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Julie Thoma Wright, 49, Who Helped Create Market for Modern Design, Is Dead

Something of a design object herself, Wright dressed in vintage Chanel or Hermès.

From The New York Times -- Interior Design, 6/19/2007 12:00:00 AM

Julie Thoma Wright, a founder and co-owner of Wright, the Chicago auction house that helped create the market for 20th-century modern design, died on Monday [June 11] in Chicago. She was 49.

The cause was colorectal cancer, her husband, Richard Wright, said.

Ms. Thoma Wright, an interior designer, founded Wright in Chicago in 2000 with Mr. Wright, who was at the time a private dealer in collectible 20th-century postwar design. Ms. Thoma Wright’s vision for promoting the still-nascent field at auction contrasted with and eventually helped transform the traditionally dry approach at the large international houses like Phillips de Pury, Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

“She basically brought the concept of auctions into the 21st century,” James Zemaitis, director of 20th century design at Sotheby’s in New York, said of Ms. Thoma Wright. “From the first, the catalogues looked like fashion or lifestyle magazines.”

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