One of the chief exponents of the iconographic interpretation of Dutch art emphasizing particularly that many seventeenth-century Dutch genre paintings were intended to have symbolic or emblematic meaning (Simiolus, 1968).
Selected Bibliography
and Luijten, Ger. Mirror of Everyday Life: Genreprints in the Netherlands, 1550-1700. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1997; “Erotica in vogelperspectief.” Simiolus 3 (1968): 22-72.
Sources
Burke, Peter. “Introduction: Carlo Ginzburg, Detective.” The Enigma of Piero: Piero della Francesca. London: Verso, 1985, p. 3.
Citation
"Jongh, Eddy de." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jonghe/.
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One of the chief exponents of the iconographic interpretation of Dutch art emphasizing particularly that many seventeenth-century Dutch genre paintings were intended to have symbolic or emblematic meaning (Simiolus, 1968).
Place Born: Dordrecht, Gemeente, South Holland, Netherlands
Home Country/ies: Netherlands
Overview
Director Centraal Museum Utrecht (1941-1951). De Jonge was born to a noble family. She was the daughter of Willem Adriaan de Jonge and Wilhelmina Naletta van Rappard. Her father died in her early youth. De Jonge attended high school at The Hague, where she had been living since 1894. Between 1904 and 1912, she studied Dutch language and literature at Leiden University. After her graduation she decided to specialize in art history under Willem Vogelsang at Utrecht University, where she became Vogelsang’s assistant in 1913. In the same year she was actively involved in the preparation of the Utrecht exhibition on early Dutch painting and sculpture. With Vogelsang and Nicolaas Beets, she coauthored the accompanying catalog, Tentoonstelling van Noord-Nederlansche schilder- en beeldhouwkunst voor 1575. In 1916 she obtained her doctoral degree with a dissertation on the history of the Dutch men’s costume in the first half of the sixteenth century. In 1917 De Jonge was appointed adjunct-commies tweede klasse at the Utrecht Municipal Archives under Samuel Muller Fz (1848-1922), who also was, until 1919, the director of the municipal museum collections in Utrecht. Muller was responsible for the setting up of the new Central Museum in the former Utrecht Agnieten monastery. De Jonge’s 1917 appointment was related with this project. In 1918 she, in addition, became an active member of the Rijkscommissie voor de Monumentenzorg and was charged with the description of monuments in the North-East of the province of Noord-Brabant. De Jonge obtained the position of curator of the Central Museum, under director Willem Schuylenburg, in 1920. Muller, however, kept the responsibility for the arrangement of the display of the objects in the building. Following the opening of the museum, in 1921, the general display of the objects was sharply criticized. Schuylenburg and De Jonge then rearranged the galleries and began to describe the collections. In 1928 the comprehensive catalog of the historical department appeared, Catalogus van het Historisch Museum der stad, Centraal Museum Utrecht, followed, in 1933, by the critical catalog of paintings, Centraal Museum Utrecht, Catalogus der Schilderijen. De Jonge had a special predilection for the Utrecht Old Masters. Between 1921 and 1938 no less than 27 paintings were added to the collection, including the famous Lochorst triptych of Jan van Scorel, on which De Jonge published a number of articles in Oud Holland and other periodicals. In 1938 her major study and oeuvre catalog on the Utrecht painter Paulus Moreelse appeared. De Jonge also broadened the costume collection, which became the subject of several publications, as a follow up to her dissertation. Before the outbreak of World War II, part of the museum collection was stored in several hiding-places. The museum soon reopened after having been closed during the German invasion, with a reduced display. In 1941, following Schuylenburg’s retirement, De Jonge was appointed director of the museum. In 1944 she was forced to mount an exhibition of modern art conforming to the ideology of the German occupation authorities. Later that year De Jonge took the initiative to evacuate a further part of the collection. The museum then remained closed for more than a year. After the war, De Jonge set up an active exhibition program. In 1951 she retired and moved to The Hague; she was succeeded by Elisabeth Houtzager (1907-2001). In 1952 De Jonge’s revision of the 1933 Catalogus der Schilderijen appeared. In the same year she was actively involved in the exhibition La leggenda del filo d’oro, organized by the Centro Internazionale delle Arti e del Costume in Venice. In the field of decorative arts, she published on Delft ceramics (1965) and Dutch tiles (1971). She died in 1972. De Jonge played an important role in the organization of the new Centraal Museum in Utrecht. The significance of her scholarly contribution to the documentation of the artworks in several critical catalogs is still recognized. Another important aspect of her directorship is her care for the objects during the war. The forced 1944 pro-German exhibition was never judged in post-war years an an act of collaboration.
Selected Bibliography
[complete bibliography:] Roodenburg, Marie-Cornélie. Jonkvrouwe dr. C. H. De Jonge, kunsthistorica (1886-1972), haar werk, haar leven. Mensen van vroeger 5/1 (1977): 11-15, and Marcus-de Groot, Yvette. Kunsthistorische vrouwen van weleer. Hilversum: Verloren, 2003, pp. 417-421; [dissertation:] Bijdrage tot de kennis van de Noord-Nederlandse costuumgeschiedenis in de eerste helft van de zestiende eeuw. 1. Het mannencostuum. University of Utrecht, 1916; and Vogelsang, W. and Beets, N. Tentoonstelling van Noord-Nederlansche schilder- en beeldhouwkunst voor 1575, Gebouw voor Kunsten en Wetenschappen Mariaplaats Utrecht 1913. Utrecht: s.n., 1913; and Weve, J. J., Ter Kuile, E. H., Ozinga, M. D., Haslinghuis, E. J. De provincie Noord-Brabant volume 10 of Voorloopige lijst der Nederlandsche monumenten van geschiedenis en kunst. The Hague: Algemeene landsdrukkerij, 1931; Nederlandsche beeldhouwkunst in de zeventiende eeuw. in, Van Gelder, H. E. And Duverger, J., eds, Kunstgeschiedenis der Nederlanden. Utrecht: De Haan, 1936, pp. 350-361; Paulus Moreelse, portret- en genreschilder te Utrecht 1571-1638. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1938; Delfts aardewerk. Rotterdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 1965, English, Delft Ceramics. New York: Praeger, 1970; Nederlandse tegels. Amsterdam: De Bussy, 1971, English, Dutch Tiles. New York: Praeger, 1971.
Sources
Roodenburg, Marie-Cornélie. Jonkvrouwe dr. C. H. De Jonge, kunsthistorica (1886-1972), haar werk, haar leven Mensen van vroeger 5/1 (1977): 1-24; Knol, Meta. omen en daden. Schuylenburg en de Jonge verzamelen onder voorbehoud, 1921-1951. in Bosma, M., ed., De verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum Utrecht, 6, Beeldende kunst 1850-2001. Utrecht: Centraal Museum, 2001, pp. 14-141; Marcus-de Groot, Yvette. Kunsthistorische vrouwen van weleer. De eerste generatie in Nederland voor 1921. Hilversum: Verloren, 2003, pp. 275-297.
Citation
"Jonge, Carla, Jkvr., de." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jongec/.
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Director Centraal Museum Utrecht (1941-1951). De Jonge was born to a noble family. She was the daughter of Willem Adriaan de Jonge and Wilhelmina Naletta van Rappard. Her father died in her early youth. De Jonge attended high school at The Hague,
Jones read classics at Oxford University and moved to Rome where he was research assistant to Professor Richard Krautheimer with whom he published the Diaries of Pope Alexander VII. After an MA at the Courtauld Institute in London, he became a lecturer at the University of Manchester in the UK. He published in many specialist journals and at his untimely death was due to take up a Fellowship at I Tatti.
Sources
Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 416
Citation
"Jones, Roger." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jonesr/.
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“The Archetypes of the Terence Miniatures.” Art Bulletin 10 (1927): 103-20. and Morey, Charles Rufus. The Miniatures of the Manscripts of Terence Prior to the Thirteenth Century. Illuminated Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, vols. 1-2. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1930-31.
Sources
KRG, 63 mentioned
Citation
"Jones, Leslie Webber." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jonesl/.
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Place Born: Hunslet, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, UK
Place Died: Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): Classical and sculpture (visual works)
Overview
Classical scholar; author books on sculpture. Jones was the son of Henry William Jones, a minister, and Margaret Lawrence Baker (Jones). After attending the Rossall School, he entered Balilol College, Oxford, in 1886 where he studied under Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893). He was awarded Craven and Derby scholarships to study in Greece in 1890. He returned to Trinity College as a tutor under Henry Francis Pelham (1846-1907). In 1894 he married Ileen Vaughn (d. 1931). The following year he published Select Passages from Ancient Writers Illustrative of the History of Greek Sculpture. In 1903 he suffered a breakdown because of overwork. As a change of pace and venue, Jones accepted the director position of the British School in Rome, which he held until 1905. After his return to England, Jones retired permanently to a country home near Tenby, Wales, though he remained an examiner for Trinity degrees. He published several Roman histories between 1908-1912. In 1911 Charles Cannan (1858-1919) of the Clarendon Press approached Jones about revising the Greek Lexicon written by Henry George Liddell (1811-1898) and Robert Scott (1811-1887). The following year Jones also began the general editorship for the catalogs of ancient sculpture in the municipal museums in Rome. When World War I was declared, Jones worked for the Foreign Office on the continent. After the war’s conclusion, Francis John Haverfield (1860-1919), the Camden Professor of Ancient History at Brasenose College, died and Jones succeeded him. In 1927 he was appointed Principal of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and in 1929 vice chancellor. He resigned his post on the orders of his physician in 1934. A festschrift number in the Journal of Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies in 1937 was presented in his honor.
Selected Bibliography
edited. A Catalogue of the Ancient Sculptures Preserved in the Municipal Collections of Rome: the Sculptures of the Palazzo dei Conservatori. 2 vols. Oxford: The Claredon Press, 1926; edited, A Catalogue of the Ancient Sculptures Preserved in the Municipal Collections of Rome: the Sculptures of the Museo Capitolino. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912; Classical Rome. London: Grant Richards Ltd., 1910; “The Historical Interpretation of the Reliefs of Trajan’s Column.” Papers of the British School at Rome 5 no. 7 (1910): 433-459; “Notes on Roman Historical Sculptures.” Papers of the British School at Rome 3, no. 2 (1905): 213-271; Select Passages from Ancient Writers Illustrative of the History of Greek Sculpture. London: Macmillan and Co., 1895.
Sources
“Sir Henry Stuart-Jones.” Times (London) June 30, 1939, p. 18.
Citation
"Jones, Henry Stuart." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jonesh/.
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Classical scholar; author books on sculpture. Jones was the son of Henry William Jones, a minister, and Margaret Lawrence Baker (Jones). After attending the Rossall School, he entered Balilol College, Oxford, in 1886 where he studied under Benjami
Place Died: Haverford, Lower Merion Township, Montgomery, PA, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): Classical
Career(s): curators
Overview
Classicist and curator of collections at The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1943-1983. Jones studied Classical Archaeology at Bryn Mawr University, receiving her B.A. in 1934. She participated in the excavation of the ancient city of Tarsus directed by archaeologist Hetty Goldman. In 1939 she joined Goldman as her assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study, a private research center near Princeton University. Jones began working part-time for the Princeton Art Museum in 1943, still assisting Goldman, but soon became a full-time member of the Museum staff. At that time, the staff consisted of herself; the director Professor Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., and a janitor-guard. Because of gas rationing during World War II, Mather only came to Princeton once a week, leaving Jones essentially in charge. As both a secretary and assistant curator of Classical art, Jones cataloged the Museum’s holdings and researched objects from all areas of art. She became curator of Classical art in 1946. Jones’ 1950 chapter on the pottery of the Tarsus dig was published Hellenistic and Roman Pottery from Tarsus, in Excavations at Gözlü Kule, Tarsus I, and accepted by Goldman as her dissertation from Bryn Mawr in 1952. She joined the Princeton archaeological expedition to Sicily in 1955 and 1959, and was a visiting member of the excavations at Curium, Cyprus, under the sponsorship of the University of Pennsylvania, and Aphrodisias, Turkey, directed by New York University. Jones was one of the American correspondents for Fasti Archaeologici beginning in 1955, a journal compilation of articles in archaeology. She was a founding editor of the Record of The Art Museum. Jones attended the month meetings of the Archaeology Club, an informal group of classical art historians, whose ranks included Dorothy Kent Hill of the Walters Gallery, Homer Thompson (1906-2000) and his wife Dorothy Burr Thompson of the Institute for Advanced Study, Otto J. Brendel of Columbia University and his wife, Maria, and Evelyn B. Harrison. A second publication, Ancient Art in the Art Museum, Princeton University, appeared in 1960. She was promoted to curator of collections at The Gallery in 1971. Jones retired at age seventy in 1983 and was succeeded by Robert Guy. She lived at the Quadrangle retirement community in Haverford, PA, where she died sixteen years later.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] “The Pottery”, Chapter 6 of, Goldman, Hetty, ed. Excavations at Gözlü Kule, Tarsus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950,[Bryn Mawr, 1950]; Ancient Art in the Art Museum, Princeton University. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960.
Sources
Rosenbaum, Allen. “Forward.” Greek Sculpture in The Art Museum, Princeton University, Greek Originals, Roman Copies and Variants. Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1994; [obituaries:] “Art Museum Curator Frances Follin Jones Dies.” Princeton University Office of Communications. http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/99/q1/0219-jones.htm.
Citation
"Jones, Frances Follin." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jonesf/.
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Classicist and curator of collections at The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1943-1983. Jones studied Classical Archaeology at Bryn Mawr University, receiving her B.A. in 1934. She participated in the excavation of the ancient city of Tarsus dir
Turner scholar and gallery director. Joll was the son of Cecil Augustus Joll (1886-1945), senior surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital, and Laura Meriel Winsloe (Joll) (d. 1931). Joll graduated from Eton College in 1938 where his teachers included Geoffrey Agnew (1908-1986). In 1943 Joll served with the British army (60th rifle unit) rising to the rank of second lieutenant in 1944, finishing out his posting in Greece in 1945. A 1946 offer at Magdalen College, Oxford to study history allowed him an early discharge. At Oxford he studied under the historians A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990) and A. Raymond Carr (b. 1919). Joll graduated in 1949 and married Pamela Sybil Kingzett (b. 1925), the niece of Colin Agnew (1882-1975), a director of the proprietary art gallery Thos. Agnew & Sons. Joll joined Agnews the same year, remaining there his entire career. He become a director of Agnews in 1955. Joll was in charge of the annual watercolor exhibition at Agnews which brought him into contact with the works on paper of J. M. W. Turner. Agnews mounted important Turner exhibitions under Joll in 1951, 1967, and 1979. In 1962 Joll and Martin Butlin, assistant keeper of the Tate Gallery, began work on a catalogue raisonné of Turner’s paintings. Butlin wrote on the pictures of the Turner bequest (then in the Tate and National galleries and the British Museum), and Joll on the paintings dispersed by Turner during his lifetime. The Turner bicentenary exhibition at the Royal Academy of 1974-5 at the Burlington House revitalized international interest in the artist. In 1977 Joll and Butlin’s The Paintings of J. M. W. Turner appeared. Joll succeeded Geoffrey Agnew, who had initially recommended him in 1949, as chairman of Agnews in 1982. Bultin and Joll continued to advise on the Turner exhibitions, including Paris (Grand Palais, 1983-4) and Tokyo and Kyoto in 1986. Joll retired as a director of Agnews in 1994. In 1996 he helped organized the large Turner exhibition in Canberra and Melbourne, Australia. In 2001 he, Butlin and Luke Herrmann edited The Oxford Companion to J. M. W. Turner. His manuscript for the watercolor and drawing collection of the Cecil Higgins Museum, Bedford, UK, was completed shortly before his death of a pulmonary embolism. He was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea off the Yar estuary, Isle of Wight, where he had a summer home. Joll’s catalog of the works of Turner remains the exhaustive work on the artist, rescuing an artist who had fallen into an uneven reputation (Clive Bell had referred to Turner as “that old vulgarian”). Joll’s principal interest was establishing a list of the authentic Turners. Joll’s 210 works were scattered throughout the world (Butlin’s 318 were entirely in England). The catalog won critical acclaim. In 1978 it was awarded the first Mitchell prize for art history.
Selected Bibliography
and Butlin, Martin. The paintings of J. M. W. Turner. 2 vols. New Haven: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art/Tate Gallery/Yale University Press, 1977; Cecil Higgins Art Gallery: Watercolours and Drawings. Bedford, UK: Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, 2002; and Lord, Michael. Turner [exhibition catalog] Canberra, ACT: National Gallery of Australia/Thames and Hudson, 1996.
Sources
Plomer, William G. “Joll, (Dowrish) Evelyn Louis, 1925-2001.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; [obituaries:] Millar, Oliver. “Evelyn Joll.” The Independent (London) April 2, 2001, p. 6; Egerton, Judy. “Evelyn Joll: Art Dealer and Eminent Scholar of the Paintings of Turner.” The Guardian (London), April 11, 2001, p. 20.
Citation
"Joll, Evelyn Louis." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jolle/.
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Turner scholar and gallery director. Joll was the son of Cecil Augustus Joll (1886-1945), senior surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital, and Laura Meriel Winsloe (Joll) (d. 1931). Joll graduated from Eton College in 1938 where his teachers included Ge
Subject Area(s): American (North American), prints (visual works), and twentieth century (dates CE)
Career(s): curators
Overview
Scholar of 20th-century American prints and Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Brooklyn Museum from 1941 until 1969. Johnson received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in art history and literature in 1928. She began work at the Cleveland Museum of Art, earning an M.A. degree from Western Reserve University in Cleveland (today Case Western Reserve) in 1937. The previous year she moved to Brooklyn, NY, to an assistant curator of prints at the Brooklyn Museum under Carl O. Schniewind. In 1941 she succeeded Schniewind as curator. In 1943 she organized the first annual National print exhibition, an event which would lead the Museum into international prominence. The following year Johnson published a monograph on the print dealer Ambrose Vollard, Ambroise Vollard, éditeur, 1867-1939. The book remained a significant scholarly examination of the most important print dealer of the 20th-century. It was reissued as part of a large exhibition of the dealer and publisher’s work in 1977 Johnson continued to build European works on paper, expanding the collection to include work of twentieth-century American artists. She was an early curator to support American printmaking. She retired from the Museum in 1969. Johnson was named curator emeritus in 1973. In 1980 she wrote the first survey of American prints, American Prints and Printmakers: a Chronicle of Over 400 Artists and their Prints from 1900 to the Present.
Selected Bibliography
Ambroise Vollard, éditeur, 1867-1939, an Appreciation and Catalogue. New York: Wittenborn, 1944, republished as Ambroise Vollard, éditeur: Prints, Books, Bronzes. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1977; 20th Century Drawings. New York: Bonanza Books, 1964; American Prints and Printmakers: a Chronicle of Over 400 Artists and their Prints from 1900 to the Present. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980; Isabel Bishop: Prints and Drawings, 1925-1964. Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum, 1964; “Part I: 1939-1970.” of, Karl Schrag: a Catalogue Raisonné of the Graphic Works. Syracuse, NY,:School of Art, Syracuse University, 1971; and Rothko, Mark. Milton Avery: Prints and Drawings, 1930-1964. Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum of Art/Shorewood Publishers, 1966.
Sources
“The Beginnings of the Print Council of America.” Zigrosser, Carl. A World of Art and Museums. Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1975, p. 294ff; “Brooklyn Museum Department of Prints and Drawings.” http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/departments/prints-drawings-and-photographs/; [obituary:] Smith, Roberta. “Una E. Johnson, 91, An Expert on Prints Who Led a Museum.” New York Times May 5, 1997, p. B11.
Citation
"Johnson, Una E.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/johnsonu/.
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Scholar of 20th-century American prints and Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Brooklyn Museum from 1941 until 1969. Johnson received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in art history and literature in 1928. She began work at the Clevelan
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Modern (style or period), and sculpture (visual works)
Career(s): curators
Overview
Architect and first curator of the department of architecture of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1932. Johnson was the son of a wealthy Cleveland attorney Homer M. Johnson, and an equally wealthy and cultured mother, Louise Pope (Johnson). He entered Harvard in 1923 without taking the qualifying exam. The following year his father divided a large amount of his fortune between his children, his daughters receiving cash, and Philip given stock in Alcoa Aluminum. This was the source of a lifelong financial independence. Troubled by his emerging homosexuality, Johnson suffered several psychological breakdowns while at Harvard, intermittently traveling to Europe. Toward the end of his Harvard years (he finally graduated in 1930 with a degree in classics), two events changed his life. At about the same time, Johnson met Alfred H. Barr, Jr., a graduate student at Harvard who had just accepted the directorship of the Museum of Modern Art, and Johnson read an article by another Harvard student, Henry-Russell Hitchcock on the subject of modern architecture. Johnson may have been amorously attached to these men as well. Barr saw in Johnson’s wealth and enthusiasm the perfect person to lead a department of architecture in his new museum. Johnson and Hitchcock traveled to Germany in 1930 to study modern architecture for the Museum of Modern art. He returned with enthusiasm for modern architecture and, somewhat ironically, a glowing view of Adolf Hitler. In 1932, Johnson mounted the exhibition “The International Style,” with a catalog written by Hitchcock, who had coined the term, for the Museum. The exhibition was responsible for bringing modern architecture as a style to the minds of the United States’ public. Johnson left MoMA in 1934 to return to Ohio as a political activist. He and a friend, Alan Blackburn, worked for populist and fascist candidates in America such as Huey P. Long, the senator from Louisiana, and, after Long’s assassination, the Detroit radio broadcaster Father Charles E. Coughlin (famous for characterizing Roosevelt’s “New Deal” in anti-Semitic terms as the “Jew Deal”). Johnson returned to Germany to study the Nazi successes. He attended a Hitler rally in Potsdam in 1938, the co-called Sommerkurs für Ausländer in Berlin. His roommate was the journalist William Shirer (1904-1993), later author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Johnson followed the German army into Poland after the German attack in 1939, writing “We saw Warsaw burn and Modlin being bombed…It was a stirring spectacle.” In the United States, he helped organize a fascist party. In 1942, with the country deeply engaged in the war fighting fascism, Johnson decided to train as an architect, enrolling at Harvard’s graduate school of design. The school was led by the modernists architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. However, Johnson was closer to Mies van der Rohe. Johnson graduated in 1943, served in the U.S. Army, and after the war attempted to practice architecture on his own. Barr took Johnson back a his head of MoMA’s architecture department. He was joined in the department of decorative arts by Mildred Constantine. In 1947 Johnson mounted a show on Mies van der Rohe. In 1952, Johnson designed the sculpture garden for the museum (though later altered, refurbished in 2004 to its original design). In 1954 Johnson left the museum again in 1954 to return to practicing architecture. Between 1967 and 1991 he partnered with John Burgee to design many of the large buildings for which he is famous. These include a number of New York office buildings and the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art at Dumbarton Oaks in Washgington, D. C. In 1988, in his mid nineties, Johnson returned to curation at MoMA with an exhibition on “Deconstructivist Architecture,” highlighting the work of Frank Gehry and others. Johnson died in his most famous residential architectural work, his Glass House at New Canaan, Connecticut, designed in the mid 1960s. Flamboyantly gay, his relationships were never a secret. His partner of the final forty years of his life was David Whitney. Johnson’s architecture has been criticized for being overly style conscious and indeed his building designs seemed to change with every new architectural fashion. His commissions comprised some of the most important ones in the United States. Peter Eisenman, in an introduction to Johnson’s Writings (1979) wrote that Johnson’s architecture was the “ideal model of a more perfect society.” Neither his designs or his architectural writing indicate a concern for the social or practical aspects of modern architecture.
Selected Bibliography
and Hitchcock, Henry Russell. The International Style: Architecture Since 1922. New York: W. W. Norton/Museum of Modern Art, 1932; Mies van der Rohe. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1947; Lewis, Hilary, and O’Connor, John, eds. Philip Johnson: the Architect in his Own Words. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1994; and Sombart, Werner. Weltanschauung, Science, and Economy. New York: Veritas Press, 1939; Eisenman, Peter, and Stern, Robert A. M, eds. [Philip Johnson] Writings. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979; and Wigley, Mark. Deconstructivist architecture: the Museum of Modern Art, New York. New York: Little, Brown/New York Graphic Society Books, 1988.
Sources
Philip Johnson and the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art /Harry N. Abrams, 1998; Schulze, Franz. Philip Johnson: a Biography. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1994; Marquis, Alice Goldfarb. Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary for the Modern. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989, p. 84; [obituaries:] Saint, Andrew. “Philip Johnson: Flamboyant Postmodern Architect whose Career was Marred by a Flirtation with Nazism.” The Guardian (London) January 29, 2005, p. 25; The Washington Post February 2, 2005, p. A23; Applebaum, Anne. “Remembering Philip Johnson.” The Guardian (London) January 29, 2005, p. 25.
Citation
"Johnson, Philip." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/johnsonp/.
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Architect and first curator of the department of architecture of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1932. Johnson was the son of a wealthy Cleveland attorney Homer M. Johnson, and an equally wealthy and cultured mother, Louise Pope (Johnson). He
