Paid Notice: For more than 50 years, Sandra Buhai Barz’s beach house in the dunes of Amagansett was the center of our family’s life, a place where four generations came together summer after summer. Sandra died peacefully of natural causes on Saturday, October 24, 2026, at her apartment in New York City. She was 96.
Sandra and her beloved husband, Marc, made the house a gathering place from the start. Days ended with dinner on the grill and corn on the cob, always shucked by the kids. Inside was her white couch, which somehow stayed pristine through decades of sandy feet and sticky hands. Outside, she watched baby birds at the bird feeder and took great joy in her crape myrtle, while mint grew at the base of the outdoor shower. She was the matriarch who kept everyone’s stories straight and everyone connected, and Amagansett was where those stories were made.
Born and raised in Chicago, Sandra studied sociology at Skidmore College and began her career in magazine publishing at Redbook and McCall’s. A personal passion for Inuit art became her life’s work. In 1976 she founded Arts and Culture of the North, the first international newsletter on circumpolar art, and over 40 years she made 35 trips to the Arctic and produced three volumes on Inuit printmaking that remain the field’s standard reference. The University of Manitoba awarded her an honorary doctorate, and her archives are held by the University of Manitoba, the National Gallery of Canada, the Smithsonian Institution and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Sandra was predeceased by Marc in 1993. She is survived by her many nieces and nephews, their children and grandchildren, and dear friends, all of whom will carry the summers in Amagansett with them.
