ARG Staff

Kitty Carlisle Hart succeeded her friend, Trustee Marietta Tree, as chair of the Friends of the Arthur Ross Gallery from 1991 until she stepped down last fall. Kitty served the University well as member, later ex officio member, of the Arthur Ross Gallery Advisory Committee and as advisor to the director. She championed arts institutions of all sizes as long-time Vice-Chair and Chair of the New York State Council on the Arts following a career on stage and screen and as an early star of television. Kitty starred in the Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera in 1935 and sang Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus at the Met. In the movie version of Six Degrees of Separation, she played herself—an icon of the arts in New York society. After retiring from the government agency she had served under three governors she returned to singing, playing to select audiences in one-woman shows that again took her across the country. On November 21, 2004, she sang the final word— and brought the house down at a packed Avery Fisher Hal— in Hart to Hart, a celebration of Kitty and her husband, Moss Hart. She passed away at her home in New York City on April 17, 2007, at the age of 96.