Barry Taper

Barry H. Taper, a Beverly Hills businessman and philanthropist who was active in the governance of the Music Center, died after an illness Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was 71. Taper was the son of the financier, philanthropist and Music Center benefactor for whom the Mark Taper Forum was named. Barry Taper served on the boards of the Center Theatre Group and the Founders and was a member of the Music Center Board of Governors. He was a founding member of the Library Collectors' Council of the Huntington Library as well as the UCLA Stroke Recovery Group. He and his wife, Louise, shared an interest in Abraham Lincoln, and he helped her build one of the world's most extensive private collections of original Lincoln manuscripts and memorabilia. The couple loaned a third of the items shown in a popular 1993-94 exhibition at the Huntington Library, including a stovepipe hat and a gauze bandage on which Lincoln wrote a soldier's pardon. Taper was born in London. His father was a Polish emigrant who developed Lakewood and prospered in the savings and loan business before giving $1.5 million and his name to the Mark Taper Forum, the most intimate of the three Music Center auditoriums. In addition to his wife, Barry Taper is survived by two sisters, five children, three grandchildren and six nieces.