Myrna Palley, who turned a love of glass art into a multimillion gift to Miami, dies at 85
“The good thing about glass,” Myrna Palley once said, “is that when you move it, light plays such a role. It comes to life. It’s different from any other medium.”
For decades, Myrna Barbara Palley, alongside her husband Sheldon, was a light, too, illuminating the South Florida art community with not only her collection to the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum, but her philanthropic support of many cultural institutions, from the New World School of the Arts to the Miami Film Festival.
Palley, for whom the 3,500-square-foot Myrna and Sheldon Palley Pavilion for Contemporary Glass and Studio Arts at the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum is named, died suddenly Saturday morning of cardiac arrest at 85, according to her husband, Sheldon, and her daughter, Lisa Palley.
A 63-year marriage
She died in the same Kendall home she shared with her husband since moving to the once rural area not far from Dadeland Mall in 1962. The couple were wed for 63 years, since Christmas Day in 1956, after they graduated from the University of Miami — she with a bachelor’s in education and he with a law degree. Palley’s best friend was dating Sheldon’s roommate and introduced her to Sheldon, their daughter Lisa said.
Sheldon was then a businessman and lawyer. Myrna, who was born in Jersey City on July 15, 1934, was teaching art at Horace Mann Junior High in the El Portal neighborhood of Miami. She had moved to South Florida when she was a high school sophomore and graduated from Miami High.
Sheldon Palley said his wife championed the arts throughout her life. She served on the boards of the New World School of the Arts, the National Association for the Advancement of the Arts (now the National YoungArts Foundation), the Palley Pavilion at the Lowe and often had her checkbook open to help students who would go on to college.
But Sheldon Palley, 87, also cherishes the woman who shared his life and with whom he raised three children. The woman who, during the current COVID-19 pandemic, still puttered about her yard, kept up with the family, even applied her artistic talents (yes, she once studied glass blowing) to attend to her husband’s growing hair.
“She cut my hair because we can’t go to the barbershop. She cut my eyebrows,” Palley said, speaking most often in the present tense as the loss is so new, so unexpected. He says he still imagines that Myrna is in the garden or cooking in the kitchen or talking to someone about work or with the grandchildren.
“She was always upbeat, always moving forward, always involved with the children,” he said, lapsing into the present tense only to add, “We had such a wonderful, wonderful life. She was a fantastic wife, a fantastic mother and proud of them ... and our grandchildren. Such a delight.”
Not shy
Myrna Palley’s husband also has to smile when he reflects on how they functioned as a team — in both business and in personal life.
“She was very fortunate to be a part of their lives,” he says of their children and grandchildren, “but she wasn’t shy about telling them about what they should do. She never shirked from telling people how she felt. She sat on a number of boards and after she would speak the chair would say, ‘Myrna, don’t hold back. Tell us how you feel’ and would laugh. She was one of those people who really said what she felt. A lot of times I was reticent to be confrontational but that never bothered her.”
Nat Chediak, the founder of the Miami Film Festival and its director for 18 years from 1984 to 2001, remembers those early days working alongside Myrna and how that grew into a lifelong friendship.
“Myrna and I used to spar at board meetings over ticket prices. It was great fun,” Chediak said. “We were family and I will miss the Palleys’ end-of-the-year parties — with a magician doing card tricks — as long as I live. Myrna and Sheldon were two reasons why the Miami Film Festival was a success from day one.”
Collecting glass art
For more than 40 years the couple collected glass art, a passion that sprung from the couple buying their first piece of glass artwork while browsing the booths of the Winter Park Art Show near Orlando in 1975.
Their home became a showcase for their growing collection yet it was meant to be a home first, not a museum.
“It was just a home with a lot of art in it,” daughter Lisa Palley, a longtime South Florida publicist, recalls. A home with a lot of love. That, too, was by design.
Her mother, Lisa said at the service Monday at Mount Nebo in Kendall, “lived, loved with a passion. For books, for animals, for her garden, for orchids, her fish, for her home, for us. She built a home — and it was her heart. There was room for all of us, at all times.
“We knew she was there for us with a piece of advice, with something to eat, a story, anything that would make us feel better. I couldn’t, and never did, leave the house without a word of advice, a funny story, or a roll of Ritz crackers, a package of graham crackers, a can of tuna for Carmella, or with a treasured shirt revived because she made it all better.”
When the kids and later the grandchildren were little, none of the fragile art was locked away behind cases.
“They’ve each spent a lot of time here since they were 6 weeks old,” Myrna told the Miami Herald in 2000. “I would never even think about saying, ‘Don’t touch.’”
Much of this collection went public thanks to the family’s donation. The $2.6-million Myrna and Sheldon Palley Pavilion for Contemporary Glass and Studio Arts pavilion opened at the Lowe in 2008, designed by Coral Gables architect Ronald Mateu. The venue was funded in part by the couple’s $1.7 million gift.
The Palleys’ glass collection — more than 100 pieces once valued by Sheldon at between $3.5 million and $4 million, according to a Herald story — fills the pavilion, alongside works by Dale Chihuly, Richard Jolley, Howard Ben Tré, José Chardiet and other international artists.
The Palleys’ philanthropy
The Palleys also funded a $1 million endowment for a hot-glass program at UM’s Department of Art and Art History.
“We might have collected the glass, but the collection belongs to the community where we have lived for the past 70 years—attending UM, working and raising our family,” Myrna Palley told the Herald in 2018 for the collection’s 10th anniversary exhibit.
“Miami and the University of Miami mean so much to Sheldon and me that giving the collection to the Lowe, and making it available for everyone to see and enjoy, was our way of saying thank you. The community has done so much for us,” she had said.
For the 10th anniversary celebration two years ago, the couple strolled through the museum with Herald columnist Fabiola Santiago and shared stories of their finds.
“He drank a little too much,” Myrna quipped about the artist of one particularly clever piece distinguished by its intriguing architectural details, Santiago wrote.
“Mom, don’t say those things!” daughter Lisa, a mindful Miami publicist, chided in good nature.
That gift “helped the Lowe to emerge as a leading center for contemporary glass,” said Jill Deupi, Beaux Arts’ director and the Lowe’s chief curator.
“Mrs. Palley was a champion of studio glass. She was also an ardent supporter of the artists who created this movement and deeply involved with the close-knit community of glass collectors, many of whom were her close personal friends,” Deupi said.
“Myrna Palley will forever be remembered for her commitment to community, education, youth, glass, the University of Miami and the Lowe,” Deupi said.
In 2012, Palley told the Herald her support had been motivated by the desire to see the museum grow in stature and to provide more educational opportunities.
That dedication, and her contributions to the New World School of the Arts in Miami to help students, continued for the rest of her life.
Former founding New World School dance dean Daniel Lewis, now on the advisory board of Dance Now Miami, told the Herald in 2000 how Palley would mark the memo line on her checks that he could spend the money however he pleased, “so long as it was for the students.”
Deupi at UM also notes that the Palleys created the Myrna and Sheldon Palley Lecture Series, a biannual event to bring leading glass artists to the Lowe and UM campus.
“The Palleys have also gifted or promised the majority of their world-class collection to the Lowe, guaranteeing that people from all walks of life will continue to be inspired by and learn from that most magical of materials that enhanced Mrs. Palley for so many years: glass,” Deupi said.
“The best people I’ve ever known give to others so much of themselves and what is special in their own lives. Myrna and Sheldon are wonderful examples of just that. They and their gifts have enriched our whole community,” said David Lawrence Jr., chair of the Children’s Movement of Florida and a retired Miami Herald publisher.
A daughter’s reflection on Mom
At Myrna Palley’s service, daughter Lisa Palley said: ”In reality, we only had Mom for just a blink of an eye. But in that blink she — Myrna, Myrn, Mom, MiMa — made things happen, bringing beauty into the world. The changes she left behind, the things she did, the words she said, the passion, the joie de vivre she had for life. And for each of us.
”She understood our individuality, our uniqueness and reveled in it,” she continued. “She never thought a new idea was a bad one. For me, for others, she was all about making a change. She was not a wrinkle in time, but a force of nature. I don’t think she thought about setting an example of how to live: It was the way she was. She lived.”
In addition to her husband, Sheldon, and daughter Lisa, Palley’s survivors include her children Donna Kass, Kevin Palley and grandchildren Jordan, Alyssa, Brenna, Nathan and Amanda.
Donations in Palley’s memory can be made to the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami, New World School of the Arts or The Education Fund for Miami-Dade Public Schools or Temple Judea in Coral Gables. The family plans to host a community celebration of life sometime in the summer of 2021.
This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 6:50 PM.
