BALTIMORE, MARYLAND.- Art collector and philanthropist Jane Meyerhoff, 80, died after heart surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital She helped assemble one of the country's major collections of latter 20th-century art. Jane Meyerhoff and her husband Robert announced in 1987 that they would donate their $300 million collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Officials said it was the institution's largest single gift - after those from its founding benefactors.

While pursuing their passion of collecting art, Robert E. Meyerhoff, a real estate developer, and his wife, the former Jane M. Bernstein, raise thoroughbred racehorses and actively support the arts and higher education. Their children, now grown, are Rose Ellen Meyerhoff Greene, a member of the National Gallery of Art's Trustees' Council; Dr. John O. Meyerhoff; and Neil A. Meyerhoff.

The Meyerhoffs began collecting art in the late 1950s with their purchase of Hans Hoffmann's Autumn Gold (1957), now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art. The New York School of abstract expressionism is well represented, from the gestural paintings of Willem de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Hans Hoffmann, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock, to the field compositions of Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Barnett Newman. The collection also embraces paintings and drawings by the most important members of succeeding generations, including contemporary artists Richard Serra and Terry Winters. The breathtaking concentrations of works by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Brice Marden demonstrate the intense aesthetic pleasure that the Meyerhoffs have found in the works of these artists.