2 percent of the art purchased by major museums was from women. By the mid-2010s, that number had only improved slightly to 11 percent. And as the museum’s collection expanded, criticism subsided.

“She had the guts of her beliefs and knew what she wanted to do,” said Susan Fisher Sterling, the museum’s longtime director. “She would say to people, ‘You are absolutely right. It would be wonderful if women artists were treated equally. But they are not. ‘”