Vilcek Foundation

Marica Vilcek

Vice President and Cofounder, The Vilcek Foundation

Marica Vilcek, an art historian, co-founded The Vilcek Foundation with her husband Jan. She shapes and administers its programs, which honor significant achievements in culture and biomedical research by immigrants to the US. The Foundation's dual mission derives in large part from her interest and professional work in the arts.

Born in Bratislava, Slovakia (then Czechoslovakia), to educator parents, Marica Vilcek grew up in a family that expected high academic achievement, hard work and personal integrity. Her teenage years were spent amid political, social and intellectual upheavals of the communist system. Defying pressures of the political system that favored more practical fields of study, she decided to pursue her interest in the arts and earned advanced degrees in art history at the Comenius University in Bratislava and Charles University in Prague. After graduation she secured one of the few available curatorial positions, in the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava.

In 1964 the Vilceks decided to leave communist Czechoslovakia and seek immigration to the US. They arrived to New York in 1965 with all their possessions packed inside a pair of suitcases.

Within a few months Mrs. Vilcek joined the staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, an institution to which she eventually devoted 32 years. Most of her tenure there was dedicated to collections management. As the Associate Curator in Charge of the Accessions and Catalogue Department, Mrs. Vilcek was responsible for the processing and cataloguing of all new acquisitions; authored the Museum's procedural manuals on accessioning and cataloguing; and advised scores of curators, administrators and students on collections management.

Marica Vilcek has served as an independent consultant to non-profit organizations including the Commission for Art Recovery of the World Jewish Congress, the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, the Foundation for a Civil Society, and the Bard Graduate Center in New York. She has also advised private collectors and corporations, and lectured widely on collections management.

In 2005 Marica Vilcek joined her husband in giving the New York University School of Medicine the largest gift in its history. In recognition of their generosity, the School named several programs, chairs and facilities for the Vilceks. Among these legacies will be The Marica F. Vilcek Research Laboratories in the Department of Otolaryngology. In 2005, the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America recognized Dr. and Mrs. Vilcek as the Humanitarians of the Year.