Photo credit: Mark Estes
A native Californian, Angus Whyte (1937-2019) lived in San Francisco following his graduation from University of California at Berkeley in the late 1950s. He enrolled in graduate studies at the University of Washington, where he earned a Master’s degree in French and Music. In 1959, he was awarded a Fulbright Teaching Scholarship in France, and, in the early 1960s, contracted with the U.S. State Department to teach public health via mobile cinema in the Congo Republic. He subsequently studied baroque music and harpsichord at the Amsterdam Conservancy and the Salzburg Mozarteum Academy.
In the 1970s he operated the Angus Whyte Fine Arts Gallery in Boston, Provincetown, MA, New York City, and Washington, DC. After completing the Institute of Arts Administration program at Harvard University, he worked as Director of Special Events at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA in the 1980s, during which he served on the boards of the Brody Arts Foundation, Pacific Serenades, and the California Confederation of the Arts.
Following a sabbatical in France in the early 1990s, where he renovated ancient stone buildings in the Périgord, he returned to San Francisco, where he served as development consultant to the capital campaign for the LGBT Community Center Project. From 1997 through 2012 he directed a philanthropic organization, Art for Healing, which placed donated original works of art in hospitals and healthcare facilities.
In 2013 he published “After-Dinner Tales”, his first collection of memoirs, recollections, essays, observations and vignettes drawn from his extraordinary life. Upon his move to Palm Springs, CA in 2017, he remained active in music and arts circles, and joined the Palm Springs Writers Guild. In 2021, his second collection, “The Lavender Blade: Delights and Desires” was published by Whyte Light Press.