Jackie Ferrara, a New York–based artist known for stacked-wood sculptures, traveled to Basel, Switzerland, to end her life via physician-assisted suicide. She died on October 22 at age 95, according to a report in the New York Times. She told the Times that she had fallen twice in the past year, and did not want to be dependent on anyone.

Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland (with or without the participation of a physician) and does not require that the person in question be terminally ill. (Medical aid in dying, as it is often called, is legal in several states in the US, though the patient must be terminally ill.)

Ferrara grew up in Detroit, and moved to New York in 1952, when she was in her 20s, leaving her son and her first husband behind. She had been active in the downtown New York art world for over half a century. Ferrara often used organic materials like wood to make her pyramids, staircases, obelisks, and other stacked geometric structures stand out from her Minimalist peers, who were more likely to work with sleek materials like steel and concrete.

Ferrara’s work is in the collection of several major museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of M...