Melissa Wickser Banta, beloved wife of Charles Urban Banta and one of Buffalo’s most accomplished female intellectuals of her day, died at the Buffalo Hospice in Cheektowaga, N.Y., on August 18. It was her 86th birthday.
In the mid-1950s, at a time when a married woman with children traditionally stayed at home, Melissa returned to college, received her BA, MA, and PhD, and went on to make extraordinary contributions in the fields of literature and art — all while successfully raising a family.
Dr. Banta’s intellectual aspirations and love of art came naturally. She was a descendant of Robert Livingston, one of the drafters on the Constitution, and her great-grandfather, Pascal Pratt (a founder of the M& T Bank in 1857) was one of the incorporators of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy (aka Albright-Knox Art Gallery) in 1862. Her father, Philip J. Wickser, president-elect of the American Bar Association at the time of his death in 1949, was instrumental in founding the Room for Contemporary Art fund, which made possible the acquisition of 276 key works of modern art to the Albright-Knox’s permanent collection.
Melissa, who was born in 1925, shared her father’s love of music, literature and modern art and often accompanied him on trips throughout the U.S. and abroad. On one cross-Atlantic trip aboard the Queen Elizabeth in 1937, Mr. Wickser made the acquaintance of the noted French Fauvist artist, Raoul Dufy and asked if he would paint his 12-year-old daughter. Dufy’s impressionistic portrait brilliantly captured Melissa’s youthful intellectual curiosity.
Melissa attended the Buffalo Seminary, graduated from the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., in 1944 and attended Smith College for two years before marrying Charles Urban Banta, who was then a management consultant in Boston and later became an investment banker in Buffalo.
In the mid-1950s while raising a family, Melissa returned to the classroom and the academic world. She received her bachelor’s degree in art history at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB) in 1958, her masters in English in 1963, and her PhD in English in 1966.
She then pursued a tremendously rich and varied career. She held teaching positions at the Calasanctius School for academically gifted children and in the English department at UB. At the university she served as special assistant to President Martin Meyerson from 1969 to 1970 on a foundation-supported national effort to aid and improve higher education. Dr. Banta worked with the President in preparing a prospectus designed to elicit proposals and suggestions from education administrators, professors, students, and legislators. In 1971 Dr. Banta was a recipient of the Town and Gown Award, presented by the Women’s Committee of the Buffalo Museum of Science. Acknowledged in particular for her work as a special assistant to Meyerson, it was noted that “in the community where she is loved and respected, she has interpreted the university with insight and candor, for all who cared to listen.”
Dr. Banta also served as a trustee on the university foundation from 1971 to 1987, and she remained a trustee emerita from 1988 forward. She was the first female board member of Creative Associates from 1977 to 1981 in the Faculty of Arts and Letters. Dr. Banta received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the university in 1990.
Dr. Banta’s longstanding contributions to the university included 25 years of service (1968-1993) to the University Libraries. She was assistant curator of the poetry collection from 1968 to 1971 and assistant to the director of University Libraries from 1971 to 1973. She also volunteered her time to the office of the director of University Libraries, with responsibility for reviving and coordinating the activities of the Friends of the Lockwood Memorial Library, planning for the Friends Room in the new Lockwood Library on the north campus and selecting books for the Friends Collection housed in the Friends Room.
With Dr. Oscar A. Silverman, a noted English professor, authority on modern literature, and director of the University at Buffalo Libraries, Dr. Banta researched the James Joyce materials held in the university library’s poetry collection. The collection had come to the university in part from a generous gift made in 1950 by Dr. Banta’s mother, Margaretta Wickser, who donated it as a memorial to her husband, Philip J. Wickser. The gift consisted of the Librairie La Hune’s (Paris) Joyce exposition, which featured a substantial body of his manuscripts, the family portraits of Joyce’s great-grandparents and grandparents, Patrick Tuohy’s portraits of Joyce and his father, and other items of memorabilia. Another part of this gift was Joyce’s private library, received in the same condition as it was when packed for storage after Joyce left Paris to flee the Nazi occupation.
Together Banta and Silverman edited James Joyce’s Letters to Sylvia Beach, 1921-1940, published in 1987 by the University of Indiana Press. The volume was printed in several languages and received an Outstanding Academic Books award in 1988.
Dr. Banta had an equally fascinating career in art. With James Dyett she was cofounder of Les Copains Gallery, which specialized in Japanese wood-block prints and Indian Miniature paintings. She assisted Albright-Knox curator Cherly Brutvan in the preparation of the exhibition catalog, Masterworks on Paper from the Albright-Knox Gallery published in 1987. That same year she cocurated the exhibition, Essence and Persuasion: The Power of Black and White, which opened at the David Anderson Gallery.
Dr. Banta also served on the boards of the Burchfield Penney Art Center and the International Institute of Buffalo.
In adition to her husband, she is survived by her children, Charles Wickser Banta (married to Penny Schoellkopf Banta), Philip Livingston Banta (married to Susan Johnson Banta), and Melissa Winspear Banta; and eight grandchildren: Charles Livingston Banta, Christopher Andrew LeGare, Olivia Banta Tyson, Nicholas Philip Tyson, Adriana Gerd Banta, Gabrielle Livingston Banta, Maximilian Alexander Banta, and Sophia Khars Banta.
A funeral service was be held at Trinity Episcopal in Buffalo.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 285 Elmwood avenue Buffalo, NY 14222.
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