News reached the Island over the weekend of the death of Olga Hirshhorn, the art collector and well-known Vineyard summer resident who founded the Chicken Alley art show that raised large sums of money for Martha’s Vineyard Community Services through the years.

Mrs. Hirshhorn died at her home in Naples, Fla.; she was 95.

She was the widow of financier, philanthropist and art collector Joseph Hirshhorn, founding donor of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. She fell in love with the Vineyard in 1988 when she rented a cottage off Lambert’s Cove Road for the summer.

“I told the realtor I was working with that I didn’t want to drive down some long, fashionable Island dirt road,” she recalled in a 2006 interview with the Gazette. “I wanted to be in Vineyard Haven within walking distance of the town.”

She eventually would own two homes in Vineyard Haven and become an active member of the summer arts scene. The Chicken Alley art show, now an annual event that raises money for Community Services through the sale of art and other found treasures from the Thrift Shop, was conceived by her, somewhat accidentally. The energetic collector loved to prowl the Thrift Shop — “I always came with a bag of stuff but I always went home with a bag of stuff,” she famously said. One day in 2003 she came home with a $15 seascape she had bought at the shop. She hung the seascape on her mantle and decided to approach the thrift store about holding a spoof art opening on a Sunday afternoon. The show was a huge hit and is now an annual event that helps bolster fundraising for Community Services, the Island’s sole social services umbrella agency.

“It’s a fun thing and the reason I did it was because I wanted people to know what a truly wonderful place this is . . . you can really furnish your home with stuff from this place and we don’t price these to go beyond the pocketbooks of the people of the Island,” she told the Gazette.

Her interests were wide-ranging — she also loved to fish, and was a regular at the Possible Dreams auction, held every summer also as a benefit for Community Services.

In August 2013 she was awarded a Vineyard Medal by the Martha’s Vineyard Museum for her outstanding contributions to the Vineyard.

“It’s hard to imagine the Vineyard arts scene without imagining Olga in middle of it,” Dr. Gerald Yukevich said in introducing her.

A complete obituary appears online on the Gazette website.