There, Freaney started designing and crafting collectible ornaments, growing her garage-based avocation into a million-dollar business that she eventually took into retail, and national. Among her early students? That creator of “Beanie Babies.”
Freaney’s second son, David Suscavage, was born in 1975 and several years later, she received new degrees in art history from SUNY Purchase and moved to Woodstock after a stint at the Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden in North Salem. Here, she first worked as a craftswoman until her old Westchester friend Lisa Williams, who had worked with her in the garage business, took a job at the WAA and brought Freaney in to help at the front desk. Soon after, she started working under Aileen Cramer in the permanent collection, which she later ran from 1996 to 2005, at first for free. In 2005 she was offered the organization’s directorship, which she stayed in for a year before finally retiring “to travel.”
During her retirement, Freaney made numerous “art trips” with her many local friends to Burgundy, Venice and Paris, amongst a host of destinations.
If I recall, Linda started out working at the front desk at WAAM and when the organization decided to create a paid position for Director of the Permanent Collection, she was hired,” Bloodgood recalled this week of her friend and mentor. “She worked hard to professionalize the organization through the hiring of trained professional staff with prior museum, archives, and educational experience. She wrote successful grants to the New York State Council that resulted in hiring (me, as) registrar and began the digitization of the collection in 2002…I learned so much from watching Linda in action the first few years after I arrived at WAAM. She was a dynamic force and set an ambitious standard for the organization. When her enthusiasm and good humor wasn’t engaging enough, she would tempt everyone on the staff with homemade lunches she prepared in the WAAM kitchen and we’d eat at card table in the galleries.”
Linda has such a great love for the art and artists of the Historic Woodstock Art Colony, and she came to the WAA at a time when its exhibitions were at a crossroads,” recalled the collector and philanthropist Arthur Anderson of his friend. “She was a perceptive learner and quickly saw the potential of the permanent collection, and also had an astute ability to select guest curators.”
“When I got here, I fell in love with the way that the Artists’ Association combined a rich permanent collection with a vibrant active membership program, all under one roof,” said Freaney in a 2006 Woodstock Times article. “I am most proud of building a better WAA.”
Survived by her sons Ben and David, who reside in Southern California, Freaney’s family will be hosting a private memorial for close friends at her beloved Rose Cottage on Wendell Road, and then a more public gathering to be announced later.
She was a true Woodstocker, even if it took her two thirds of a lifetime to get here.
