Audrey Skirball-Kenis, founding trustee of the Skirball Cultural Center, died June 19, at the age of 87.
The board of trustees, staff, docents and volunteers of the Skirball Cultural Center express our deepest sorrow upon the death of our beloved friend and founding trustee.
With astounding verve and imagination, she made a difference in life wherever she ventured — not the least in her passionate pioneering and nourishing of the Skirball Cultural Center.
In 1981, Audrey, with her beloved husband, Jack Skirball (1896-1985), provided the initial funding for the development of the new Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, which opened to the public in 1996 and has since served nearly 3 million visitors.
In all her philanthropic endeavors through the Skirball Foundation, she and her husband, Charles Kenis, whom she married in 1987, continued and built upon a lifelong service to education and culture.
She helped the Skirball Cultural Center shape itself as a Jewish institution in an American context. She lived the Skirball’s mission, which is dedicated to reaching out to people of every ethnic and religious identity around the globe through its cultural programs, museum exhibitions and communal initiatives.
We will miss her and never see her like again.
She is survived by her husband, Charles; daughters, Sally and Agie; stepdaughter, Andrea Shapiro Sheldon; stepson, Stephen; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Donations in memory of Audrey-Skirball Kenis may be made to the Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90049.
— Howard I. Friedman, chairman, Skirball Cultural Center board of trustees; and Uri D. Herscher, founding president and CEO Skirball Cultural Center
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