Florence Meyer Blumenthal

Florence Meyer Blumenthal (1875–1930) was an American philanthropist who founded the Fondation franco-américaine Florence Blumenthal (Franco-American Florence Blumenthal Foundation), which awarded the Prix Blumenthal from 1919-1954 to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians — to promote Franco- American relations. For their altruism, Florence Blumenthal and her husband George Blumenthal received the French Legion of Honor in 1929. Both a street as well as a public square in Paris are named in her honor. Biography Florence Meyer was born in Los Angeles in 1875, the third of eight children of Marc Eugene Meyer, dry goods merchant from Strasbourg, France, and Harriet Newmark Meyer, daughter of Joseph Newmark, who founded New York's Elm Street Synagogue. Florence's younger brother Eugene Meyer Jr. was president and publisher of The Washington Post. In 1898, Florence married international financier George Blumenthal. In 1919, she organized the La Fondation américaine Blumenthal pour la pensée et l’art français (American Foundation for French Art and Thought) in Paris to discover young French artists, aid them financially, and in the process draw the United States and France closer together through art, thought, and literature. In 1925, Blumenthal moved to Paris with her husband, later donating to the Children’s Hospital in Paris the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Sorbonne in Paris. She and her husband received the French Legion of Honor in 1929, and Blumenthal died of bronchial pneumonia at her home in Paris on September 21, 1930, at age fifty-five.