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Costello, Jane

    Full Name: Costello, Jane

    Other Names:

    • Jane Costello Goldberg

    Gender: female

    Date Born: unknown

    Date Died: c. 1986

    Home Country/ies: United States

    Subject Area(s): Baroque, French (culture or style), French Renaissance-Baroque styles, and painting (visual works)


    Overview

    Poussin scholar and New York University professor of art history. Costello was raised in Brooklyn. She graduated from Erasmus Hall High School, Brooklyn, NY, and then Barnard College in 1940. She continued for graduate study at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, writing her dissertation under Walter F. Friedländer in 1951. In 1952 joined the faculty at New York University teaching undergraduates at the Washington Square campus. In 1953 she collaborated with the other baroque specialists on Poussin in the English language, Anthony Blunt and Ellis K. Waterhouse on volume three of Friedlaender’s catalogue raisonné of Poussin. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1954 for further study of Poussin. In 1960, Costello participated in one of the first televised lecture programs in art history, a joint venture with NYU and WCBS television, “Sunrise Semester.” Her taped program, which aired early in the morning was called “Outlines of the History of Art.” At her death, she willed works of African art were left to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from the collection of her husband. A Jane Costello Prize for excellence in the study of fine arts was established in her honor at the College of Arts and Sciences.She married Arthur I. Goldberg.


    Selected Bibliography

    [dissertation:] Nicolas Poussin and the Genesis of French Classicism. New York University, 1951; Nicolas Poussin: The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1975; and Friedlaender, Walter, and Blunt, Anthony, and Waterhouse, Ellis. Mythological subjects, part 3 of, Nicolas Poussin: Drawings, catalogue raisonné. London: Warburg Institute, 1953.


    Sources

    Shanley, John P. “Jane Costello Enjoys Her TV Assignment.” New York Times February 7, 1960; p. X13




    Citation

    "Costello, Jane." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/costelloj/.


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