Frances Elliot Storey, 81, artist

A public memorial service will be held Monday, Dec. 8, for Frances Elliot Storey, 81, an artist and supporter of the arts in Philadelphia, who died Sunday, Oct. 5, of cancer at her Spring Garden home.

The service is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Burial was private.

Born in Boston in 1933, Mrs. Storey grew up in Needham and Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass. She attended Foxcroft School, then Radcliffe College, and graduated in 1956 with a degree in fine arts. She worked for Coward-McCann Publishing in New York City, and in 1958, she married Bayard T. Storey. The two moved to Whitemarsh, where she began her involvement with the arts in the city.

Starting in 1958, Mrs. Storey studied with the abstract painter Warren Rohrer at the Philadelphia Museum of Art School. Later, she studied at Tyler School of Art in Elkins Park, the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, N.Y., and Haystack Mountain School in Deer Isle, Maine.

Mrs. Storey pursued photography, lithography, painting, and drawing. Her work appeared at shows in the Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia and Gallery 20 in Newark, Del., and on placards hung in SEPTA buses and subways in the early 1980s.

In 1967, Mrs. Storey helped Anne d'Harnoncourt, then a curator's assistant, organize the "Friends Collect" exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the 1969 "Pure and Clear: American Innovations" exhibit. The two became friendly. D'Harnoncourt became the museum's director and died in 2008.

Mrs. Storey continued to be active in the service and support of museum programs as a member of the European painting and sculpture advisory committee, and the modern and contemporary art committee.

In 1987, the Storeys moved from Whitemarsh to Spring Garden, where they remained.

In addition to her husband of 56 years, she is survived by sons Bayard Jr. and John M.E.; daughters Gwen Feher and Frances R.; seven grandchildren; and a sister.

Donations may be made to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Box 7646, Philadelphia 19101, or via www.philamuseum.org.