Nina Spalding Stevens

Nina Spalding Stevens (January 29, 1876 – March 11, 1959) was an American writer and museum director.

Early life

Nina de Garmo Spalding was born in

Nina de Garmo Spalding wrote a children's book, The Story of Jason (1900),[10] and an article about traveling in Holland for a Catholic periodical.^[11]

Nina Spalding Stevens's short stories and articles were published in various publications.^[12] She wrote about traveling to the Grand Canyon in a party with East Coast artists, including Thomas Moran, Elliott Daingerfield, Frederick Ballard Williams, and Edward Henry Potthast.^[13] She wrote a posthumous biography of George W. Stevens, recounting much of their work together in the museum's early years.^[14][15] She was a founder of the Toledo Girl Scout Council, chartered in 1917.^[16]

Personal life

Nina Spalding married twice. Her first husband was George W. Stevens; they married in 1902, and she was widowed when he died in 1926. She was briefly married a second time, in 1929, to a young French museologist Georges Henri Rivière; he was gay, and theirs was a marriage of convenience (a mariage blanc in French). They socialized as a couple when she was in Paris, and worked together on museum projects, until they formally divorced in 1934.^[7][17][18] She lived in France in her later life, and died in 1959, aged 83 years, in Monte Carlo.^[19][20]

References