Emilie Beneš Brzezinski

Emilie Beneš Brzezinski (born Emilie Anna Beneš; January 21, 1932 – July 22, 2022) was a Swiss-American sculptor and the wife of Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Emilie Beneš Brzezinski
Born	Emilie Anna Benešová (1932-01-21)January 21, 1932 Geneva, Switzerland
Died	July 22, 2022(2022-07-22) (aged 90) Jupiter, Florida, U.S.
Education	Wellesley College, Massachusetts
Known for	Sculpture
Spouse	Zbigniew Brzezinski ​ ​ (m. 1961; died 2017)​
Children	Ian Mark Mika

Cherry Pantomime

Education and career

Emilie Beneš was born in Geneva, Switzerland. She earned a fine arts degree at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, United States. After marrying, she sculpted for 25 years while raising a family, then had her first solo show in 1981 in Washington, D.C.^[1]

From the 1980s on, most of her works were in wood. Her monumental 1993 work Lintel, constructed from cut cherry trees and then cast in bronze, is in the collection of Grounds for Sculpture, a 35-acre (140,000 m²) sculpture park and museum in New Jersey.^[2] She exhibited in the 2003 Florence Biennale and participated by invitation in the 2005 Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale.^[3] The Kreeger Museum had an exhibition of her work in 2014.^[4]

Personal life

Václav Edvard Beneš, a mathematician, was her brother. Shortly after graduating from Wellesley, Emilie Beneš, herself a relative of Czechoslovakia's former president Edvard Beneš, married Polish-born emigrant turned naturalized citizen Zbigniew Brzezinski, a political scientist who served as an adviser to Jimmy Carter while US president.^[5] The Brzezinskis had three children. Their oldest son, Ian Brzezinski, served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy in 2001–2005. Their second son, Mark Brzezinski, was the U.S. Ambassador to Poland from 2022 to 2025. Their youngest child, Mika Brzezinski, is a co-host of Morning Joe on MSNBC.

Emilie Beneš Brzezinski died on July 22, 2022, at the age of 90.^[6]