Honoring a Life in Art
Donor makes legacy gift to support emerging artists
When renowned artist Patricia Forsberg passed away in 2024, Stephen Speckart — her husband of nearly 60 years — began to contemplate a meaningful way to honor her legacy and celebrate their shared passion for the arts.
The couple’s adventures together began in the mid-1960s, when the two college students met while working near the north rim of the Grand Canyon in Utah, Speckart as a busboy, Forsberg as a waitress.
Their journey first took them from Utah to Louisiana to Washington, D.C., but when they arrived in Missoula in 1975, they knew they had found their home.
In a house just blocks from the University of Montana, they built lives steeped in art, music and medicine. Speckart became one of Missoula’s first oncologists. Forsberg, who began her career as a nurse, earned a master's degree from the College of the Arts and Media and went on to become a celebrated painter. Several of her pieces are part of the permanent collection at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture.
She also played violin with the Missoula Symphony Orchestra for almost five decades and, in the 1980s, founded the Pattee Canyon Ladies’ Salon, a group for women artists that meets twice monthly to this day.
Both lifelong learners, Speckart and Forsberg maintained deep ties to the University throughout their time in Missoula, with Forsberg immersing herself in studying languages and history — even teaching art to elementary students in Italian and Japanese.
“Missoula is a special place,” Speckart said, “and, to us, the most special part of Missoula is the University. It shaped every part of our lives here.”
UM was so influential on their experience that Speckart was ultimately inspired to include a significant legacy gift in his estate plan to the College of the Arts and Media, which will ultimately establish the Patricia Forsberg and Stephen Speckart Endowed Art Impact Fund. The fund will help transform the School of Visual and Media Arts’ ability to support future generations of emerging artists at UM in perpetuity.
The college plans to name a space for Forsberg at the time the gift is received, to commemorate her enduring contributions to Missoula’s art community. In addition, Speckart has provided for continued support of UM’s Department of Environmental Philosophy through his estate plans.
“This generous gift will fund new programming in studio areas and art history that were cherished by Stephen and Patricia,” said Valerie Hedquist, Director of the School of Visual and Media Arts. “To receive a gift of this kind from people who are so passionate about the arts is especially heartwarming.”