Barney A. Ebsworth (July 14, 1934 – April 9, 2018)[1] was an American corporate executive and art collector. He was one of the initial investors in the Build-A-Bear Workshop and was a pioneer in the travel industry.[1] Ebsworth died on April 9, 2018.[2]
Ebsworth was a trustee of the St. Louis Art Museum and the Seattle Art Museum, a commissioner of the American Art Museum and Smithsonian Institution and a member of the Trustees Council and Co-Chairman of Collectors Committee of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.[3]
At a Christie's auction in 1997, Ebsworth purchased Wayne Thiebaud's Bakery Counter (1962), one of the artist's largest early still lifes, for $1.7 million; at the time, this was a record for the artist.[4] In 2010, he sold Andy Warhol's Big Campbell's Soup Can With Can Opener (Vegetable), a 1962 painting with a can opener cutting into the signature can, for $23.8 million to raise money to finance a church designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando.[5] He also owned the Edward Hopper painting Chop Suey (1929) and had promised it to the Seattle Art Museum.[6] However, at his death, ownership transferred to his estate. In November 2018, the painting sold for a record $92 million.[7]