Mother Dedicates, Donates Art Collection in Honor of Late Son
By: Christina Pugliese | May 23, 2025
Joan Davidow is a longtime supporter of the arts and friend of The University of Texas at Dallas. Her son, Seth, was an art collector until his death in 2023 from ALS. To honor her son’s legacy, Joan has donated the Joan Davidow Art Collection in memory of Seth Carlin Davidow to the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of the Arts, Humanities, and Technology.
The collection is comprised of over 40 pieces of fine art and can be found on display in the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building. Davidow wanted to make the collection interactive by asking a unique thought-provoking question on the placard of each piece. For example, someone passing by the piece Green Eye, may stop to ponder the prompt, “How do you personally describe the nature of the painting?” Other prompts ask the audience to consider the physical attributes of the art.
“Art is my whole life,” Davidow said. “It is very important to me. I don’t think anyone can have a creative, fulfilling life without art. So, I wanted to put art in the handsome building in which the Bass School is based in, because art schools should have art on the walls. These students should see art on the way to their classes. I also wanted to ask one engaging question for each piece to get people to connect with the pieces they were seeing.”
This in-kind gift is not Davidow’s first to UT Dallas.
In 2024, she had the opportunity to meet Dr. Ted Price BS’97, Ashbel Smith Professor of neuroscience and founding director of the Center for Advanced Pain Studies. Davidow was inspired by the work his team was doing and wanted to help them by giving them a proper space in which to work.
“About a year ago, I went to visit the center during a tour with Dr. Price,” she said. “We saw the lab and all the testing they were doing. Around the same time, I was looking at selling Seth’s collection of modernist furniture through my auctioneer friend. But then I thought someone should make good use of this furniture, and an idea came to light. I thought of Dr. Price and his students sitting around the table trying to figure out what to do with their experiments, so I gave the furniture to them.”
The Davidows had been involved in the Dallas art world for over 30 years. Joan Davidow is an American contemporary art expert who built a career as a curator at different art museums across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. As a result, a lot of Davidow family weekends were spent at art museums, galleries and shows. However, it took some more time for Seth Davidow to fully immerse himself in the world of art.
“As a teenager in high school, Seth decided to drop out of the family visits to museums and galleries, a decision we honored,” Davidow said. “His attitude around art changed as an adult when he was on business in Miami. He saw a Florida commercial bank was disposing of its collection. I remember he called me from Florida, ‘Hey mom! Please help me bid on some of this bank’s collection.’ It ignited his position as a contemporary art collector, which then lasted a lifetime.”
Together, the two opened a nonprofit in Dallas called SITE131 showcasing quarterly, rotating exhibitions surrounding the theme “here, there and beyond.”
“The ‘here,’ was the local area, or Texas, ‘there’ was represented by artists from other states, and ‘beyond’ was international,” Davidow said. “The idea was to show fresh, new pieces that other people had not yet displayed, and artists who had never been featured.”
Although it was a non-collecting space, at times, Seth Davidow would sometimes purchase art from the artists showcased in the exhibitions. A collector at heart, he was always dedicated to finding new art for public display and for his own personal collection.
“After his passing, I went through all these boxes in his attic and realized he saved almost everything,” Davidow said. “He was a contemporary collector that loved abstraction, mostly colorful, non-figurative pieces that ‘winked’ at him.”
Because of their mutual connections and passion for art in DFW, the Davidows became acquainted with the late Dr. Richard Brettell, the former Margaret M. McDermott Distinguished Chair of Art and Aesthetic Studies and the Edith O’Donnell Distinguished Chair. Their relationship inspired Joan to donate her first art collection to the University in 2014.
Dr. Nils Roemer, dean of the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology shares Joan Davidow’s passion for the arts and appreciates her longstanding commitment to bringing the art world to the UT Dallas community.
“The arts at UTD are continuously growing thanks to the support of our donors,” Roemer said. “Luckily for us, Joan Davidow has been a part of our campus for more than 10 years. It is an honor to house this collection on campus in memory of her son, Seth. We are excited to display her and Seth’s art for our students, faculty and staff to appreciate and enjoy.”