Josephine B. Crane

American socialite and patron of the arts

Josephine Porter Crane (née Josephine Porter Boardman) (November 14, 1873 – July 8, 1972) was an American socialite and patron of the arts, co founder and original trustee of the Museum of Modern Art and supporter of the Dalton School of New York City.

Born Josephine Porter Boardman, in Cleveland, Ohio, she was from a well to do family. She was a daughter of Florence (née Sheffield) Boardman (1840–1928) and William Jarvis Boardman (1832–1915), a lawyer and political activist. She had five siblings, including Mabel Thorp Boardman, William Henry Boardman, Florence Sheffield Keefe, and Elijah George Boardman. Her family moved from Ohio to Washington, D. C. around 1887, although they maintained connections to Ohio politics including a friendship with the Taft family. In fact, "when they came to Washington shortly before the Taft inauguration, Mr. and Mrs. Taft were house guests of Mr. and Mrs. Boardman."

In 1906, she married the American millionaire Winthrop Murray Crane, who was a widow and twenty years her senior. A former Republican Governor of Massachusetts, at the time of their marriage, Crane had been a U. S. Senator since October 1904 and continued to serve until March 1913. From his first marriage to Mary Benner, he had one son, Winthrop Murray Crane Jr. (1881–1968). Together, they were the parents of three children:
Louise Crane (1911–1997), a poet, publisher, and philanthropist; her partner was Victoria Kent, the Spanish lawyer and republican politician. Crane hosted a weekly literary salon at her apartment at 820 Fifth Avenue, New York City (an 18 room apartment on the fourth floor of the 12 story limestone clad luxury coop built in 1916 and designed in the neo Italian Renaissance palazzo style by Starrett & van Vleck) and at the family home on Penzance Point, Woods Hole, Massachusetts where guests included Marianne Moore and William Somerset Maugham. Her husband died in Dalton, Massachusetts on October 2, 1920 at sixty seven years old. A widow for more than fifty years, she died of pneumonia on July 8, 1972, aged 98, at Falmouth Hospital in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Crane, Boardman Josephine. A Middle West Child New York: Spiral Press (1971)