Art Historians

Moes, Ernst Wilhelm

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Moes, Ernst Wilhelm

Gender: male

Date Born: 1864

Date Died: 1912

Place Born: Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

Place Died: Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Subject Area(s): Dutch (culture or style) and prints (visual works)

Overview

Director of the Amsterdam Print Room between 1903 and 1912. After having attended the Gymnasium in Amsterdam, Moes enrolled as a law student at the University of Amsterdam, but after one year he switched to the faculty of arts. He founded Clio, an association of history students who started collecting objects related to the university’s history. Without having completed his studies, he became, in 1885, a volunteer at the auction house Frederik Muller in Amsterdam. A year later, he obtained the position of assistant archivist in the city of Rotterdam, and between 1890 and 1898 he served as assistant librarian at Amsterdam University. In 1896, he published the first fascicle of an extensive study on the history of the publishing industry in Amsterdam during the sixteenth century: De Amsterdamsche Boekdrukkers en Uitgevers in de zestiende eeuw. He completed the first volume in 1900. The second volume was coauthored with the librarian C.P. Burger jr. (1858-1936), who also completed volume three and four. Between 1897 and 1905 Moes published his Iconographia Batava, a two-volume list of painted and sculptured portraits of Dutch persons living prior to the year 1800. This work is still today an important source for the iconography of portraits. In 1897, Moes began a new series of the yearbook for Amsterdam’s history and literature: Amsterdamsch jaarboekje. From 1893 until his death, he was the coeditor of Oud Holland, along with Abraham Bredius, and between 1899 and 1906, he was a member of the board of the Bulletin Nederlandsche Oudheidkundige Bond. In 1898, Moes began his career at the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, first as assistant director of the Print Room. Five years later, he obtained the position of director, succeeding Johan Philip van der Kellen. Moes systematically reorganized the Print Room and set up several card catalogs. At the same time, he broadened the collections, paying much attention to prints with a documentary value. An important purchase was the René de la Faille collection of Netherlands etchings from the 19th century. Under his direction temporary exhibitions were held every three months. An overview of Dutch engraving was permanently on display. He also selected 100 exquisite drawings for reproduction in the original colors, in order to make them more easily accessible for students and visitors. The plates appeared in two luxurious portfolios, in Dutch as well as in foreign editions. He contributed many biographies to the Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, from 1907 edited by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, as well as to the Nieuw Nederlandsch Biographisch Woordenboek. His monograph on Frans Hals was published in French, in 1909: Frans Hals, sa vie et son œuvre. This work, as most of his publications, is rich in historical documentation. In 1912, Moes untimely death of tuberculosis at the age of 48, came without his having published all the materials he had collected or the projects in which he had been engaged in the last years of his life. With Wilhelm Martin he had begun a series on old paintings in public and private possession in the Netherlands, and, with Karel Sluyterman (1863-1931), a work on Dutch historical castles. The contribution of Moes to the field of art history consists primarily in documentation, and less in art critical evaluation.

Selected Bibliography

[for a succinct bibliography, see] Six, J. Levensberichten der afgestorven medeleden van de Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde te leiden 1913-1914; and Burger, C.P. De Amsterdamsche Boekdrukkers en Uitgevers in de zestiende eeuw. Amsterdam: C.L. van Langenhuysen, 1896-1915; Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1988; Iconographia Batava; beredeneerde lijst van geschilderde en gebeeldhouwde portretten van Noord-Nederlanders in vorige eeuwen. Amsterdam: F. Muller & co, 1897-1905; Oude teekeningen van de Hollandsche en Vlaamsche school in het Rijksprentenkabinet te Amsterdam. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1904; Original Drawings of the Dutch and Flemish School in the Printroom of the State-Museum at Amsterdam. The Hague: M. Nijhoff; London: Williams & Norgate, 1905?; Frans Hals, sa vie et son œuvre. Brussels: G. van Oest & cie, 1909; and Martin, W. Oude schilderkunst in Nederland; schilderijen van Hollandsche en Vlaamsche Meesters in raadhuizen, kleine stedelijke verzamelingen, kerken, hofjes, weeshuizen, senaatskamers enz., en in particulier bezit. 1. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1910; and Sluyterman, K. Nederlandsche kasteelen en hun historie. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1912-1915.

Sources

Burger, C.P. Het Boek. 2nd series 1 (1912): 353-358; Beets, N. In Memoriam E.W. Moes. Bulletin van den Nederlandschen Oudheidkundigen Bond. 2nd series 6 (1913): 35-41; Bredius, A. In memoriam Ernst Wilhelm Moes, 1864-1912. Oud Holland 31 (1913): 1-3; Six, J. Levensberichten der afgestorven medeleden van de Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde te leiden 1913-1914: 1-17; Boon, K.G. Gids voor het Rijksprentenkabinet. Amsterdam, 1964: 25-26; Van der AA, O.L. Feiten en konterfeitsels. Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie.27 (1973): 33-34; Ekkart, R.E.O. in J.Charité (ed.) Biografisch woordenboek van Nederland 2. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1985: pp. 394-395.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

Möbius, Hans

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Möbius, Hans

Gender: male

Date Born: 1895

Date Died: 1977

Place Born: Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany

Place Died: Bad Homburg, Hesse, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient European, Ancient Greek (culture or style), Ancient Italian, Early Western World, funerary art, funerary sculpture, Greek (modern), Mediterranean (Early Western World), prehistoric, Roman (ancient Italian culture or period), and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Specialist in prehistoric and ancient Greek and Roman art, particularly Greek funerary sculpture. Scientific assistant to E. Buschor in Athens, 1921-1928. Curator at the State museum in Kassel, 1928-1943. Professor at the University of Würzburg, 1943-196?). From 1946 until his death, Möbius worked on the comprehensive corpus of east grecian funerary sculpture (continuing the work of Ernst Pfuhl).

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] H. Möbius. Studia Varia. 1967 xiii-xv; über Form und Bedeutung der sitzenden Gestalt in der Kunst des Orients und der Griechen, in: AM 41, 1916 [1927], 119 ff.; Die Ornamente der griechischen Grabstelen. 1929; “Zu den Stelen von Daskyleion” in: AA 1971, 442 ff.; edited, Pfuhl, Ernst. Die ostgriechischen Grabreliefs. 2 vols. Mainz am Rhein: Von Zabern, 1977, 1979.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 264-265.

Mireur, Hippolyte

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Mireur, Hippolyte

Other Names:

H. Mireur

Gender: male

Date Born: 1841

Date Died: 1914

Place Born: Fayence, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

Place Died: Marseille, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): art market

Career(s): art dealers

Institution(s): Académie des Sciences et Beaux-Arts de Marseille

Overview

history of the art trade

Selected Bibliography

Dicionnaire des ventes d’art faites en France et à l’étranger pendant les XVIIIe et XIX siècles. 7 vols. Paris. 1911-1912.

Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 383

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

history of the art trade

Miner, Dorothy E.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Miner, Dorothy Eugenia

Other Names:

Dorothy Eugenia Miner

Gender: female

Date Born: 04 November 1904

Date Died: 12 May 1973

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Place Died: Baltimore, Baltimore Independent City, MD, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): manuscripts (documents) and Medieval (European)

Career(s): curators

Institution(s): Pierpont Morgan Library and The Walters Art Museum

Overview

Medievalist curator of manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Miner was born to Roy Waldo Miner (1875-1955) and Anna Elizabeth Carroll (d. 1924). Her father was a marine biologist and a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. She attended Barnard College, graduating in 1926 and continued in medieval literature as the first Barnard International Fellow at Bedford College, University of London. She returned to New York in 1928 to study art history at Columbia University as a Carnegie Fellow. At Columbia she took courses under George Rowley, Marion Lawrence and Emerson H. Swift. A 1929-1930 study year in Europe resulted in her intent to write a dissertation on an Trier Carolingian illuminated manuscript under Meyer Schapiro. However, she began teaching art history at Barnard in 1931 and never completed her degree. Through a friend of her father’s, Bashford Dean, Miner met Belle da Costa Greene (1883-1950), the famous director of the Morgan library. Greene offered Miner a position at the Pierpont Morgan Library in 1933 at the height of the Depression to catalog Morgan’s illuminated manuscripts for exhibition. Greene was impressed with Miner’s work. In 1934 she recommended her as keeper (curator) of manuscripts at the recently established Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. Henry Walters had bequeathed over 23,000 art works in 1931 to the city. It was Miner’s first job to ready the manuscripts collection for exhibition in just two months. Miner devoted the next thirty years to the Walters, adding to her responsibilities the collections of Islamic art, the library of both the rare books and the reference collection, as well as editing the Walters publications.

In 1937, she and Grace Frank published, Proverbes en rimes: Text and Illustrations of the Fifteenth Century from a French Manuscript in the Walters Art Gallery, an early social history of printed books. The book also examined the transmission of images throughout the Middle Ages. In 1938 she initiated the publication of the Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, the first scholarly periodical produced by an American museum, which she edited until 1969. Miner produced small-scale exhibitions for the Walters, until after World War II when resources allowed larger shows, generally mounted at the Baltimore Museum of Art because of space limitations at the Walters. In 1947, Miner pressed for the Early Christian and Byzantine Art show at the Walters, one of the first scholarly retrospectives of the period. The exhibitions of her own design included Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in 1949, The History of Bookbinding, 525-1950 A.D. in 1957, and The World Encompassed: An Exhibition of the History of Maps, (with the libraries of the Peabody Institute and Johns Hopkins University) in 1952. In 1954, Miner paid tribute to her mentor and former boss, Belle Greene, when she edited a festschrift for her, Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene. In 1962 she led the Walter’s The International Style: The Arts in Europe around 1400 another groundbreaking exhibition of medieval art. A second multi-library exhibition of manuscripts, 2,000 Years of Calligraphy, was held in 1965. Throughout these years she lectured at Johns Hopkins University. She died after an extended illness.

Miner’s personal contact with the manuscripts was the driving force of her methodology, one that focused on the total structure and design, the interrelationship of page, text, image, and even binding. Her work led the way for modern codicology. Her exhibition catalogs became reference works for the topic they covered. Many of Miner’s entries were anonymously written as she considered the focus of the catalogs to be the Gallery and not herself. She designed a 1960 coloring book on the middle ages for children visiting the museum. She was among the group of founding curators of the Walters, mostly women, who also included Dorothy Kent Hill.

Selected Bibliography

[extensive bibliography:] Sherman, Claire Richter. “Selected Bibliography of Dorothy Eugenia Miner.” in, Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts, 1820-1979. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981, pp. 407-409; The Greek Tradition in Painting and the Minor Arts. Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1939; Anastaise and her Sisters: Women Artists of the Middle Ages. Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1974; The Development of Medieval Illumination as Related to the Evolution of Book Design. Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1958; The Giant Bible of Mainz: 500th Anniversary. Philadelphia: s. n., 1952; edited. Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954; Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance: an Exhibition held at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Baltimore: The Walters Art Gallery, 1949.

Sources

Gatherings in Honor of Dorothy E. Miner. Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1974; “Manuscript Sleuthing.” Bulletin of the Walters Art Gallery (November 1950): 1, 3 ; “Since De Ricci: Western Illuminated Manuscripts Acquired since 1934.” Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 29, 30 (1966/1967): 68-103 [Memoirs of her collecting and art-historical analysis of her acquisitions]; Sherman, Claire Richter. “Dorothy Eugenia Miner [etc.].” in, Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts, 1820-1979. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981, pp. 377-409; Sherman, Claire Richter. “Pioneers in American museums: Dorothy Miner.” Museum News 59 (March/April 1981): 33-41ff.; [obituaries:] Randall, Richard. H. jr. “In memoriam: Dorothy Miner, Keeper of Manuscripts and Rare Books, 1934-1973.” The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 35 (1977): iv-vii; “Dorothy Miner.” Gesta13 no. 1 (1974): 3.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Millon, Hank

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Millon, Hank

Other Names:

Hank Millon

Gender: male

Date Born: 1927

Place Born: Altoona, Blair, PA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Baroque, Renaissance, and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Architectural historian of the Renaissance and Baroque era. Millon’s father, Henri Francois Millon, was an aerial photographer and his mother, Louise de Serent (Millon), was the daughter of the publisher of a French newspaper in New York. Millon graduated from Brownsville, Texas, high school in 1942. He entered Navy ROTC (then called the Navy V-12 program) in 1943 at Tulane University. He served in active duty immediately after World War II in 1946. He returned to Tulane where he received multiple bachelor’s degrees in English, physics and architecture. He spent a year in Paris with a maternal grandmother before entering Harvard University where he received a master’s degree in architecture and urban design. A second master’s degree and Ph.D., in the history of art followed. At Harvard his classes included the legendary seminars taught by Jakob Rosenberg, Sydney Joseph Freedberg and George M. A. Hanfmann. A deep impression was made on him during the two summer courses taught by Rudolf Wittkower at the Fogg Museum. In the 1950’s, Millon met Craig Hugh Smyth the Princeton-trained NYU art historian, twelve years his senior, whom Millon would collaborate on many projects. Following three years of research in Italy first as a Fulbright Fellow and then as a fellow for the American Academy in Rome, 1957-1960, under the directorship of Laurance Page Roberts, he returned to the United States to teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1960 as an assistant professor of architecture. His 1964 dissertation on Guarino Guarini was directed by Wittkower. He married Judith Rice in 1966. Millon was appointed professor at MIT in 1969. Together with Smyth, the two published a series of articles on Michelangelo’s architecture between 1969 and 1983 fundamentally changing contemporary thinking on Michelangelo’s contributions to the design of St. Peter’s. Millon was vice-chair of the Boston Landmarks Commission, 1970-1973. In 1974 he was appointed the Director of the American Academy in Rome, which he held until 1977. He retained his Visiting Faculty status at MIT the rest of his career. In 1980, when the National Gallery of Art in Washgington, D. C., inaugurated the Center for Advanced Study of the Visual Arts, Millon was its first Dean. He and Smyth summarized their research on Michelangelo’s architecture in the 1988 NGA exhibition, “Michelangelo, Architect.” He retired from CASVA in 2000.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Guarino Guarini and the Palazzo Caarignano in Turin. Harvard University, 1964; and Lampugnani, Vittorio Magnago. The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: the Representation of Architecture. Milan: Bompiani, 1994; edited, The Triumph of the Baroque: Architecture in Europe, 1600-1750. New York: Rizzoli, 1999; and Smyth, Craig Hugh. Michelangelo architetto: la facciata di San Lorenzo e la cupola di San Pietro. Milan: Olivetti, 1988, English, Michelangelo Architect: the Facade of San Lorenzo and the Drum and Dome of St. Peter’s. Milan: Olivetti, 1988; Italian Renaissance Architecture from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996; and Millon, Judith Rice. St. Paul’s Wthin-the-walls in Rome: a Building History and Guide, 1870-1980. Dublin, NH: W. L. Bauhan, 1982.

Sources

Millon, Henry A. A Life of Learning: Charles Homer Haskins lecture for 2002. New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 2002.

Millin de Grandmaison, Aubin-Louis

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Millin de Grandmaison, Aubin-Louis

Gender: male

Date Born: 1759

Date Died: 1818

Place Born: Paris, Île-de-France, France

Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): archaeology and Medieval (European)

Overview

Archaeologist and historian of classical and medieval art. Millin was imprisoned in 1793 for completing a study on vandalized churches and monasteries in France. After spending one year in jail, he was hired to teach art history at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, where he also served as the Keeper of the Department of Antiquities. Millin’s scholarship focused on the historical, rather than the aesthetic importance of French churches and castles. He also wrote several articles about Greek vases. In 1806, he published the Dictionnaire des beaux-arts, a work that utilizes French, German, and Italian sources on aesthetics. Millin’s later publications included a translation of James Dallaway’s Anecdotes of the Arts in England, and the Magazin encyclopédique, a collection of information about artists, aesthetics, and artistic practices during the 18th and 19th centuries. Samuel Cauman wrote that Millin continued the “monographic trend” of early art-historical development begun (in France) by Bernard de Montfaucon.

Sources

Cauman, Samuel. The Living Museum: Experiences of an Art Historian and Museum Director, Alexander Dorner. New York: New York University Press, 1958, p. 22; The Dictionary of Art

Milliken, William M.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Milliken, William M.

Other Names:

William Mathewson Milliken

Gender: male

Date Born: 1889

Date Died: 1978

Place Born: Stamford, Fairfield, CT, USA

Place Died: Cleveland, Cuyahoga, OH, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)

Overview

Medievalist, director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1930-1958. Milliken was the son of Thomas Kennedy Milliken and Mary Spedding Mathewson (Milliken) (1858-1932). His father was a New York linen importer and manufacturer. The younger Milliken entered Princeton in 1907 as part of the class of 1911, but illness delayed his graduation. Summers were spent traveling in Europe where he became familiar with the Gothic churches and art museums. After graduation, Milliken was offered but declined an offer to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, cataloging objects. Instead, he attempted to work in the family textile business. However, when it became clear he would not be successful, he accepted the unpaid position at the Met. After six months, he was appointed to the Department of Decorative Arts, whose curator, Wilhelm Rheinhold Otto Valentiner, had returned to Germany during World War I. During this time, the Met hosted the loaned collection of magnificent medieval object collection of Board president J. P. Morgan (1837-1913). Milliken had a first-hand opportunity to study these pieces (the show remained until 1916). That year, 1916, the Morgan pieces became part of the Metropolitan and Milliken was promoted to Assistant Curator. With the United States entry into the War the following year, Milliken enlisted serving as a ground officer in the 282nd Air Squadron in England. After discharge in 1918, Milliken found his former job had been eliminated, but he found a position similar position as Curator of Decorative Arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1919, perhaps advising them on medieval purchases before his hire. He published his first article for the museum the same year as his employment, “French Gothic Sculpture in the Museum,” in the Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Milliken’s first major acquisition for the museum was the 1922 small ivory plaques. He has so impressed board president and wealthy collector Jeptha Homer Wade II (1857-1926), that Wade purchased them personally and made them a gift to the museum. The following year Milliken purchased the Spitzer Cross enamel and the Stroganoff ivory in 1925, all with the assistance of Wade. After Wade’s death, Milliken purchase the nine spectacular Guelph Treasure pieces (one was later exchanged in a purchase deal for the Gertrudis Altar). Milliken was appointed director of the Museum in 1930, but retained his position as curator of Decorative Arts. He set about to make the Museum one of the major art centers in the nation and one particularly attuned to the public. Milliken hired the innovative art education curator, Thomas Munro the same year. During the Depression, Milliken headed the Public Works of Art Project for the mid-west (“Region 9”), part of the federally funded WPA. He instituted the “May Show,” an annual exhibition of local design arts which connected Cleveland industry and commerce with the Museum. In the 1940s, Milliken was awarded an Honorary M.A., Princeton University in 1942 and Doctor of Fine Arts at Yale University in 1946. He retired as director in 1958 and was succeeded by Sherman E. Lee. In retirement, Milliken organized the “Masterpieces of Art” exhibition for the Seattle World’s Fair of 1962. He was Regents Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1963. Milliken planned to publish a book “Stories Behind the Museum Collection,” a 254-page history of the Cleveland Museum, which he wrote around 1970 but never issued. He wrote two autobiographies, one in 1975 and a second in 1977. After his death in 1978, a William Mathewson Milliken Scholarship Fund was established at the Cleveland Institute of Art. His papers are held by the Western Reserve Historical Society and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Milliken represents the genre of American art museum director who achieved prominence solely through personal experience. With neither a degree in art nor any graduate degree, though from a privileged background and conversant in four languages, Milliken developed a connoisseur’s eye for objects in the medieval area through buying trips and training while working on the job.

Selected Bibliography

[bibliography:] Toth, Georgina G. “William Mathewson Milliken: a Selected Bibliography.” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61 (December 1974): 384-91; [Milliken wrote many introductions to catalogs as director; works of original authorship include:] “A Byzantine Ivory in the Morgan Collection.” Art in America 10 (1922): 197-202; “Art of the Goldsmith.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 6, no. 4, June, 1948): 311-322; “Two sculptures of St. Margaret by Antonello Gagini.” Gazette des beaux arts (April, 1943): 209-218; Pages from Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts from the Xth to the early XVIth Centuries: an Exhibition. Berkeley : University of California, 1963; Unfamiliar Venice. Cleveland, OH: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1967. [auction catalog of private collection:] Catalogue of the Milliken Collection of Small South German and Austrian Baroque Wood Carvings. London: Sotheby & Co., 1974.

Sources

Wittke, Carl Frederick. The First Fifty Years: the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1916-1966. Cleveland: John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust, Cleveland Museum of Art/Press of Western Reserve University, 1966, pp. 91, 98-99ff.; Milliken, William M. A Time Remembered: A Cleveland Memoir. Cleveland: Western Reserve Historical Society, 1975; Milliken, William. Born Under the Sign of Libra: An Autobiography. Western Reserve Historical Society, 1977; Barrie, Dennis ; interviewer. “William Milliken interviews, 1974 Dec. 27-1976 Mar. 13.” Archives of American Art; Marling, Karal Ann. “William M. Milliken and Federal Art Patronage of the Depression Decade.” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61 no. 10 (December 1974): 360-370; Bruhn, Heaterh McCune. “William M. Milliken and Medieval Art.” in, Smith, Elizabeth Bradford, ed. Medieval Art in America: Patterns of Collecting, 1800-1940. University Park, PA: Palmer Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania State University, 1996, pp. 195-198; [obituary:] Lee, Sherman E. Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65 (April 1978): 110; Hawley, Henry. “Directorship of William M. Milliken.” in, Turner, Evan H. Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1991.

Millet, Gabriel

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Millet, Gabriel

Other Names:

Gabriel Millet

Gender: male

Date Born: 17 April 1867

Date Died: 08 May 1953

Place Born: Saint-Louis, Saint-Louis, Senegal

Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): archaeology, Byzantine (culture or style), and Medieval (European)

Overview

Byzantinist archaeologist and art historian; Professor at the Collège de France, Sorbonne and École Pratique des Hautes Études. Millet’s father was a colonel stationed with the Marine division of France in Senegal. Orphaned at eighteen months, Millet was raised in Nice by his grandmother where he initially studied. He continued his studies in Paris, attending lectures by the Greek-language philologist Jean Psichari (1854-1929) and the linguist Antoine Meillet (1866-1939). Millet graduated 1891 in history and was named a member of the École française d’Athènes (French School in Athens). There he became fascinated with the extant Byzantine monuments, initially studying the 11th-century Byzantine monastery of Daphni outside the city. In 1894 Millet made his first visit to Mount Athos, the collection of monasteries which hold rich Byzantine manuscripts and painting. Many of these manuscripts and objects were undocumented and unresearched. This work was the beginning of what would become a series of important publications for Millet and establish his reputation. His later travels included Attica, Epirus (Arta), in Macedonia (Thessalonike), in Beotia and in the Peloponnese. He returned to Athos in 1898, documenting the architectural monuments and manuscripts through photography. Millet led missions of study to Dalmatia and Istria (in 1897, and again in 1901), where he helped excavate the 6th-century Euphrasian Basilica at Poreč (Parenzo). During many of his travels, his wife, Sophie Millet (d. 1953), produced on-the-spot watercolors. His monograph on Daphni, Le Monastère de Daphni: histoire, architecture, mosaïques appeared in 1899, still the only scholarly work on that monastery. The same year Millet received a teaching appointment in the religious sciences section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études. Millet created a center at the École in 1903 to house his notes and other material, which he called The Christian and Byzantine Collection. His study on the Mount Athos inscriptions, Recueil des inscriptions chrétiennes de l’Athos was issued in 1904. He researched in Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro between 1905 and 1906, travels which would become the foundation for his later work on Slavic and Balkin art. Millet was appointed head of the École in 1906. He continued to publish his findings with his book on the monuments of Mistra, Monuments byzantins de Mistra: Matériaux pour l’étude de l’architecture et de la peinture en Grèce aux XIVème et XVème siècles in 1910. A book on church architecture in Greece,L’École grecque dans l’architecture byzantine appeared in 1916. That year, too, he published an innovative book on the iconography of the Gospel in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries based on his findings of Mistra, Macedonia and Mount Athos, Recherches sur l’iconographie de l’évangile aux XIVe, XVe et XVIe siècles, d’après les monuments de Mistra, de la Macédoine et du Mont-Athos. The book established the importance of the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire for art. Millet continued to visit Mount Athos in 1918, 1919 and 1920. Lancien art serbe, the first of a series on Slavic art, appeared in 1919. His Monuments de l’Athos relevés avec le concours de l’armée française d’Orient et de l’École françise d’Athènes appeared in 1927, the same year he was appointed chair of aesthetics and history of art at the College de France. Millet was elected to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1929. He maintained his position at the École at the same time. His final research and photographic campaigns, from the mid-1920s until 1935 concentrated on Balkan monuments of the Palaeologan period, monuments considered a decline of style. He established the Archives of Athos. He collaborated with David Talbot Rice, who had studied with him at the Collège de France, on the book Byzantine Painting at Trebizond in 1936, retiring the same year to be succeeded at the école by André Grabar. Among his final publication, Millet opened the study of religious embroidery, Broderies religieuses de style byzantin (with Helene des Ylouses) in 1939, and La dalmatique du Vatican; les élus, images et croyances, in 1947. His work on Balkan art appeared posthumously, published in 1954 through 1969 by A. Frolow and T. Velmans. His most distinguished student, at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, was Sirarpie Der Nersessian. Andreas Xyngopoulos and Frolow were also students. Millet’s reputation as an historian came on the resurgence of Byzantine studies at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth centuries (Jolivet-Lévy). His Recherches sur l”iconographie revealed the importance of the last centuries of Byzantium, and though some findings are today discounted, it is still a rich source of iconography. He was the first to scholar to systematically examine of the art of Armenia (Frolow). His fairness as a scholar extended to those outside his theoretical mindset, including Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski. Millet’s most important accomplishments is arguably the creation of a great corpus of documentation on Byzantine art. His notes, plans, architectural drawings, copies of inscriptions and manuscripts, sketches and watercolors and an impressive quantity of photographs on glass plates are a trove of material, some of works no longer extant. Millet further built this collection with donations from other Byzantinists researchers to a collection central for Byzantine research.

Selected Bibliography

and watercolors by Benouville, Pierre. Le Monastère de Daphni: histoire, architecture, mosaïques. Paris: E. Leroux, 1899; Recueil des inscriptions chrétiennes de l’Athos. Paris: A. Fontemoing, 1904; and Eustache, Henri, and Ronsin, Jules, and Roumpos, Pierre. Monuments byzantins de Mistra: Matériaux pour l’étude de l’architecture et de la peinture en Grèce aux XIVème et XVème siècles. Paris: E. Leroux, 1910; Recherches sur l’iconographie de l’évangile aux XIV, XV, et XVI siècles, d’après les monuments de Mistra, de la Macédoine et du Mont-Athos. Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome. fascicle 109. Paris: 1916; L’école grecque dans l’architecture byzantine. Bibliothèque de l’école des hautes études. Sciences religieuses. 26. Paris: E. Leroux, 1916; Monuments de l’Athos relevés avec le concours de l’armée française d’Orient et de l’école françise d’Athènes. Paris, E. Leroux, 1927; introductory essay to, Strzygowski, Josef. L’ancien art chrétien de Syrie, son caractère et son évolution d’après les découvertes de Vogüé et de l’expédition de Princeton; la façade de Mschatta et le calice d’Antioche. Paris: E. de Boccard, 1936; and Rice, David Talbot. Byzantine Painting at Trebizond, London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1936; Broderies religieuses de style byzantin. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1939-1947; “Paradtadeis dnutohoi crouikai: essai sur la date.” Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique 70 (1946): 393-402; La dalmatique du Vatican; les élus, images et croyances. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1945; Catalogue des négatifs de la collection chrétienne et byzantine. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955.

Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 171, 471; Jolivet-Lévy, Catherine. “Gabriel Millet (1867-1953).” Index of Christian Art. http://ica.princeton.edu/millet/biography.php; [obituary:] Lemerle, P. “Gabriel Millet.” Revue Archeologique 6 no. 43 (April 1954): 214-217; Frolow, A. “Gabriel Millet († 8 mai 1953).” Revue des études byzantines 12 (1954): 294-298.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Miller, Lillian B.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Miller, Lillian B.

Other Names:

Lillian B. Miller

Gender: female

Date Born: 1923

Date Died: 1997

Place Born: Boston, Suffolk, MA, USA

Place Died: Washington, DC, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): American (North American)

Overview

Peale family scholar and early researcher in American arts funding. Born to a Lithuanian immigrant family–her father worked as a butcher in Boston–Lillian Beresnack, graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe College–the first of her family to attend college–in 1943. She continued on to Columbia University as a graduate student. Having worked her way through college as a secretary, she spent her graduate years as one to Columbia’s historian Jacques Barzun (b. 1907) and the literature professor Lionel Trilling (1905-1975). When the temperamental writer Mary McCarthy (1912-1989) abruptly resigned from teaching at Bard College in 1946, they recommended Beresnack, still only 23, to replace McCarthy. Her master’s degree, granted in 1948, was on the Socialist labor leader Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926). She married Nathan Miller (1917-), a fellow Columbia graduate student in economic history the same year. Beresnack, now Miller, continued working on her Ph.D., while having children (an AAUW grant was once denied because she was pregnant). The couple secured an appointment at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1961, forcing the University to rescind its nepotism rule. Her dissertation was accepted for her Ph.D. in 1962 on the topic of arts sponsorship in the early U.S. The published version of her dissertation, appearing in 1966 as Patrons and Patriotism: The Encouragement of the Fine Arts in the United States, became a seminal text for those in government looking for precedents to government funding for the arts and attracted the attention of the Smithsonian hierarchy. In 1971 she moved to the National Portrait Gallery in Washgington, D. C., an institution only nine years old then, to be its first historian. She began research on Charles Wilson Peale in 1973, one of the country’s early portraitists but relatively unstudied. The approaching bi-centennial of the U.S. focused her research on two exhibitions of visual nationhood. “In the Minds and Hearts of the People,” 1974, and “The Dye is now Cast,” 1975, both examining American portraiture as an historical phenomenon through individual personalities of the artists. In 1980, the microfilm version of the complete Peale papers was published. Together with curators Ted Richardson and the historian Brooke Hindle (1918-2001), Miller helped curate the major Peale exhibition held at the National Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Yale University Press’ edition of the selected papers began appearing in 1983. Her office at the Gallery became the center of Peale studies. An exhibition devoted to Rembrandt Peale, “In Pursuit of Fame,” was mounted at the Gallery in 1992. A final Peale exhibition toured Philadelphia and San Francisco between 1995 and 1996. She also lectured at George Washington University and the University of Maryland. Miller announced her intention for two retirement projects for which she had gathered material: a study of art patronage in the United States between 1800 and 1914, and a biography on Charles Eliot Norton. However, she died of a a cerebral hemorrhage at Georgetown hospital, age 74, the year before her projected retirement at 75.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Art and Nationality: The Encouragement of the Fine Arts in the United States, 1790-1860. Columbia University, 1962; Patrons and Patriotism: The Encouragement of the Fine Arts in the United States, 1790-1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966; In the Minds and Hearts of the People; Prologue to the American Revolution: 1760-1774. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1974; edited, with Hart, Sidney, and Appel, Toby A. The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and his Family. 5 vols. New Haven, CT: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/ Yale University Press, 1983-1997; In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale, 1778-1860. Washington, DC: National Portrait Gallery, 1992.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p. 120 mentioned; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 84; [obituaries:] Fern, Alan. “Lillian B. Miller (1923-1997).” American Art 12, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 92-95; Thomas, Robert M, Jr. “Lillian B. Miller, Historian, 74; Studied Art by the Peale Family.” New York Times December 1, 1997, p. B7.

Miller, Dorothy

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Miller, Dorothy

Other Names:

Dorothy Miller

Gender: female

Date Born: 04 February 1904

Date Died: 11 July 2003

Place Born: Hopedale, Worcester, MA, USA

Place Died: Greenwich Village, Manhatten, New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period)

Career(s): curators

Overview

Early and seminal modernist art curator; first paid curator at the Museum of Modern Art, 1934 to 1969. Miller was raised in Montclair, N. J. She graduated from Smith College in 1925 and enrolled in the Newark Museum, Newark, N. J., inaugural apprentice program where she studied under John Cotton Dana. After graduating she was hired at the Newark Museum in 1926 until Dana died in 1929. At the Newark Museum she met Holger Cahill, a curator, with whom she worked on exhibitions of progressive American art, particularly the 1934 “First Municipal Art Exhibition.” The exhibition caught the attention of Museum of Modern art director Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Barr hired her first as his assistant. In 1934 she was appointed curator–first curator on MoMA’s payroll. Cahill was appointed director of the Federal Works Progress Administration’s, Art Project in Washington in 1935 and asked Miller to join him, but Miller declined, calling her position at the Modern “best job in the museum world.” Barr changed her title to Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture and increasing her salary from $35.00 to $40.00 a week. She and Barr may have been amorously involved (Marquis). Miller mounted her first solo show in 1936, survey of WPA artists, ” New Horizons in American Art.” Her selections included the artists Arshile Gorky, Morris Graves and Willem de Kooning–the first museum show for each of these artists. The following year she launched an exhition on William Edmundson, the first black artist to be shown at the museum. Miller married Cahill in 1938. In 1942 she began the first of her shows highlighting American artists. Known as “Americans” the show included the then mostly unknown artists of disparate styles from the United States. The exhibition was designed to give a select group of artists, both abstract and figurative, display space in depth. The brief catalogs contained statements by the artists. Miller wanted artists to speak for themselves in these catalogs. The show was panned by the media. The museum’s trustees were appalled, some threatening to quit. Barr himself, who generally supported Miller, quietly tried to distance himself from it. Barr’s consternation was summed up during a subsequent show in her series when he quipped, “Congratulations, Dorothy. You’ve done it again. They all hate it.” After her “Americans 1942,” show, she mounted “American Realists and Magic Realists” in 1943, and “Fourteen Americans” in 1946. The 1946 show was notable for the inclusion of Arshile Gorky, Isamu Noguchi and Robert Motherwell. “Fifteen Americans” followed in 1952, containing the work of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. In 1956, her “Twelve Americans” introduced Larry Rivers and Grace Hartigan to the public. “Sixteen Americans” (1959) featured Frank Stella, Louise Nevelson, Jay de Feo, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Her final “Americans” show concluded in 1963 with Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Ellsworth Kelly, Cryssa, Lee Bontecou, Richard Lindner and Robert Indiana. The New York Times conservative art critic John Canaday, missing the importance, wrote that it answered “the 30-year-old question of what ever happened to vaudeville. It moved to the Museum of Modern Art.” Miller retired from the Modern in 1969 to work as a member of the art committee of Chase Manhattan Bank and as an art consultant to the Empire State Plaza, Albany, New York, Rockefeller University, the Inmont Corporation, Citibank, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and many private collectors. She served on the Board of the Rothko Foundation and the Hirshhorn Museum. In 1984, she was elected Honorary Trustee to the Board of the Museum of Modern Art. She wrote the catalog of Nelson Rockefeller’s modern art collection and authored Edward Hicks: His Peaceable Kingdom and Other Paintings, the latter with Eleanor Price Mather. Miller was responsible for pioneering exhibitions of modernist American artists, shows which she termed “Americans,” including the painters Jackson Pollock, Frank Stella and Jasper Johns. Her most influential show was “The New American Painting,” which toured Europe in 1958 and 1959, changing European perceptions of American art, and placing Abstract Expressionism at the fore of modernist art.

Selected Bibliography

[and Barr, Alfred H. Jr.]. American Realists and Magic Realists. New York: The Museum of Modern Art; 1943; [and Soby, James Thrall]. Romantic Painting in America. New York: The Museum of Modern Art; 1943; “Discovery and Rediscovery in American Art.” Art in America 33 no.4 (October 1945): 255-260; [first of her “Americans” show] Americans 1942: 18 Artists from 9 States. New York: The Museum of Modern Art; 1942; edited. Sixteen Americans, with Statements by the Artists and Others. New York: Museum of Modern Art/Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1959; edited. Americans 1963. New York: Museum of Modern Art/Garden City, NY, Distributed by Doubleday, 1963; and Lieberman, William S., and Barr, Alfred H. Jr. The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection: Masterpieces of Modern Art. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1981; and Rosenblum, Robert, and Severinghaus, J. Walter. Art at Work: The Chase Manhattan Collection. New York: Chase Manhattan Bank, 1984.

Sources

Lynes, Russell. Good Old Modern: an Intimate Portrait of the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Atheneum, 1973; Marquis, Alice Goldfarb. Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary for the Modern. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989, p. 139; Jeffers, Wendy. “Dorothy C. Miller: A Profile.” New England Antiques Journal. (May 1990): 38-39; Jeffers, Wendy. “Holger Cahill and American Art” Journal of the Archives of American Art 31, no. 4 (1991): 2-11; Zelevansky, Lynn. “Dorothy Miller’s Americans, 1942-1963.” Studies in Modern Art 4 (1994): 57-107; Kantor, Sybil Gordon. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the Intellectual Origins of the Museum of Modern Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002; personal correspondence, Wendy Jeffers, November 2011; [obituary:] Kimmelman, Michael. “Dorothy Miller Is Dead at 99: Discovered American Artists.” New York Times, July 12, 2003, p.16.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

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