Thomas Silliman, 74; Art Professor, Head of Vincent Price Gallery

Thomas Silliman, 74, longtime art professor and director of the Vincent Price Gallery at East Los Angeles College, died April 25 of leukemia at Glendale Memorial Hospital, said his cousin Julie Silliman.

In 1957, Silliman started managing the gallery that actor Vincent Price helped establish with a donation of 90 works six years earlier.

The initial gift from Price, who had a degree in art history from Yale, included works by Honore Daumier and Albrecht Durer, African artifacts and pre-Columbian textiles from Peru.

Silliman turned the gallery’s holdings into a hands-on collection for students, who learned to frame and display art. Artists Kent Twitchell, Gronk and Patssi Valdez are among the alumni who have said that working at the gallery was instrumental in their careers.

Born July 29, 1931, in Salinas, Calif., Silliman received a bachelor’s degree from San Jose State and a master’s from UCLA.

He also helped establish a foundation to sustain the collection and keep the Price gallery open without charging admission.

“That’s been my whole cause, and Mr. Price’s too -- accessibility to art,” Silliman told The Times in 1990. “If it’s not at the community colleges, then ... where is it going to be?”