The death last month of Edmund P. "Ted" Pillsbury, a major player on the American art museum scene, was a suicide, his family said Monday.

An earlier statement said his March 25 death was due to a heart attack.

Dr. Pillsbury, 66, was chairman of fine arts at Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas. He was previously the founding director of the Yale Center for British Art, which opened to the public in 1977. From 1980 to 1998, Pillsbury was director of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

Dr. Pillsbury is well-known for securing important acquisitions for the Kimbell including: “Portrait of Don Pedro de Barberana,’’ an unusually large piece by the 17th-century Spanish artist Diego Velazquez; “The Cardsharps,’’ a seminal work by Caravaggio from the 1590s; a 1906 Picasso, “Nude Combing Her Hair’’; “L’Asie,’’ a 1946 oil by Matisse; and art by Fra Angelico, Titian, Tintoretto, Rubens, Cezanne, and Mondrian.

A specialist in Italian Renaissance art, Dr. Pillsbury earned degrees from Yale and the Courtlauld Institute, part of the University of London.