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Kimbell, Kay (1886-1964). Kay Kimbell, entrepreneur and
benefactor of the Kimbell Art Museum, was born in Oakwood,
Leon County, on June 15, 1886, the son of Benjamin B. and
Mattie (Jones) Kimbell. He attended the public schools in
Whitewright, Grayson County, but quit school in the eighth grade
to work as an office boy in a grain-milling company there, where
he later founded the Beatrice Milling Company. This firm grew
into Kimbell Milling Company, the pilot organization of diverse
interests that Kimbell later founded or directed.
At the time of his death he was the head of more than seventy
corporations, including flour, feed, and oil mills, grocery chains,
an insurance company, and a wholesale grocery firm. In addition
to pursuing business interests, Kimbell collected art. He
established the Kimbell Art Foundation in Fort Worth in 1935 and
at his death left his fortune to the foundation, with directions to
build a museum of the first class in Fort Worth. The collection of
art that Kimbell and his wife amassed included many fine works
by late Renaissance, French nineteenth-century, and American
nineteenth-century artists, with a special emphasis on eighteenth-
century English painters such as Tomas Gainsborough.
The Kimbell’s home in Fort Worth was often visited by touring
groups before the museum was completed, and a great many of
the works in their collection were continuously on loan to area
colleges and universities, libraries, and churches. Kimbell married
Velma Fuller on December 24, 1910. They had no children.
Kimbell died on April 13, 1964, in Fort Worth & was buried in
Whitewright. Although at a later date his wife had him exhumed
and his body moved to Ft. Worth.