Mr. Blinken’s career began in 1966 when he co-founded the investment group EM Warburg, Pincus & Company. He remained involved with the company until he was appointed ambassador in 1994. That year, The Times described Pincus’ Warburg as “the nation’s largest venture his capital firm,” reported that he managed $4 billion from “blue chip, state pension funds, and colleges.” Donation.
Mr. Blinken was even more influential as a connoisseur with an interest in art.
It began with a dispute over the preservation of hundreds of paintings after Mark Rothko’s suicide in 1970. inspired The movie “Regal Eagles” starring Robert Redford was released in the same year.
In the mid-1970s, the executors of Rothko’s estate were dismissed and Mr. Blinken, who began collecting Rothko’s paintings in the 1950s, became chairman of the Mark Rothko Foundation. He oversaw the donation of about 1,000 Rothko works to museums, dissolved the foundation he ran, sacrificed potential sources of personal power, and avoided an atmosphere of scandal. sometimes surround A foundation that manages the works of standard contemporary artists.
The artist’s daughter, Kate Rothko, declared the donation a “very happy ending”.
Donald Mayer Blinken was born on November 11, 1925 in Yonkers, New York. His father, Maurice, was a lawyer and is credited with persuading the U.S. government to support the establishment of an Israeli state. His mother, Ethel (Horowitz) Brinken, was a homemaker.
Mr. Blinken graduated from Harvard University in 1944 and joined the Army Air Corps, but the war ended before he could see combat. He graduated from Harvard University in 1948 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. He then worked in retail, including the British firm Marks & Spencer, where his father represented as a lawyer.
He married Judith Frame, also from Yonkers, in 1958. Anthony He was born in 1962. In 1971 Donald and his wife divorced and Anthony and his mother moved to Paris. Mr. Blinken met Vera Elmer on a blind date and married in 1975.