Tina with the editorial and vice presidents of El Mundo, WKAQ radio, and Telemundo in San Juan.
This spring and throughout the auction year, Phillips will offer A Life in Color: Property from the Estate of Tina Hills across a series of sales in New York. Hills, an influential figure in Miami and beyond, helped shape the city’s cultural landscape through decades of civic engagement and philanthropy. That legacy continues today and holds a special place in the city's future, as Suzanne Delehanty, Founding Director of the Miami Art Museum, now the Perez Art Museum, eloquently captures.
Thirty-one years ago, I moved to Miami to head up the fledgling Center for the Fine Arts (CFA). To my good fortune, Tina Hills was a member of the CFA's board. For more than a decade, I had the privilege of working with Tina and other community members in transforming the CFA into the flagship art museum for the greater Miami community. Many thought this aspiration was an impossible dream. But Tina believed in dreams.
An incomparable civic leader and philanthropist, Tina showed up year after year. She joyfully joined students, artists, and other citizens in attending countless community town halls and city and county commission meetings to champion the vision of a museum for all in Miami. Few could resist Tina's radiant smile, melodious voice, sparkling brown eyes, and keen intelligence. She simply brought out the best in everyone.
Tina and Lee Hills with a friend.
In 1996, CFA set out to become a collecting institution and was renamed the Miami Art Museum (MAM). Creating the foundation for the museum's collection was my charge. I immediately asked Tina and Lee for one painting from their nationally admired collection. I will never forget Tina's response: “But, darling, you need more than one. What about our Helen Frankenthaler as well.” The Hills set a high bar — for quality, for generosity, for what it meant to believe in a museum’s future.
Tina & Lee Hills with Helen Frankenthaler's Blue Jump, 1966. Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Later, when MAM needed to mount a campaign to secure a waterfront site from the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County bond funding for a new museum building, Tina and Lee were among the first patrons to contribute to the MAM Leadership Fund. Once again, the Hills’ commitment was a magnet for other patrons to join in realizing the dream.
Now, thirty years later, the Miami Art Museum — known today as the Pérez Art Museum Miami — is housed in an award-winning building designed by Herzog & de Meuron on one of the most beautiful waterfront sites in the Western Hemisphere, welcoming hundreds of thousands of residents and visitors of all ages and speaking many languages each year.
The museum sits just blocks away from the Tina Hills Pavilion and the Lee and Tina Hills Playground. Tina’s name graces those spaces, but her incandescent spirit lives in the museum — a dream she helped will into being with her generosity, joy, and love of art.
Suzanne Delehanty
Founding Director, Miami Art Museum
4 March 2026
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