The Bronx Museum 2025 Gala Honoree:

Abbott Stillman spent his earliest years at 711 Walton Avenue in The Bronx in a building his grandfather, an immigrant from the Pale of Settlement who arrived in the United States in 1905, developed while leaning on his skills as a carpenter who had apprenticed as a very young man as a boat builder on the Volga River. He went on to build four buildings in The Bronx and deepen the family’s roots in that borough. 

Abbott started painting in the 1980s, self-taught and never intending to show his work beyond family and friends. After studying architecture and design at MIT he had a very successful career in real estate that included the development and construction of Three Lincoln Center a roughly 1,000,000 square foot, 60-story, mixed-use project that constitutes the northwest corner of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and 1110 Vermont Avenue, a 400,000 square foot office/retail project three blocks from The White House that allowed for a crossover into the art world with LowRez/HiFi, a large public art installation at that building conceived by Stillman and fabricated in collaboration with architects, sound designers and both LED- and structural engineers, that was included in the Cooper Hewitt Triennial and subsequently exhibited at the ICA, Boston and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Houston. Stillman also has been involved for decades in the world of venture investing and became the Executive Chairman and C.E.O. of a Silicon Valley tech company at the request of its board. While engaged in this varied set of experiences Stillman maintained a studio practice that has resulted in a remarkable depth and breadth of work. 

His paintings are compositions of rich color, often in abstracted grounds and spaces that evoke deep emotional responses. He offers harmony and joy, a celebration of the human experience, and what looks to be an effort to use art as a means to repair a fractured world. Clearly, like Matisse, he insists on the “decoratif”, that what he produces should first be beautiful above all else.

Stillman had a 2023 solo exhibition at Wolf House and in 2024 was included in group exhibitions with Brigitte Mulholland in both Paris and New York. He has paintings that have been included in the permanent collections of The Bronx Museum and the ICA, Miami as well as numerous private collections. His dedication to the art community includes the newly endowed Stillman Prize, juried by the NYC Culture Club, and providing the funds to purchase work from an emerging artist each year to be exhibited at the Club’s space in the World Trade Center.  

Abbott has served on a wide variety of boards, including those of Ensemble Studio Theater, The New Group, Union College, Community Access (NYC), and Foster Pride (NYC and LA), and has served on the Visiting Committee of MIT and the Parents Advisory Board (Stanford).