Joan Mondale

Joan Adams was born on Aug. 8, 1930, in Eugene, Ore., the eldest of three daughters of the Rev. John Maxwell Adams, a Presbyterian minister, and the former Eleanor Jane Hall. The family later moved to Wallingford, Pa., and then to St. Paul, where she attended Macalester College, majoring in history with a double minor in French and art. Her interest in art had been encouraged by an uncle, Philip Rhys Adams, who was director of the Cincinnati Art Museum. After graduation, in 1952, she worked as a librarian at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, then returned to Minnesota, where she took a job as an education assistant at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. During that period she met Mr. Mondale, who was in law school after serving in the Korean War. Their first date was a photography exhibition. In addition to her husband, Ms. Mondale’s survivors include two sons, Ted and William, and four grandchildren. A daughter, Eleanor Mondale Poling, died of brain cancer in 2011.