Skip to content

B

Boutelle, Sara

Full Name: Boutelle, Sara Holmes

Gender: female

Date Born: 29 January 1909

Date Died: 26 May 1999

Place Born: Aberdeen, Brown, SD, USA

Place Died: Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre)

Career(s): art historians

Institution(s): The Brearley School


Overview

Architectural historian and early scholar of female architects who produced the major study of Julia Morgan. Sara Boutelle graduated from Mount Holyoke College. Her education also included the Sorbonne Université and Universität Hamburg. She taught art and architecture at a private all-girls school in New York City, the Brearley School, until her retirement in 1973. During a pleasure visit to the castle-mansion of W. R. Hearst (1863-1951) near San Simeon, CA, Boutelle discovered the building’s female architect had been identified only as Hearst’s private secretary. Julia Morgan (1872-1957), a pioneering architect and the first woman licensed to practice architecture in California, conceived the Hearst Castle. Frustrated by the negligence of the state in identifying the work of Morgan and other female architects, Boutelle subsequently moved to California and began reconstructing Morgan’s legacy. During this time, she published book reviews in the AIA journal. In 1988, Boutelle published her biography, Julia Morgan, Architect, which revealed Morgan’s life and architectural production and reflected the rise of female architects at the beginning of the century. The book won the California Book Award Silver Medal in 1989. Following the success of her book, Boutelle lectured at UC Santa Cruz and contributed to architectural preservation in Santa Cruz. Affirming Boutelle’s dedication as a historian, lecturer, and preservationist, the American Institute of Architects made Boutelle an honorary member, the highest award given to a non-architect in 1991. Boutelle died in Santa Cruz, California, in 1999.


Selected Bibliography

  • “Architecture of the Nineteenth Century in Europe.” Architecture: The AIA Journal, no. 9 (September 1984): 93–94;
  • “Renaissance Paris: Architecture and Growth, 1475-1600.” Architecture: The AIA Journal, no. 9 (September 1985):161;
  • Julia Morgan, Architect. New York: Abbeville Press, 1995.

Sources

  • Boutelle, Sara Holmes. “Morgan, Julia (1872-1957), architect.” American National Biography. 1 Feb. 2000;
  • Honan, William. “Sara Boutelle, Architectural Historian, 90.” New York Times, 1999;
  • Roth, Leland M. “Julia Morgan, Architect by Sara Holmes Boutelle.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 48, no. 3 (1989): 297–99;
  • Sara Holmes Boutelle Papers, Online Archive of California. https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt7g5027xh/entire_text/

Archives


Contributors: Siyu Chen


Citation

Siyu Chen. "Boutelle, Sara." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/boutelles/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Architectural historian and early scholar of female architects who produced the major study of Julia Morgan. Sara Boutelle graduated from Mount Holyoke College. Her education also included the Sorbonne Universit

Brown, Alice Van Vechten

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Full Name: Brown, Alice Van Vechten

Other Names:

  • Alice Brown

Gender: female

Date Born: 07 June 1862

Date Died: 16 October 1949

Place Born: Hanover, Grafton, NH, USA

Place Died: Middletown, Monmouth, NJ, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Contemporary (style of art) and museology

Career(s): art historians

Institution(s): Wellesley College


Overview

Establisher of the first Art History program and Art Museology courses in the United States. Alice Van Vechten Brown was the daughter of Samuel Gilman Brown (1813-1885), a professor at Dartmouth College and former president of Hamilton College, and Sarah Van Vechten (Brown)(1819-1893). Her grandfather Francis Brown was the third president of Dartmouth College. From 1881 to 1885, Brown studied at Art Students League, New York, under William M. Chase, the founder of the Parsons School of Design. Brown continued her training as a painter abroad and exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants, Paris. She returned to the U.S. and worked as the assistant director and the director of the Norwich Art School, Connecticut, from 1891 to 1897. During this period, Brown developed the “Laboratory Method” of teaching art history. She insisted on the hands-on approach of appreciating artworks by practicing the studio technique and introduced this method to Wellesley College when she was hired to be a Professor of Art in 1897. Brown’s innovation quickly prevailed among other schools and became known as the “Wellesley Method.” As the head of the Department of Art, Brown led Wellesley to become the first American college to offer an Art History major in 1900. She worked with Myrtilla Avery to initiate the first Art Museology course in 1910. In 1926 Brown hired Alfred H. Barr to teach the first courses in contemporary art in America. Later as the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Barr spoke highly of the Wellesley Art History program, commenting that the multidepartmental plan at MoMA consisted of “simply the subject headings of the Wellesley course.” Receiving suggestion from Bernhard Berenson, F. Mason Perkins, and Frank J. Mather, Brown published her only book A Short History of Italian Painting in 1926. She was succeeded by Myrtilla Avery in 1929.  She died in1949 in Middletown, New Jersey.


Selected Bibliography

  • [and Rankin, William] A Short History of Italian Painting, London: J.M. Dent & sons, 1926;

Sources

  • Gustafson, Eleanor H. “A New Look for the Davis at Wellesley.” Magazine Antiques 183, no. 6, (November 2016): 136;
  • Kantor Sybil Gordon. 2002. Alfred H. Barr Jr. and the Intellectual Origins of the Museum of Modern Art. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press, 2002, p.91;
  • Leonard John William, Editor. Woman’s Who’s Who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada. New York: American Commonwealth Co;
  • Nersessian, Sirarpie Der. “The Direct Approach in the Study of Art History.” College Art Journal 1, no. 3 (1942): 55;
  • Sherman, Claire Richter. “Women Librarians as Interpreters of the Visual Arts.” ARLIS/NA Newsletter 9, no. 5 (1981): 186.;


Contributors: Siyu Chen


Citation

Siyu Chen. "Brown, Alice Van Vechten." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/browna/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Establisher of the first Art History program and Art Museology courses in the United States. Alice Van Vechten Brown was the daughter of Samuel Gilman Brown (1813-1885), a professor at Dartmouth College and former president of Hamilton College, an

Brettell, Richard

Image Credit: Art News

Full Name: Brettell, Richard Robson

Other Names:

  • Rick Brettell

Gender: male

Date Born: 17 January 1949

Date Died: 24 July 2020

Place Born: Rochester, Monroe, NY, USA

Place Died: Dallas, TX, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Institution(s): Art Institute of Chicago and University of Texas at Dallas


Overview

Brettell was born in Rochester, New York.  When he was eight his family moved to Denver, Colorado, and spent his formative years there. He entered Yale University, intent on studying molecular biophysics until hearing professor George Kubler speak, changing his mind to study art history. Brettell received his Bachelor’s and Master’s, degrees from Yale. At Yale, Brettell met Zoe Caroline Bieler (b. 1950), a graduate student in cultural anthropology, who he married in 1973. He mounted his first art installation, a photography exhibition at Yale, the same year. The couple lived in Paris and Portugal for more than a year, supporting Caroline’s dissertation fieldwork.

Brettell joined the faculty at the University of Texas in 1976 while still pursuing his Ph.D.. His dissertation was accepted at Yale on the topic of “Pissaro and Pontoise,” under the supervision of the Impressionist scholar Anne Coffin Hanson. Always more interested in museum work than academics, Brettell moved to the Art Institute of Chicago as the Searle Curator of European Painting in 1980. His Impressionist exhibition, A Day in the Country, Impressionism and the French Landscape, 1984, established his reputation as a curator. In 1988, Brettell launched a similar, widely hailed exhibition, a Gauguin retrospective, at the Institute and the National Gallery of Art. The same year he returned to Texas to become the McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. There he founded an initiative for the arts of Latin America and Africa and a fundraising campaign for a new museum wing for the museum.

His museum career took a dramatic change in 1992, however, when he was arrested in a police sting operation to clear the parks of gay meetups. In the wake of this, the Dallas Museum voted narrowly to fire him. The action brought a groundswell of protest from professional societies and the ACLU. Brettell worked privately as a museum consultant advising museums such as the Portland (Oregon) Museum of Art and was instrumental in developing the Millennium Gift of the Sara Lee Collection, an art collection dispersed to twenty museums in 1998.

That year he was appointed the Margaret McDermott Distinguished Chair in Art and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas, Dallas. For UT Dallas he developed a large endowment to establish the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History and a building to house it. He returned to museum exhibition work in 2000 with the show Impression: Painting Quickly in France 1860–1890, which travelled to the National Gallery, London, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown MA.  Brettell convinced his chair namesake, Margaret McDermott (1912-2018), to create a $150,000 bi-annual lifetime achievement in the arts award, founded in 2017, named the Richard Brettell Award in the Arts. In 2018 he guided a collection of Swiss 19th/early 20th-century art works to the University, including masterworks by Ferdinand Hodler. Bretell brought the extensive Crow Collection of Asian Art to UTD and 23 million dollars to build a museum to house it.  He died in 2020, working on a project to develop the Institute for the Study of American Art in China (ISAAC) at Nanjing University, after a long battle with prostate cancer.  A memorial fund was established in his honor.

Immensely erudite, opinionated, frank, a raconteur, and an “emotional lover of beauty and gossip,” (CAA) Brettell was admired by his institutions but could be fierce with individuals.  His publications were largely museum exhibition catalogs and journal articles.  Although his career began and ended as university faculty, he directed most of his abilities toward museum work.  He supervised fifteen dissertations from 2009 until 2020.


Selected Bibliography

  • A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape.. Los Angeles County Museum of Art/Art Institute of Chicago.  Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984;
  • The Art of Paul Gauguin. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1988;
  • and Pissarro, Joachim.  Pissarro and Pontoise: the Painter in a Landscape New Haven : Yale University Press, 1990;
  • The Impressionist and the City: Pissarro’s Series Paintings.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992
  • Modern Art, 1851-1929: Capitalism and Representation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999;
  • Impression: Painting Quickly in France 1860–1890.  London (National Gallery), Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum) and Williamstown MA (Clark Art Institute) 2000–01;
  • “Murder, Autopsy, or Dissection? Art history Divides Artists into Parts: the Cases of Edgar Degas and Claude Monet.”  in, Haxthausen, Charles Werner, ed.  The Two art Histories: the Museum and the University.  Williamstown, Ma : Sterling and Francis Clark Art Institute, 2002;
  • Pissarro’s People. San Francisco (Legion of Honor) and Williamstown MA (Clark Art Institute) 2011–2012

Sources

  • [obituaries:]  Erickson, Bethany.. “Former DMA Director Richard Brettell Dies at 71.” Newsbank/Texas News Sources;
  • “In Memoriam: Richard Brettell.”  CAA press release, August 13, 2020;
  • Who’s Who in American Art, 2009.  New Providence, NJ: Marquis, 2008. P. 157;


Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Brettell, Richard." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/brettellr/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Brettell was born in Rochester, New York.  When he was eight his family moved to Denver, Colorado, and spent his formative years there. He entered Yale University, intent on studying molecular biophysics until hearing professor

Baticle, Jeannine

Full Name: Jeannine Baticle

Gender: female

Date Born: 1920

Date Died: 2014

Subject Area(s): eighteenth century (dates CE), painting (visual works), and Spanish (culture or style)


Overview

Specialist in Spanish painting;;curator of painting at Louvre Museum; co-authored the Propyläen Kunstgeschichte volume on eighteenth-century art with Harald Keller.






Citation

"Baticle, Jeannine." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/baticlej/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Specialist in Spanish painting;;curator of painting at Louvre Museum; co-authored the Propyläen Kunstgeschichte volume on eighteenth-century art with Harald Keller.

Burmeister, Werner

Full Name: Burmeister, Werner

Gender: male

Date Born: 26 June 1895

Date Died: 30 November 1945

Place Born: Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany

Place Died: Hamburg, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): antisemitism and National Socialism

Institution(s): Universität Hamburg


Overview

Nazi art historian; director of the Kunstgeschichtliche Seminar, Universität Hamburg  (Art History Seminar at the University of Hamburg); responsible for the exile of many Jewish art historians.






Citation

"Burmeister, Werner." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/burmeisterw/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Nazi art historian; director of the Kunstgeschichtliche Seminar, Universität Hamburg  (Art History Seminar at the University of Hamburg); responsible for the exile of many Jewish art historians.

Brizio, Anna Maria

Image Credit: Wikidata

Full Name: Brizio, Anna Maria

Other Names:

  • A.M. Brizio

Gender: female

Date Born: 19 September 1902

Date Died: 01 August 1982

Place Born: Sale, Alessandria, Piedmont, Italy

Place Died: Rapallo, Genova, Liguria, IItaly

Home Country/ies: Italy

Subject Area(s): Italian (culture or style), Medieval (European), and Modern (style or period)

Institution(s): Università degli Studi di Milano and Università degli Studi di Torino


Overview

Italian art historian and Professor of medieval and modern art at University of Turin and University of Milan; Scholar of Leonardo da Vinci.

Anna Maria Brizio was born in 1902 in Sale d’Alessandria, Italy. Brizio attended the University of Turin along with fellow Italian historian and art critic, Lionello Venturi. Brizio received her A.B. in 1923 from the University of Turin with a thesis on Defendente Ferrari da Chivasso, at the time she was still focused on the classical painters of the past. After graduation, she attended the Graduate School of Art History at the University of Rome, founded by Lionello Venturi’s father, Adolfo Venturi. Venturi and Brizio eventually collaborated to organize the first exhibition of the Gualino collection in the Regia Pinacoteca di Torino in the 1930s. They also participated in research to support the publication of Italian paintings in America. Brizio’s participation in the “Gualino exhibition” sparked her interest in contemporary art. She found it important to evaluate 19thcentury art with an understanding of the history that underlines contemporary art, especially noting the Impressionist movement, which few in Italy had done.

She then began focusing on Italian painters of the Renaissance, starting with Gaudenzio Ferrari, and then turning her focus to Paolo Veronese. Brizio furthered her connection with the Venturi’s when she became a collaborator for their magazine, L’Arte. She was the editor of L’Arte from 1930 to 1938. Once the Venturis’ moved away from their magazine, Brizio began her project for U.T.E.T., an Italian publishing company, which was Ottocento Novecento. It was the last volume of the universal history of art series published by U.T.E.T, but was the first to be published in the late 1930s. It was also considered part of a nationalistic approach that highlighted Italian painting in the 19th century. In 1939 she published one of her most famous works, Nineteenth and Twentieth Century. This book addressed the fascist regime. Starting in 1946, she taught History of medieval and modern art at the University of Turin. While she taught at Turin she directed the Galleria Sabauda (1936-1947), organized exhibitions, and collaborated with the UTET Great Encyclopedic Dictionary. Her contributions to the UTET are considered some of her most important contributions to 20th century historical-artistic studies. Later, Brizio began to focus on Leonardo da Vinci, culminating in the Selected Writings of Leonardo da Vinci in 1952. Brizio transferred to the University of Milan to be the chair of Medieval and Modern Art in 1957. She was also an important scholar of Leonardo da Vinci, also editing Leonardo da Vinci’s “Treaty of Painting.” During this time, she was urged to publish a second edition of her Ottocento Novecento,  but she became more interested in abstract expressions and the relationship between art and human life. She retired in 1979 but remained as chair to the Corrente Foundation, which highlighted the period of time in art history when the Corrente Movement was developed. Brizio died August 1st, 1982 in Rapallo, Italy.


Selected Bibliography

  • For the fourth centenary of the birth of Paolo Caliari, known as Paolo Veronese. Notes for a critical definition of Paolo Veronese’s style, L’arte. 1928;
  • Vercelli. Roma: Libreria dello stato. 1935;
  • The Catalog of Art and Antiquities of the city of Vercelli. 1935;
  • Nineteenth century Twentieth century. 1939;
  • Ottocento e Novecento, Torino, 1939;
  • Bibliographic note of recent Italian studies on topics of Spanish and Italian-Spanish painting , in Italy and Spain. Essays on the historical, philosophical and artistic relations between the two civilizations , edited by the National Institute for cultural relations with foreign countries, Le Monnier, Florence. 1941;
  • Painting in Piedmont from the Romanesque age to the sixteenth century. 1942;
  • The Selected Lives of Giorgio Vasari. 1948;
  • The Selected Writings of Leonardo da Vinci. 1952;
  • Il Trattato della Pittura di L., in Scritti di Storia dell’Arte in onore di Lionello Venturi, Roma, 1956;
  • Leonardo’s Treatise on Painting , De Luca, Rome 1956
  • [and Giovanni D’Enrico], in Atti e Memorie del Congresso di Varallo Sesia, Torino, 1960;
  • [and Maria Vittoria Brugnoli, André Chastel, and Ladislao Reti.] Leonardo the artist. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1980;
  • [and Reti, Ladislao, Emil M. Bührer, Augusto Marinoni, Maria Vittoria Brugnoli, Emanuel Winternitz, Ludwig H. Heydenreich, and Bern Dibner]. The unknown Leonardo. 1974;

Sources

  • Brizio, Anna Maria. Giornata Di Studio in Ricordo Di Anna Maria Brizio, 1902-1982, Nel Centenario Della Nascita: Atti. Sale: Associazione ex Allievi/e Istituto Sacro Cuore, 2002.
  • Leonardi, Miriam Giovanna. “Ottocento Novecento” Di Anna Maria Brizio. Varianti Critiche E Redazionali (1939-1944-1962).” Annali Della Scuola Normale Superiore Di Pisa. Classe Di Lettere E Filosofia 3, no. 2 (2011): 527-637; (article);
  • Lodovici, Sergio. Storici, teorici e critici delle arti figurative : 1800-1940. – Rome: Tosi, 1942. – (Enciclopedia biografica e bibliografica italiana ; 4);
  • Chi scrive : repertorio bio-bibliografico e per specializzazioni degli scrittori italiani. – 2. ed. aggiornata. – Milan: Ist. librario editoriale, 1962;
  • Dizionario generale degli autori italiani contemporanei. – Florence : Vallecchi, 1974. – 2 v;
  • Fra Rinascimento, manierismo e realtà: scritti di storia dell’arte in memoria di Anna Maria Brizio. – Florence: Giunti Barbèra, 1984;
  • Dizionario biografico delle donne lombarde 568 – 1968. – Milan : Baldini & Gastoldi, 1995;
  • Rosci, M. “Leonardo “filosofo”. Lomazzo e Borghini 1584: due linee di tradizione dei pensieri e precetti di Leonardo sull’arte in Fra Rinascimento Manierismo e Realtà. Scritti di storia dell’arte in memoria di Anna Maria Brizio;”


Contributors: Arden Schraff


Citation

Arden Schraff. "Brizio, Anna Maria." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/brizioa/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Italian art historian and Professor of medieval and modern art at University of Turin and University of Milan; Scholar of Leonardo da Vinci.

Anna Maria Brizio was born in 1902 in Sale d’Alessandria, Italy. Brizio attended the University of

Boothe, Louise Worthington

Full Name: Boothe, Louise Worthington

Other Names:

  • Louise W Boothe
  • Louise W. Boothe
  • Louise Worthington
  • Louise Boothe

Gender: female

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: April 1974

Place Died: Funchal, Ilha da, Madeira, Portugal

Home Country/ies: Canada and Switzerland

Subject Area(s): Moroccan


Overview

Scholar of Moorish and Moroccan art; librarian at the public library of Toronto. Boothe was also a member of the ALA (American Library Association) and served on its Adult Education Roundtable in the 1940s. During her life, she lived in Canada and Geneva, Switzerland.


Selected Bibliography

  • “Madame Rossignol.” The North American Review 228, no. 3 (1929): 367-75.;
  • “The evolution of Moorisch Art”. Gazette Des Beaux-Arts / Fondée Par Charles Blanc. 6: 113-122, 1945;
  • Luce, Stephen B., and Alexei Okladnikov. “Archaeological Digest.” American Journal of Archaeology 50, no. 3 (1946): 405-20. doi:10.2307/499462, 1946;
  • “The Medersas of Morocco”. Gazette Des Beaux-Arts / Fondée Par Charles Blanc. 5-36, 1950;
  • Venetian night. New York: Vantage Press, 1966;

Sources



Contributors: Eleanor Ross


Citation

Eleanor Ross. "Boothe, Louise Worthington." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/boothel/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Scholar of Moorish and Moroccan art; librarian at the public library of Toronto. Boothe was also a member of the ALA (American Library Association) and served on its Adult Education Roundtable in the 1940s. During her life, she lived in Canada and Ge

Bondil, Nathalie

Image Credit: Blooloop

Full Name: Bondil, Nathalie

Gender: female

Date Born: 19 February 1967

Place Born: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Home Country/ies: Canada and France

Subject Area(s): Canadian and Québécois (culture or style)

Institution(s): Montreal Museum of Fine Arts


Overview

Director and chief curator of the Montreal Museum of Arts. Nathalie Bondil was born in Barcelona on February 19th, 1967, and raised in Morocco. She obtained her degree in museology and art history with specializations in sculpture and 19th century to modern art from the École du Louvre in 1992, before matriculating to l’Institut national du patrimoine, a French academy that trains curators and conservators, in 1994. In 1996, she graduated with a diploma certifying her as a “conservateur du patrimoine” (heritage curator), with a specialization in art and civilization from 18th-20th century Europe. For two years following graduation, Bondil was a curator at Musée des Monuments français in Paris. There, Bondil was in charge of museography for galleries dedicated to the 17th-20th centuries.

Following this, Guy Cogeval, the then director of the Montreal Museum of Arts (MMFA), hired Bondil in 1999 to curate European art from the 19th to mid 20th century, prompting her move from France to Canada. Only a year passed before she was promoted to MMFA’s chief curator, which expanded her responsibilities to include managing every curatorial department. In 2007, she became the first female director of the MMFA, simultaneously managing the museum and continuing her role as chief curator for another thirteen years. During her time as director, she was widely credited for elevating the MMFA to the international stage. In 2008, Bondil organized ¡Cuba! Art and History from 1868 to Today, the largest Cuban art exhibit to date, featuring over 400 pieces from the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and the Fototeca de Cuba in Havana. For this exhibit, the French government awarded Bondil the Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, meant to distinguish individuals who contribute significantly to the advancement of the arts. That year, Bondil also introduced fashion to the museum, hosting a forty year retrospective on fashion designers Yves Saint Laurent and Jean Paul Gaultier from May 29th through Sept. 28th, an event later presented to 12 additional cities worldwide.

In 2011, Bondil established music as a new medium within the museum by converting a nearby church into a 462 person concert hall, and received the Insignia of Merit from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the Université de Montréal. Bondil held several music focused exhibitions, notably Warhol Live (2008), and We Want Miles: Miles Davis vs. Jazz (2010). In 2013, MMFA surpassed 1 million visitors, making it the first Canadian museum to do so. That year, Bondil was appointed Vice Chair of the Canada Council of Arts, and was bestowed an honorary doctorate from McGill University. In 2015, she received another honorary doctorate from the Université de Montréal. Bondil received the Medal of the National Assembly in 2016 in addition to being crowned with the Prix Femmes d’affaires du Québec (2017). Bondil was the Vice President of Programming for the Société des célébrations, a committee in charge of celebrating Montreal’s 375th birthday, in 2017. In 2018, Bondil received the Peter Herrndorf Prize for Leadership in the Arts. On October 9th, 2019, French Minister of Culture Franck Riester presented Bondil the Legion of Honor, the highest French distinction. Bondil sat on the COVID-19 Task Force Committee of the Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization and Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation’s Covid-19 impact committee, where she led public discussions on the impact of Coronavirus on the arts in Canada. Bondil was also a board member of the Council for Canadian American Relations, Association of Art Museum Directors, the French Regional & American Museum Exchange, the Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization, the Fonderie Darling, and Liberte. In 2020, Bondil refused to endorse the advancement of Mary-Dailey Desmarais, a wealthy and donor-connected curator to a new position of Chief Curator. Bondil’s resistance to Desmarais’s promotion sparked accusations from other members of the museum that Bondil created a hostile work environment, and she was dismissed in July of the same year.

Bondil, making history as the first female director at the Montreal Museum of Art, was widely credited with lifting the museum onto the international stage. Bondil doubled MMFA attendance from six hundred thousand to over 1.3 million annual visitors. Through her introduction of non-traditional music and fashion exhibits, as well as an emphasis on opening the museum to world cultures through her exhibitions ¡Cuba! Art and History from 1868 to Today, and Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and the Moon, Bondil established herself as an innovative and internationally-focused curator. She describes the museum as “a visual encyclopedia”, which helps people behave not like robots, but like humans. In 2020, following her sudden departure from MMFA, Nathalie Roy, minister of culture and communications for the province of Quebec, declared “the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is Nathalie Bondil!”


Selected Bibliography

  • Bondil, Nathalie, and Sophie Biass-Fabiani. Metamorphoses: in Rodin’s Studio. Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2015;
  • Bondil, Nathalie, Hémery Axel, Montiége Samuel, and Benjamin-Constant.Benjamin-Constant: Marvels and Mirages of Orientalism. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2014;
  • Bondil, Nathalie. Cuba: Art and History from 1868 to Today. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2009;
  • Bondil, Nathalie, Biass-Fabiani, Sophie. Métamorphoses: dans l’atelier de Rodin. Montreal: Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, 1985;
  • Bondil, Nathalie, Pimentel, Victor, Walter Alva, and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden. Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and the Moon. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2012;

Sources



Contributors: Zahra Hassan


Citation

Zahra Hassan. "Bondil, Nathalie." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/bondiln/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Director and chief curator of the Montreal Museum of Arts. Nathalie Bondil was born in Barcelona on February 19th, 1967, and raised in Morocco. She obtained her degree in museology and art history with specializations in sculpture and 19th century

Banti, Anna

Image Credit: rtveaudio

Full Name: Lopresti Longhi, Lucia

Other Names:

  • Lucia Longhi
  • Lucia Lopresti Longhi
  • Lucia Lopresti

Gender: female

Date Born: 27 June 1895

Date Died: 02 September 1985

Place Born: Florence, Tuscany, Italy

Place Died: Ronchi dei Legionari, Gorizia, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy

Home Country/ies: Italy

Subject Area(s): film (discipline)


Overview

Author, art scholar, cinema critic, and translator; wife pupil of the art historian Roberto Longhi. Banti was born Lucia Lopresti. Her father, a lawyer for the railways, Luigi-Vincenzo, was an avid literature enthusiast and her mother was Gemma Benin, both of them of Calabrian background. She attended the Liceo Tasso di Roma (a lyceum or high school), where in 1914 she encountered the young art historian (and future husband) Roberto Longhi. She continued to study art history at the University in Rome under the eminent Adolfo Venturi, who had also been Longhi’s mentor. Venturi supervised her thesis on the seventeenth-century artist and dealer Marco Boschini (1602–1681). A subsequent 1919 essay by her on Boschini in Venturi’s own publication, L’Arte, was noted favorably the the art philosopher Benedetto Croce (1856-1952). She married Longhi in 1924. By 1930 she had adopted the pseudonym “Anna Banti”, the name of a beloved relative, to distinguish herself from her husband. Her first article under that name, “Barbara e la morte”, was expanded into a book in 1937.

One of her husband’s students in Bologna where he taught was the young (future film director) Pier Paolo Passolini (1922-1975). Passolini and Banti became close friends. A book by Banti, Itinerario di Paolina, appeared in 1937, During WWII, Banti continued to write novels, clearly propaganda for Fascism and American motives. The most prominent of these, Sette Lune (Seven Moons) was issued in 1941. As the war progressed, Banti transcribed a novel to a screenplay romance film called Sissignora (Yes, Madam) in 1942. The following year Pasolini wrote an evaluative article on her, terming her work “Mannerist”, meaning her writings focused on re-enactment of painting. While the war still ensued, Banti turned to researching a historical novel about the female baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. The first draft, however, was destroyed during Allied bombing in 1944 and she was forced to rewrite the manuscript. It was published after the war, 1947, as Artemisa. It became her most important book, popularizing a heretofore obscure painter.

The post-war years saw Banti and her husband founding Paragone, a journal for art and literature in 1950; her husband was editor. The same year she published her translation of Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room which resulted in the popularization of Woolf in Italy. Banti also translated French authors such as Colette. Her most feminist publication were her collected short stories, Le donne muoiono (The Women Die) which appeared in 1951. Banti returned to art history; brief biographies of artists followed, Fra Angelico and) Lorenzo Lotto (both 1953), Diego Velásquez (1955), Claude Monet (1956) as well as others into the 1960s. In addition she maintained a log-running cinema column in the magazine L’approdo letterario. After Longhi’s death in 1970, Banti assumed the editorship of Paragone until 1985 when she divided the editorship between art and literature, the former to Mina Gregori (b. 1924).

Banti’s Artemisia claims importance because the novel format introduced the then obscure artist to a wide public. Her husband had written a 1916 article on the painter, followed by a brief discussion by Hermann Voss in his Die Malerei Des Barock In Rom of 1924. Like many of Banti’s novels it has autobiographical similarities. An early feminist, Banti treated the obscure artist–remembered mostly for the documents of her rape trial–in what would emerge after the 1970s as a watermark for feminist studies. In the novel Gentileschi is nourished by the influential Genoan noblewoman, Pietra Spinola. Writing Artemesia Banti struggled between her identities as art historian and creative writer. Overshadowed as an art historian by husband she came to terms with in her semi-autobiographical novels, the last of which Un grido lacernate, (A piercing cry, 1981) discussed in semi-fictional form her relationship with Longhi (Pireddu).

Banti championed Pasolini his whole life. She published his personal journal, Il Ferrobedò, which later became the first chapter of his future bestseller Ragazzi di vita (Street Kids) in 1955. He praised her focus on the emancipated women and use of realism along with naturalism. Her husband’s teachings led her to have an eye for specific illuminating details and precision of color and the understanding of various art figures and their historical significance.


Selected Bibliography

  • [complete bibliography:] Ghilardi, Margherita. Anna Banti (Lucia Lopresti Longhi) (1895 -1985) La Vita (website)  http://www.cristinacampo.it/public/anna%20banti.pdf;
  • La monache cantano. Rome: Tuminelli, 1942;
  • Le donne muoiono. Milan: Mondadori, 1951;
  • Noi credevamo. Milan: Mondadori, 1967;
  • La camicia bruciato. Milan: Mondadori, 1973;
  • Artemisia. Florence: Sansoni, 1947. English, Artemisia. Lincoln NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1988;
  • Un grido lacerante. Milan: Rizzoli, 1981.
  • Romanzi e racconti: a cura e con un saggio introduttivo di Fausta Garavini. Milan: Mondadori, 2013;

Sources

  • Biagini, Enza. “Banti, Anna”.  Dizionario critico della letteratura italiana 2nd. ed. 2 (1986);
  • Heller, Deborah. “History, Art, and Fiction in Anna Banti’s Artemisia” in Aricáo, Santo L., ed. Contemporary Women Writers in Italy : A Modern Renaissance. University of Massachusetts Press, 1990, pp. 45–62;
  • Ballaro, Beverly. “Anna Banti (Lucia Lopresti Longhi 1895-1985)”. in, Russel, Rinaldina, ed. Italian Women Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook. Westport CT: Greenwood, 1994, pp.35-40; [full article: https://books.google.com/books?id=AxDbPQrjs64C&pg=PA35&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false]
  • Carù, Paola. “Uno sgurado actuo dalla storia: Anna Banti’s Historical Writings.” in Marotti, Maria Ornella and Gabriella Brooke, eds. Gendering Italian Fiction: Feminist Revisions of Italian History. Madison NJ: Fairleigh Dickson University Press, 1999, p. 87-101;
  • Pireddu, Nicoletta. “Modernism Misunderstood: Anna Banti Translates Virginia Woolf.” Comparative Literature 56, no. 1, 2004: 54–76;
  • Papini, Maria Carla. “Anna Banti al cinema.” Antologia Vieusseux33 (2005): 115-124, http://digital.casalini.it/10.1400/85304;
  • Banti, Anna. Romanzi e racconti: a cura e con un saggio introduttivo di Fausta Garavini. Milan: Mondadori, 2013;
  • Daughtery, Britiany. Between Historical Truth and Story-Telling: The Twentieth-Century Fabrication of “Artemisia. Dissertation, University of Nebraska, 2015. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1056&context=artstudents;
  • “L’imperturbable sagesse des femmes émancipées: Pasolini et Anna Banti.” Poetiche: rivista di letteratura 18, no. 1 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1400/249914;
  • Mirabile, Andrea. “‘Lorenzo Lotto’ Di Anna Banti: Fra Longhi e Berenson.” Italica 93, no. 2 (2016): 262–273;


Contributors: Arden Schraff


Citation

Arden Schraff. "Banti, Anna." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/bantia/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Author, art scholar, cinema critic, and translator; wife pupil of the art historian Roberto Longhi. Banti was born Lucia Lopresti. Her father, a lawyer for the railways, Luigi-Vincenzo, was an avid literature enthusiast and her mother was Gemma Benin

Browse, Lillian

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Full Name: Browse, Lillian Gertrude

Other Names:

  • Lillian Browse

Gender: female

Date Born: 21 April 1906

Date Died: 2005

Place Born: Hampstead, Camden, London, England, UK

Place Died: Westminster, London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

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

Career(s): art dealers

Institution(s): Roland Browse and Delbanco


Overview

Art dealer, art historian, and a pioneer as a woman in the field. Lillian Browse was born in London to Michael Browse and Gladys Amy Browse (née Meredith). At three, she emigrated with her family to South Africa, where her father had launched a career as a racehorse trainer. She attended Barnato Park High School in Johannesburg, then returned to London in 1928 in order to study ballet at the Cecchetti Ballet School. While on tour in 1930, she realized that she would not achieve the success she desired as a dancer and decided to switch careers.

Despite her lack of experience with visual arts, she was able to persuade Harold Leger to allow her to file master photographs for his gallery. While working with Leger, Browse was able to hone her eye for art, gain the skills necessary for financial management, shape herself into a masterful negotiator and expert cataloguer, and become deeply involved with the contemporary art scene. She soon became manager of Leger’s gallery and staged a series of successful shows based on her tastes and interests. She married Ivan Harold Joseph in 1934, but they soon were separated. The couple officially divorced in 1944.

When World War II sparked to life, Browse volunteered to work in the London ambulance service. In addition to her service, Browse also ambitiously persuaded Kenneth Clark, director of the National Gallery, to stage showings of contemporary British artists while the gallery’s usual paintings were being kept safe in Wales. Browse organized a number of exhibitions from artists around the country. She gained both an impressive personal network of artists, curators, and collectors and an impressive personal archive of works by contemporary British artists. She published her first book, The Drawings of Augustus John, in 1941.

After the end of the war, her success led to a founding partnership, along with Gustav Delbanco (1903–1997) and Henry Roland (1907–1993) as Roland, Browse, and Delbanco. Their office was situated at 19 Cork Street, from which Browse would later gain the nickname “the Duchess of Cork Street.” In 1949, she published Degas Dancers to great critical acclaim. She was able to take full advantage of both her dance and fine art backgrounds, and the quality of this book led to her appointment as the ballet critic of The Spectator from 1950 to 1954. Browse married Sidney Henry Lines in 1964.

In 1977, Roland and Delbanco retired and withdrew from the firm. The dealer William Darby assumed the lease and together with Browse opened a new gallery, Browse & Darby. Her experience was invaluable in their partnership. She published her last art history book, Forain, the Painter, in 1978. Browse finally retired from her business in 1981. In 1982, she donated a large portion of her private art collection to the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 1998, she was honored as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her contributions to British art. Browse published her autobiography, Duchess of Cork Street, in 1999. She died in 2005, a few months short of her hundredth birthday.

Browse is as notable for being a remarkably prolific art dealer, collector, and author as she is for being a leading figure in the art world of 20th century Britain. Her personal and professional connections made her a force to be reckoned with, and she was easily among the top members of her field. Degas Dancers is still considered a seminal work on the artist. (Darby) Her pieces on Forain and Sickert have been considered “authoritative volumes.” (Kendall)


Selected Bibliography

  • John, Augustus, and Lillian Browse. 1941. The Drawings of Augustus John. London: Faber & Faber;
  • Degas Dancers. London: Faber and Faber, 1949;
  • Sickert. London: Hart-Davis, 1960;
  • Forain, the Painter, 1852-1931. London: P. Elek, 1978.

Sources



Contributors: Arial Hart


Citation

Arial Hart. "Browse, Lillian." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/browsel/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Art dealer, art historian, and a pioneer as a woman in the field. Lillian Browse was born in London to Michael Browse and Gladys Amy Browse (née Meredith). At three, she emigrated with her family to South Africa, where her father had launched a ca