Skip to content

Remington, Preston

    Full Name: Remington, Preston

    Gender: male

    Date Born: 1897

    Date Died: 1958

    Home Country/ies: United States

    Subject Area(s): Post-Renaissance and Renaissance

    Career(s): curators


    Overview

    Curator of Renaissance and Post-Renaissance Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Remington graduated from Harvard University, joining the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Decorative Art in 1923 under Joseph Breck. He remained there the rest of his career. After Breck’s death in 1933, the department was divided into the three divisions, medieval art, under James Rorimer, Renaissance and Post-Renaissance art, under Remington, and American Art, under Joseph Downs. Remington advanced to the Vice-Directorship of the Department of Renaissance and Post-Renaissance Art. In later years, he held a notorious feud with Greek and Roman curator Dietrich von Bothmer, who began in the Museum in 1946. In the 1950s, Remington worked on the installation of the period rooms of the Museum, opened in 1954. Ill health in later years prevented his continued work as Vice Director. Remington published extensively in his Museum’s journals on objects in its collection.


    Selected Bibliography

    “Galleries of European Decorative Art and Period Rooms.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 13 (November 1954): 65-136; “Signed French Chairs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Metropolitan Museum Studies 2 (November 1929): 65-75


    Sources

    Gross, Michael. Rogues’ Gallery: the Secret History of the Moguls and the Money that Made the Metropolitan Museum. New York: Broadway Books, 2009, pp.250; [obituary:] Rorimer, James. Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 16 (May 1958): 241.




    Citation

    "Remington, Preston." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/remingtonp/.


    More Resources

    Search for materials by & about this art historian: