Best Products co-founder Frances Lewis dies at 103

Frances Aaronson Lewis, who co-founded Henrico County-based national retail chain Best Products and was a major figure among contemporary U.S. art collectors and patrons, died Jan. 10 at the age of 103, her family announced Tuesday.

Lewis and her late husband, Sydney Lewis, started Best Products in 1957, sending out catalogs that specialized in electronics and home goods, and opened its first showroom near the Willow Lawn Shopping Center in Richmond. In 1981, the company opened its headquarters in Henrico’s West End, a building that won an American Institute of Architects award and included two imposing Art Deco eagles outside the building, a signal of the couple’s artistic flair. By 1982, Best Product’s sales reached more than $1 billion, a figure that would climb to $2 billion.

However, in 1997, following two bankruptcy filings, Best Products closed its 180 stores in 23 states. Analysts at the time viewed the store as unable to compete against Walmart and Kmart as discount competitors.

The Lewis name remains well known to Richmonders and visitors to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the state institution to which the Lewises donated more than 1,500 pieces, some of which are in a gallery named for the couple, and where the Best Café welcomes visitors seeking a place to sit and eat. Prominent patrons and collectors of contemporary 20th century American art, the Lewises received the National Medal of Arts in 1987.

Frances Lewis often brought avant-garde artists to Richmond in the 1970s and 1980s, many of whom she and Sydney Lewis had met through their friendship with Andy Warhol, noted Bob Mooney, a longtime friend of the Lewises and co-founder and managing director of Richmond-based growth fund NRV.

She also was instrumental in supporting Virginia Commonwealth University’s arts program and the university’s former Anderson Gallery.

The couple hosted many trips to New York and other places, facilitated by the VMFA, “but it was really Sydney and Frances who did that, and we were able to go visit different cities, meet artists, experience modern art and take us not just to the studios but to have us spend time with the artists themselves, whose works are often seen on the walls of the VMFA,” Mooney recalled.

For Frances Lewis’s 60th birthday, “she flew several modern artists, composers and writers to their home for the birthday party, and it was just amazing,” Mooney said. Although the Lewises collected contemporary furniture pieces and personalized art by Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as paintings by late 20th century artists Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Susan Rothenberg, “the Lewises never talked about their collections. They just talked about the friendships which brought about their incredible collection.”

The couple, along with fellow art collectors Paul and Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, were pillars of the VMFA and established significant portions of the museum’s permanent collection in the 1980s.

The late Upperville businessman Paul Mellon, Mooney noted, specialized in collecting European Impressionists and British sporting art featuring horses and dogs — a far cry from Warhol’s “Triple Elvis” canvas in the Lewis gallery. Still, Mooney said, Mellon and Frances Lewis forged a friendship that helped Richmond establish its reputation for art.

“It’s almost impossible to imagine the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts without Frances Lewis’s vision, generosity and friendship,” VMFA CEO Alex Nyerges, director of the state art museum in Richmond, said Tuesday in a statement. “She and her late husband, Sydney, were instrumental in transforming the institution into the global destination for modern and contemporary art and decorative arts that it is today.

“A passion for growth, and a fundamental belief that great art is to be shared with everyone, is something Frances believed in. This museum has been shaped by her and her late husband’s example for many decades and will continue to be. With the passing of Frances Lewis, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has lost a dear friend. She will be forever remembered here,” Nyerges added.

Frances Lewis’ influence extended beyond the art world and Best Products; Washington and Lee University’s Frances Lewis Law Center also bears her name. Brandon Hasbrouck, director of the center, said that she and her husband, a W&L Law School alumnus, “challenged the leaders of the institution to think bigger, [asking], what do you need?”

The law center, Hasbrouck noted, promotes scholarship among W&L law faculty, thanks to a 1978 gift by the couple. “She’s legendary,” he added Tuesday. “What a life lived.”

In a 2022 interview, Frances Gibson McGlothlin, who became a significant supporter of the VMFA with her late husband, Jim McGlothlin, spoke about meeting Frances Lewis by chance at VCU Health while both of their husbands were in the hospital.

“I was kind of walking up and down the hall,” Fran McGlothlin recalled, “and I ran into this woman who introduced herself as Frances Lewis. I didn’t know who that was, and her husband was there. And she said, ‘What are you doing?’ because I had this catalog in front of me, and I told her I was trying to pick out a frame for this particular picture. And so then she invited me down to their [hospital] suite, which was at the end of the hall, for martinis.”

Later, McGlothlin said, “she took me over to the museum. She pointed out … they needed to have more American art.”

Ultimately, the McGlothlins donated more than $250 million worth of American artworks from the 19th and early 20th centuries to the VMFA, in addition to major financial gifts contributing to two expansions of the museum this century.

Frances Lewis was born in New York and was raised in Washington, D.C., and earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan. She married Sydney Lewis in 1942, and they had three children, Sydney Lewis Jr., Andrew Marc Lewis and Susan Lewis Butler. Marc Lewis was president and chief operating officer of Best Products. Sydney Lewis died in 1999.

Mooney, who says that Lewis’s friendship changed his life and sparked his interest in contemporary art, called her a “catalyst” for many people she came into contact with. “She helped people see things and think about things from a different perspective.”