Holly McIntire Wright
Holly Wright
July 13, 1941 — November 27, 2025
Charlottesville
Holly McIntire Wright was born on July 13th 1941 In New York City, and never for one second forgot it.
Born to John Herrick McIntire and Jeanette Nolan, both Principle actors in The March Of Time. The family of two lived in NYC and Montana (from where her Father hailed) until the advent of Film took the family back to Los Angeles where both of her parents had grown up, begun their careers and met. There they were joined by her brother Timothy John on July 19th 1944. The family divided their time between Lincoln County Montana and Los Angeles depending on the Contract Commitments of the parents. Holly and Tim attended High School in both Los Angeles and Eureka Montana.
She graduated BA from UCLA and Married Michael Butler in 1962; the marriage was subsequently dissolved but she remained close to the family.
She Married the Poet Charles Wright in 1969, on Easter Sunday at the Campidoglio in Rome; they lived both in Rome and Venice. The family settled in Laguna Beach, California where Charles taught for well over a decade at the University of California Irvine. A son, Luke Savin Herrick Wright was born in Los Angeles, California, on June 9th 1970. John and Jen soon moved south from Los Angeles to join them. The family spent a magical thirteen years in the environment of unspoiled Southern California. In 1983 Charles took possession of a Professorship at The University of Virginia and she, he and Luke moved to Charlottesville where they remain at the time of her death.
In 1974 when the family spent a semester in Iowa City, where Charles taught in the Creative Writing Program which produced him, she took up Photography. During the remainder of the 1970s she taught at The Laguna Beach School of Art, exhibited in various So Cal galleries, especially BC Space in Laguna, and produced a substantial body of early work, including two of her prominent series: “Final Portraits” and “Applause” which showed in California. She was hired by the Department Of Fine Art at the University of Virginia in the early 1980s and produced her most famous series: “Vanity” during the next decade. She was represented by the Marcuse Pfeffer Gallery in New York City and the Jan Turner Gallery in Los Angeles. Her work is held by both the Metropolitan Museum Of Art and The Morgan Library in New York.
In the mid 1990s she purchased an apartment in the Rockefeller Apartments in Manhattan and for three decades spent much time in the beloved city of her birth residing at 24 W 55th St. In the 2000s she began the project of expanding the property at The McIntire Ranch in Montana constructing an elegant new dwelling house which she filled with her two passions for collecting: Persian Rugs and Danish Ceramics. The collections are both significant.
She was known for her style, her sense of decorum, dress and presentation (never appearing in public without elegant makeup and wardrobe) and as a prominent hostess within the University community. She always dressed as if she were still in New York.
She was preceded in death by her Brother (1986), Father (1991) and Mother (1998).
She is survived by her husband: Charles P. Wright Jr., AAAL, Poet Laureate of The United States, her son: Luke Savin Herrick Wright, DPhil (Oxon) and her Daughter in Law: Mrs. Dorothy Jeanne Vellom Wright.
Floral Tributes may be sent to St. Paul's Church, Ivy Virginia, 851 Owensville Rd, Charlottesville Va. 22901. A funeral will be held there Tuesday December Second at Two p.m.
