Over the years, Mrs. Heyman worked at the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of American Art and the Oakland Museum of California. She was also on the board of the Smith College Museum of Art and on staff at the Yale Art Museum, where she was a curatorial assistant.

She helped write or contributed to several books, including ''Dorothea Lang: American Photographs,'' ''On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art, 1900-1950'' and ''Picturing California: A Century of Photographic Genius.''

In her career she spread awareness and appreciation of art, particularly California's photographic art. ''You often hear people say there is no American art, but this isn't so,'' she told an interviewer in 1980, according to a statement from the office of the chancellor at Berkeley.