Museum Also Announces Endowment of the Benjamin Rowland Curator of American Art
Cambridge, MA, August 11, 2000—James Cuno, the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums, today announced that the Fogg Art Museum has appointed Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. as Distinguished Fellow and Consultative Curator of American Art. Cuno concurrently announced the creation of an endowed curatorship in American art, funded anonymously and named in honor of Benjamin Rowland, a noted Harvard professor of fine arts who died in 1972. The Benjamin Rowland Curator of American Art will be appointed at a future date.
"We are very pleased Ted has agreed to join us in this capacity. He brings tremendous knowledge, experience, and a famously fine eye to the task of strengthening our American collections and programs," noted Cuno. "The coincidence of these two announcements is important. Ben Rowland was renowned for teaching American art at Harvard and for training a whole generation of American specialists, Ted Stebbins among them. That we can have the benefit of Ted’s expertise and experience at this time—and no one is better suited to provide the kind of leadership we need in this area—will mean not only that our American collections will grow and exhibitions and programs in American art will increase, but that our commitment to American art will be firmly established in anticipation of the future Rowland Curatorship."
Harvard has long played an important role in the education and professional
development of scholars and curators of American art. Among Professor
Rowland’s students were John
Wilmerding, professor of American art at Princeton University; Nicolai
Cikovsky, curator of American art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington,
D.C.; Jules Prown, professor emeritus of American art at Yale University;
and Stebbins.
The Fogg is already home to important holdings of American art. These include significant collections of drawings and watercolors by Homer, Sargent, and Whistler; important collections of American silver and decorative arts; and Ben Shahn’s photographic archives. Harvard is also the home of John Singer Sargent’s Widener Library murals, one of the artist’s late masterworks.
Stebbins is one of the nation’s leading scholars of American art. He graduated from Yale College in 1960 and received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1964 before turning to the study of art history at Harvard, where he received his M.A. in 1966 and Ph.D. in 1971. He served as associate professor of art history and curator of American painting and sculpture at Yale University until 1977. In that year he went to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as curator of American paintings, and in 1986 was appointed John Moors Cabot Curator of American Paintings. While at Yale, Mr. Stebbins wrote his well-known landmark monograph on Martin Johnson Heade (1975), as well as a pioneering survey of American drawings and watercolors (1976).
In 1999 Stebbins stepped down after 22 years as John Moors Cabot Curator of American Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. While at the MFA, Stebbins conceived, organized, and installed over a dozen major exhibitions, including the first exhibition of American paintings to travel to China (1980); the great New World show (1984), which was seen in Boston, Washington, and Paris; and the critically acclaimed Lure of Italy: American Artists and the Italian Experience, 1760—1914 (1992). The exhibition catalogue for The Lure of Italy is the only American catalogue ever to win the prestigious Minda de Gunzburg prize.
Stebbins also directed the addition of over 300 American paintings to the MFA collection, adding such major works as Copley’s Boy with a Squirrel and Gilbert Stuart’s portraits of George and Martha Washington, as well as outstanding paintings by the Hudson River school, by Tarbell, Benson, and other members of the Boston school, by Sargent and Homer, and by such 20th-century painters as Pollock and Warhol.
Stebbins is perhaps best known for his work with the Lane Collection. Working with William and Saundra Lane, he guided the acquisition of nearly 100 works by the MFA, including paintings by Charles Sheeler, Stuart Davis, Georgia O'Keeffe, Arthur G. Dove, Marsden Hartley, and other American modernists. He also organized four exhibitions of American photography drawn from the Lane Collection, producing two books on Edward Weston as well as the definitive monograph on the photographs of Charles Sheeler.
Stebbins has continued to work on the 19th-century artist Martin Johnson Heade, and in September 1999 his exhibition of the work of this important landscape and still life painter opened at the MFA before going on a nationwide tour. He has also prepared a new edition of his Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade, which was published by Yale University Press in January 2000.
Recognized internationally as one of the leading authorities on American art, Stebbins was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997.
Stebbins commented: "I am pleased and honored to join the superb staff of the Harvard University Art Museums under Jim Cuno’s directorship. Harvard’s art museums provide leadership for the entire field, and I look forward to strengthening the Fogg’s great collections of American art and to contributing to a rich and adventurous scholarly program."
Mr. Stebbins is expected to join the Art Museums in late 2000.
Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums is one of the leading arts institutions
in the United States and the world. It is distinguished by the range and
depth of its collections, its groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original
research of its staff. For more than a century, it has been the nation’s
premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars and is renowned
for its seminal and ongoing role in the development of the discipline
of art history in this country.
The three art museums at Harvard – the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Fogg Art Museum – are all outstanding institutions in their respective fields. The Fogg also houses the Straus Center for Conservation, long a leader in the research and development of scientific and technology-based analysis of art. The 150,000 objects in the art museums’ collections range in date from ancient times to the present and come from Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Each museum also has an active program of special exhibitions that promotes new scholarship in its areas of focus.
As an integral component of the Harvard University community, the three art museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension to their areas of study. The public is welcome to experience the collections and special exhibitions as well as to enjoy lectures, symposia, and other programs in the various museums.
The collections are divided among ten curatorial areas: Ancient and Byzantine Art and Numismatics; Architecture and Design; Asian Art; Busch-Reisinger Museum; Drawings; Islamic and Later Indian Art; Modern and Contemporary Art; Paintings, Sculpture and Decorative Arts; Prints; and Photographs. Developed with an emphasis on their value for teaching and research, these holdings are a uniquely broad and rich resource that is continually enhanced through gifts and acquisitions. Together, the holdings of the three museums comprise one of the finest university art collections in the world, with resources rivaling those of many major public museums.
The Straus Center for Conservation is the oldest fine arts conservation treatment, research, and training facility in the United States. The Center specializes in the conservation of paintings, sculpture, decorative objects, historic and archaeological artifacts, and works of art on paper. Its team members are pioneers in developing new applications of digital imaging in conservation. The Center’s state-of-the-art facilities support a broad range of analytical services.
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