No cause of death was reported.
Ranked among the world's richest people at one time, Hartford was once called by Architect Frank Lloyd Wright “the sort of man who will come up with an idea, pinch it in the fanny and run."
He underwrote a series of failed enterprises, most of which resulted in spectacular losses. Among them were an artist's foundation and colony in Los Angeles, and the glossy magazine Show, a journal of art and culture.
His Gallery of Modern Art in New York City, featuring an Edward Durell Stone design, opened at 2 Columbus Circle in 1964 to risible reviews, both for its structure and offerings. He had promoted the museum as a bulwark against modernism in art, whether the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning or the literature of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams.
He condemned the “vulgar" and “meaningless" extremes of modern abstract art, preferring what he called “realistic art" of an earlier period. His vocal antipathy to artists he disliked led to the resignation of all advisors to his self-titled foundation meant to aid composers, writers and fine artists. He appointed new advisors and bought large advertisements condemning “obscurity, confusion, immorality, violence" in contemporary painting.
