Rona Schneider, born Rona Alice Kass on July 7, 1934, died peacefully at her home in Brooklyn on August 24, 2024. She is survived by her three daughters Carla Muskat, Jenny Schmidt and Bettina Schneider, as well as her three sons in law, Timothy Muskat, Chris Schmidt and Bryan Stuart and her six grandchildren Harrison Muskat, Galen Muskat, Amelia Schmidt, Nina Schmidt, Nico Stuart and Lee Stuart. She was beloved to all who were fortunate enough to know her, whether as a daughter, sister, mother, mother in law, grandmother, friend or colleague.

Rona was raised in Lindenhurst, Long Island, daughter of Charles and Sally Kass, along with her kind older brother, Sid. Their father Charlie had a storied trajectory, starting with a rough early childhood as a young immigrant in New York City and evolving to owning a large dairy business in Babylon, near Lindenhurst. He brought his tough exterior to raising his children in a traditional way; after Sid left for Cornell to study science, Charlie expected Rona to graduate high school and marry soon after. Instead, Rona, already a quietly determined individualist, set her sights on higher education and on following Sid to Cornell.

After having worked during high school writing dispatches to Newsday as their young columnist, Rona then graduated high school one semester early and briefly went to work for Liberty Mutual in Long Island. To her employer’s disappointment, she only stayed for one spring and summer, and then left to attend Cornell University’s College of Home Economics, the only program Charlie would support her attending. Once at Cornell, though, Rona transferred into the College of Arts and Sciences, where she could fully pursue an academic path. She studied Comparative Literature, graduating in 1955 after earning Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude honors.

After a months-long trip through Europe with her closest friends from Cornell, Rona settled on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where she lived with some of the same friends and found work as a writer and editor of, she would wryly describe later, extremely dull employee manuals for the Port Authority. She also had a star turn writing an advice column for a romance magazine - certainly not the inspiring first jobs she’d hoped for! But jobs nonetheless. She met her future husband, Martin Schneider, on a weekend away in Fire Island with friends. Rona was to have been introduced to someone else, as was Martin, but they found each other to be the people they were each looking for.

Rona and Martin were married in February 1957 and moved to Brooklyn Heights, to the surprise of both sets of parents. (“Who would choose to live in Brooklyn?!”). After renting a couple of apartments in the neighborhood they’d quickly grown to love, they bought a multi-family house on Monroe Place, where they raised their daughters and built a long, rich life together full of books, travel, friends, food, humor, family and love. Rona meticulously managed the books while Martin gardened and fixed countless toilets. They both worked at careers that engaged them thoroughly and were very active in the community they’d chosen. After surviving breast cancer in 1973, Rona’s ambition to pursue further studies led her to prepare for the GRE by studying both German and French, and attend graduate school at Queens College, where she earned a Masters in Art History. Her relationships at Queens College were pivotal to inspiring her area of focus, and she was off and running once she completed school.

Rona’s business, Rona Schneider Fine Prints, was established in 1980. By then, her expertise was in fine American etchings and more specifically in a selection of artists who were part of the “Etching Revival”, and whose work she most cherished, including Stephen Parrish, James Smillie, Mary Nimmo Moran and Thomas Moran. She was frequently invited to write articles; curate for museums and libraries, as well as private collectors; and became a key resource for others in her area of art history.

Rona wrote a catalogue raisonee chronicling the career and life of Stephen Parrish which was critically acclaimed in the print world. Among other things, she was an excellent editor, and took a role editing the American Historical Print Collectors Society’s semi-annual publication, Imprint, from 1982-1995, about which she wrote, in her editorial farewell, “It’s been a fascinating and exhilarating experience, sometimes maddening, but always rewarding”. She was also a longstanding and valued member of the Grolier Club in New York City. She was deeply engaged in her area of study and worked closely and with joy alongside many esteemed colleagues over her long career as a collector, scholar, editor, restorer, curator and dealer.

When winding down her long career, Rona, with the encouragement of Martin, collaborated with Syracuse University to donate much of her art collection to the University’s permanent art collection so that it could be used by students and faculty alike for study and exhibition. Donating her collection was a difficult and monumental transition, but Syracuse’s careful planning and honoring of the collection brought Rona a deep satisfaction that the collection would be appreciated as she herself appreciated it. 

Syracuse published a book to accompany a beautiful opening exhibition held at their Manhattan location, the Palitz Gallery in Lubin House, to celebrate the gift and to share the works with others before the collection was sent to Syracuse. In the foreword of the book, Syracuse’s former Director of Art Galleries, Domenic Iacono, wrote “This collection of late 19th-century American printmaking is one of the most significant gifts made to Syracuse University in many years for teaching art, and helps cement the importance of the print in the Syracuse art collection.”

Over the course of almost 50 years, Rona enjoyed innumerable weekends, holidays and summers at the family house in Columbia County, NY, which they’d had built in 1974, and which Martin and Rona collaborated on designing with the architect Lo-Yi Chan. She loved to swim in the local lake, learned to play tennis - badly, by her own account - and would happily spend hours walking in the woods to find rare plants and tiny woodland flowers. Over time, Rona and Martin built a whole second community in their life upstate, where they found deep, lasting friendships with neighbors who shared their enjoyment and values in nature, art, music, politics and intellectual pursuits - and a good cocktail never hurt. She loved playing games with her children, and later her grandchildren - card games, board games and word games were all favorites. (To their chagrin, she never let kids win, choosing instead to teach them - in a fun way - how to beat her). Rona and Martin participated fully in their second life upstate, and created traditions and endless memories for themselves, their daughters, sons-in-law, and their grandchildren.

Rona was by nature a researcher and documenter, and this extended beyond academic pursuits - she took copious notes on food, travel and other experiences. She kept notes in books upon books of experiences, travel, calendars and finances. In her later years, she read the newspaper, somewhat maddeningly, from the front page to the back. She finished crossword puzzles with ease, leaving a trail of them in progress around the house. 

In her daily life, Rona was incredibly, and charmingly, methodical. She would happily be teased about this and was always in on the joke. She liked to do one thing at a time and to do it well. She was a woman of routines: she put on lipstick before leaving the house, she tied a kerchief on her hair if the weather was windy or drizzly, she organized the food on her plate, and she walked very, very slowly when she wanted to, leaving room to chat with a neighbor or inspect things or plants as she went with interest. She would not be rushed!

As throughout Rona’s life, her intellect, wit and compassion drew people in, and once there, they stayed. We will forever miss our mother’s sharp mind and kind nature.

A virtual service to celebrate Rona’s life to be held in early October; details to follow in the coming weeks, via Paperless Post. In the meantime, please feel free to reach out to any of us, any time, at:

Bettina Schneider bettina.schneider@me.com

Jenny Schmidt plantgirl36@gmail.com

Carla Muskat carlamuskat@gmail.com