Scholar of baroque architecture, blended formalism of Heinrich Wölfflin with Geistesgeschichte of Max Dvořák for his methodology. He was born in Danzig, Prussia which is present-day Gdańsk, Poland.
Selected Bibliography
Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Danzig. (Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des deutschen Ostens. Series A) 5 vols. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1957-72. Barockmalerei in den germanischen ländern. Wildpark-Potsdam: Akademische verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion m.b.h. ,1926.
Sources
Bazin 374; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1999, pp. 62-65.
Citation
"Drost, Willi." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/drostw/.
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Scholar of baroque architecture, blended formalism of Heinrich Wölfflin with Geistesgeschichte of Max Dvořák for his methodology. He was born in Danzig, Prussia which is present-day Gdańsk, Pola
Art critic, novelist, journalist, and essayist. Du Bois was born to African-American couple Alfred Du Bois (c. 1835-c.1906), a barber born in Haiti, and Mary Silvina Burghardt (Du Bois) (c. 1831-1885) in Massachusetts. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Fisk University in 1888, Du Bois continued his studies at Harvard College, enrolling as a junior and receiving his second bachelor’s degree in 1890, followed by his MA in 1891 and Ph.D. in 1895. His thesis was on the African Slave Trade in the United States. Between 1892 and 1894, Du Bois studied history and sociology at the University of Berlin, and traveled throughout Europe. His visit to Munich’s Alte Pinakothek was his first exposure to the works of Albrecht Dürer (1417-1528), Titian (c. 148890-1576), and Raphael (1483-1520), which inspired him to give a lecture entitled “The Art and Art Galleries of Modern Europe” at Wilberforce College to the student Athletic Association. When he returned to the United States, Du Bois was appointed Chair of the Classics Department at Wilberforce College. In 1896, Du Bois married Nina Gomer (1871-1950). He also completed a sociological study at the University of Pennsylvania, and then moved to Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University) in 1897, where he taught history, sociology, and economics.
Du Bois’s commitment to the visual arts began as he started searching for sources of spiritual openness in the African American community to include in his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903).The book explained his theory of “double consciousness,” in which African Americans experience conflicting identities resulting from their American citizenship and their African heritage. Though there were few active African-American artists at the time of his writing, he did highly praise artist Henry Osawa Tanner (1859-1937). Tanner fit the DuBoisan ideal of an educated, devout Christian who fulfilled his social responsibility to African Americans by producing cultural propaganda. Several African-American artists identified with Du Bois’s book, and in this way he gained acceptance in the African-American artistic community.
Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter (1872-1934) founded the Niagara Movement in 1905 which was a precursor to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910. Du Bois became the editor of the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis. The Crisis became the cultural voice of the African-American community, where many prominent artists and writers published essays, poems, and short stories. Du Bois also used The Crisis as a discussion forum for the creation of a modern, African-American aesthetic. He, along with Howard University professor and scholar Alain Locke, routinely wrote exhibition reviews highlighting the work of African-American artists. Du Bois frequently promoted African-American creativity in his writings, and when the Harlem Renaissance emerged in the mid-1920s, his article “A Negro Art Renaissance” celebrated the end of the long hiatus of African Americans from creative endeavors. His enthusiasm for the Harlem Renaissance waned as he came to believe that many white people visited Harlem only for voyeurism, not out of a genuine appreciation of African-American art. In 1926, Du Bois sponsored The Crisis symposium called “The Negro in Art,” in which he chastised African-American artists for not assuming more political responsibility in their work. Du Bois worked closely with artists such as Aaron Douglas (1899-1979) and Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), whom he believed would lead the movement to develop a black modernist aesthetic through a “bold reconceptualization of beauty” (Kirschke 11). He continued to help young artists through The Crisis magazine until he resigned from the NAACP in 1934. As a widower, Du Bois married author, playwright, composer, and activist Shirley Graham (1896-1977) in 1951. Du Bois became a member of the Communist Party of the United States in 1961. That same year, at the age of ninety-three, he moved to Ghana, where he worked with Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah on the Encyclopedia Africana, which inspired Henry Louis Gates (b. 1950) and Kwame Anthony Appiah (b. 1954) to write Africana: the encyclopedia of the African and African American experience in 1999. Du Bois’s health declined during his time in Ghana and he died in the capital of Accra at age 95.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Suppression of the African Slave Trade in the United States of America: 1638–1871. Harvard, 1895;
Aptheker, Herbert, ed.,Selections from The Crisis, Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson Organization, 1983;
The American Negro, Philadelphia, PA: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1928;
The Souls of Black Folks: Essays and Sketches, Chicago: A.C. McClurg and Co., 1903;
American Negro Art, Baltimore, MD: The Modern Quarterly: A Journal of Radical Opinion 32 no. 6 (1925): 290, 292, 294, 296-297, 1925;
Criteria of Negro art. New York, NY: Crisis Publishing Co., 1926.;
The social origins of American Negro Art. New York, NY: The Modern Quarterly: A Journal of Radical Opinion, 3 no.1:53-56, 1925.
Sources
Foster, Frances Smith, ed. Andrews, William L. and Harris, Trudier. The Oxford Companion to African-American Literature, Oxford University Press, 1997 pp. 237-239;
Lewis, David Levering, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868-1919, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993;
Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Una McGovern, ed., 1997;
Kirschke, Amy Helene. “The Intersecting Rhetorics of Art and Blackness in The Souls of Black Folk.” Souls of Black Folk One Hundred Years Later. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2003.;
Byerman, Keith Eldon. Seizing the Word: History, Art, and Self in the Works of W. E. B.Du Bois. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1994.
Contributors: Alana J. Hyman, Emily Crockett, and LaNitra Michele Walker
Citation
Alana J. Hyman, Emily Crockett, and LaNitra Michele Walker. "Du Bois, W. E. B.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/duboisw/.
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Art critic, novelist, journalist, and essayist. Du Bois was born to African-American couple Alfred Du Bois (c. 1835-c.1906), a barber born in Haiti, and Mary Silvina Burghardt (Du Bois) (c. 1831-1885) in Massachusetts. After receiving his bachelor
Medievalist historian who wrote some art history, especially on medieval building and society. Duby’s parents were Louis Duby and Marguerite Dimanche (Duby), provincial crafts workers of Mâcon. Duby’s early education was not the usual climb through a series of auspicious schools characteristic of notable French academics. He attended a lycée in Mâcon. At the outbreak of World War II, Duby joined the French Army, 8th Artillery Regiment, in 1940. At the conquest of France by Germany, he returned to school, but again, the closest school to his home, the Université de Lyon, graduating with his agregé des lettres, 1942, under the most modest of scholars, Jean Jules Déniau (b. 1886). He marred Andrée Combier the same year. He joined the Université de Lyon as an assistant under Déniau in faculty of letters in 1944. He moved to the Université de Besançon in 1950 as professor of medieval history, but the following year transferred to the Université d’Aix Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, as professor of medieval history, described by Willima Baldwin as “the most distant of the major French universities.” He received his docteur des lettres in 1952 from the Sorbonne, writing his famous dissertation, La Société aux XIe et XIIe siécles dans la région mâconnaise, under Charles-Edmond Perrin (1887-1974). Duby was awarded the Premier Prix Gobert from the Académie française for the book form of his dissertation the following year. Despite offers to join the Sixth Section o fthe École Pratique des Hautes Études (the section of the Sorbonne of the Annalistes), Duby remained at Aix until 1969. During this time Duby issued a number of texts on art history. His L’Europe des cathedrales, 1140-1280, and illustrative book, appeared in 1966 and translated into English the same year. The following year he produced a similarly-based text, Adolescence de la chrétienté occidentale, 980-1140. In 1970 he was appointed professor of history of medieval societies at the Collège de France. During his years teaching at the Sorbonne, he wrote Saint Bernard, l’art cistercien, 1976, and reissued L’Europe des cathedrales as volume two of a larger three-volume art treatment, Le Temps des cathedrales: L’Art et la societe, 980-1420. Le Temps des cathedrales appeared in English in 1981. Duby was elected to the Academie Française in 1987, retiring from the Sorbonne in 1992. A study of medieval imagery of women, written with Michelle Perrot, Images de femmes, was published the same year in both French and English. He and Michel Laclotte edited the series L’histoire artistique de l’Europe, 1995, from which the essay, “Art et société au Moyen-âge” appeared as a separtate monograph. He died of cancer in Aix the following year. Duby’s art-history writing was ancillary to his history and largely intended for a more popular audience. However, these books brought his brand of social scholarship to this readership drawn to the highly-illustrated format of the texts. The Age of the Cathedrals divided up the artistic accomplishment of the middle ages into themes such as “God is Light 1130-1190,” “Happiness 1250-1280,” etc. This theoretical framework in some ways forces itself upon a form tradition much more complex. There can be no doubt, however that his early research at the Burgundian monastery of Cluny, also an important monument for art history, provided him an important background from which to write. Methodologically, Duby embraced the Annales School, although not technically a student of the Annalistes historians Marc Bloch (1886-1944) and Lucien Febvre (1878-1956), an approach employing archival research to construct the daily life and mental attituded and avoiding ‘politics as history.’
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] La Société aux XIe et XIIe siécles dans la région mâconnaise; [art-historical writing only:] L’Europe des cathedrales, 1140-1280. Geneva: Skira, 1966, English, The Europe of the Cathedrals, 1140-1280. Geneva: Skira, 1966; Adolescence de la chrétienté occidentale, 980-1140. Geneva: Albert Skira, 1967 English, The Making of the Christian West, 980-1140. Geneva: Skira, 1967; Saint Bernard, l’art cistercien. Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1976; Le Temps des cathedrales: L’Art et la societe, 980-1420. 3 vols. [vol. 1, Adolescence de la chretiente occidentale, 980-1140, vol. 2, L’Europe des cathedrales, 1140-1280, vol. 3, Fondements d’un nouvel humanisme, 1280-1440]. Paris: Gallimard, 1976, English, The Age of the Cathedrals: Art and Society, 980-1420. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981; L’Europe au Moyen Âge: art roman, art gothique. Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1979, extracts issued separately as, “Art et société au Moyen-âge,” English, Art and Society in the Middle Ages. Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2000, original French essay reissued as part of Duby and Laclotte, Michel, eds. L’histoire artistique de l’Europe, Editions de Seuill, 1995; and Perrot, Michelle. Images de femmes. Paris: Plon, 1992, English, Power and Beauty: Images of Women in Art. London: Tauris Parke Books, 1992.
Sources
Baldwin, John W. “Foreward,” in [and] Duby, Georges. History Continues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994; Autour de Georges Duby: Galerie d’art du Conseil général des Bouches-du-Rhône, Aix-en-Provence. Arles: Actes sud, 1998.
Medievalist historian who wrote some art history, especially on medieval building and society. Duby’s parents were Louis Duby and Marguerite Dimanche (Duby), provincial crafts workers of Mâcon. Duby’s early education was not the usual climb throug
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)
Overview
Early compiler of data on architectural history. Ducarel’s work was inspired by Browne Willis in his Survey of the Cathedrals of York, Durham, Carlisle, Chester, Man, Litchfield, 1742.
Selected Bibliography
Anglo-Norman Antiquities Considered, in a Tour through Part of Normandy. London: Printed for the author, by T. Spilsbury, 1767.
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.
Early compiler of data on architectural history. Ducarel’s work was inspired by Browne Willis in his Survey of the Cathedrals of York, Durham, Carlisle, Chester, Man, Litchfield, 1742.
Place Died: Cortina d'Ampezzo, Belluno, Veneto, Italy
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): Classical
Overview
Classicist, fascist collaborator. Pericule Ducati grew up in a bourgeois family originally from Trento. He attended the University of Bologna studying Greek and Latin literature under Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907) and archaeology under Edoardo Brizio. According to the Italian XIX century academic model, he studied classical archaeology at various universities including, in particular, Rome where he studied under the Italian art historian Luigi Pigorini (q.v.) and ancient Roman topography under Rodolfo Lanciani. His 1903 dissertation on classical sculpture involved one of the concepts that would occupy him his entire life: the transmission of antique iconography in other cultures. In 1906-1907 he visited southwestern Greece in order to observe archaeological classical tradition and to study history of Greek pottery under the Austrian researcher Emanuel Löwy (1857 -1938). After a brief appointment as Ispettore ai Musei e Scavi (1909), he was named to the chair in classical archaeology in Catania in 1912. He moved to a professorship in Turin and finally to Bologna in 1920. There he combined his teaching position with that of director of the Museo Civico. As Brizio and Löwy had imparted to him, he employed an academic German tradition of instruction scheme providing a clear and general preparatory course and more specific monographic part. The latter pedogogical technique was marked by visits to the local museums in accordance with the Vienna School teaching tradition. In 1920 he was appointed Classical archaeological history Professor at University of Bologna. He was twice Dean of the Faculty of Arts in Bologna (1923-1929 and 1943-1944), and also Member of the Accademia dei Lincei and he was a member of the High Council for Antiquities and Fine Arts of Italy. Ducati collaborated with the fascist government of Benito Mussolini, less, some say, out of a political than for the need to remain researching in his field. His political affiliations clearly forced his hand, however, in publications. In 1927 he wrote Origine e attributi del Fascio littorio, a book sponsored by the Association for Fascist Schools Libraries in Italy. He was a member to the PFR (partito fascista repubblicano) and was President of the Fascist Culture Institute of Italy. In the 1930s, he was selected by the Classical archaeologist J. D. Beazley and the Greek vase painting scholar Paul Jacobsthal to write a volume in their Bilder griechischer Vasen series, Pontische Vasen (1932). After the declaration of World War II, he was ambushed outside his home in Bologna on the Via Albertazzi, and struck by several bullets by the Italian partisans. He was transferred by a German ambulance to the hospital Codivilla heliotherapy Cortina d’Ampezzo (BL), where he died two months later of a related infection. Ducati is buried in the cemetery of Bologna. A portion of his library was donated to the Biblioteca Universitaria of Bologna as well as his letters and manuscripts. Ducati’s use of unorthodox sources and highly individual research attracted scholars who sought to reinvent the discipline themselves. These included the art historian Luciano Laurenzi (q.v.), who wrote a commemoration of Ducati, the archaeologist Maurizio Corradi Cervi (1904-1982), and Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli.
Selected Bibliography
L’arte classica: con 12 tavole in rotocalco e 949 riproduzioni d’arte nel testo, Nuova rist. corretta della 3. ed. interamente riveduta, Torino: Unione Tip.-Ed. Torinese, 1956; Preistoria e protostoria dell’Emilia. Rome: R. Ist. di Studi Romani, 1942; La pittura etrusca, presentazione di Pericle Ducati. Novara: Ist. geografico de Agostini, 1942; Die etruskische, italo-hellenistische und römische Malerei. Vienna: Deuticke, 1941; Roma antica. Florence: 1940; L’arte classica. Turin: Unione Tip. Editr. Torinese, 1939; L’arte in Roma dalle origini al sec. VIII, Istituto di Studi Romani. Bologna: Cappelli, 1938; Storia d’Italia L’Italia antica : dalle prime civiltà alla morte di Cesare (44 a.C.). Milan: Mondadori, 1938; La scultura romana. Florence: 1934; La scultura greca. Florence: 1933 – 1935; Bologna nella storia d’Italia. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1933; “Les forums impériaux.” Gazette des beaux-arts 6.Pér. 8.(1932): 65-88; “L’Ipogeo dei Volumni.” Emporium 74 (1931): 363-374; “Echi del Mantegna in Bologna.” Il Comune di Bologna 16 no. 4(1929): 19; “Il convegno dei triumviri in: Strenna storica bolognese.” 3 (1930): 7-17; “I vetri dorati romani nel Museo civico di Bologna.” Rivista del Reale Istituto d’Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte 1 (1929): 232-249; Prassitele. Florence: Le Monnier, 1928; Etruria antica. Turin: Paravia, 1925; Guida del Museo Civico di Bologna. Bologna: Merlani, 1923; L’arte classica. Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1920; Storia dell’arte etrusca. Florence: Rinascimento del Libro, 1907; “L’ara di Ostia del Museo delle terme di Diocleziano.” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 26 (1906): 483-512.Giulia Savio Univeristy of Genoa-Italy
Sources
Serra Ridgway, F. R. “Ducati Pericle.” in: Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pag. 375; Paolo Paoletti, Vallucciole, una strage dimenticata, Le Lettere, 2009, p. 24. Quirino Giglioli. “Commemorazione del socio Pericle Ducati.” in, Rendiconti, Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia 27 (1953): 111-135; Laurenzi, Luciano. “Commemorazione di Pericle Ducati.” [?????] http://www.archiviostorico.unibo.it/System/27/551/Ducati.pdf.
Citation
"Ducati, Pericule." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/ducatip/.
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Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Classicist, fascist collaborator. Pericule Ducati grew up in a bourgeois family originally from Trento. He attended the University of Bologna studying Greek and Latin literature under Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907) and archaeology under
Professor of Archaeology at University of Heidelberg, 1880-1920. Duhn was the son of an eminent Lübeck judge. His namesake was his godfather, another famous jurist, Friedrich Karl von Savigny (1779-1861). Duhn was encouraged to study classics by his father, who had heard the lectures of Otfried Müller. The younger Duhn studied at Bonn under Franz Bücheler (1837-1908), Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz, and Hermann Usener (1834-1905). After his studies, Duhn traveled widely through the principal lands of classical archaeology, Italy, Sicily and Greece. In 1879 he published “über einige Basreliefs,” a brief paper which proved to be essential for assembling the Ara Pacis Augustae in Rome. It secured his reputation. After teaching only one semester at Göttingen, Duhn was called to Heidelberg where he was appointed professor of archaeology in 1880. In 1906 his Pompeji: eine hellenistische Stadt appeared. Duhn assumed the publication of Roman sculptural portraiture Friedrich Matz (1843-1874) after Matz’s death. In 1920 he retired emeritus from Heidelberg. The first volume of his Italische Gräberkunde appeared in 1924 and volume two only after his death. Heidelberg students he influenced included Gerhart Rodenwaldt and those whose dissertations he supervised included Rudolf Pagenstecher, Karl Schuchhardt, Bernhard Schweitzer, Hermann Winnefeld, Otto Weinreich (1886-1972) and Robert Zahn.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] De Menelai itinere Aegyptio, Odysseae carminis IV episodio quaestiones criticae. Ph.D. Bonn, 1864, published, same title, Bonn: Formis C. Georgi, 1864; Ein Rückblick auf die Gräber-Forschung. [Lecture honoring the second founding of the Universität, Karl Friedrich, Grossherzog von Baden.] Heidelberg: J. Hörning, 1911; and Jacobi, Louis. Der griechische Tempel in Pompeii. 2 vols. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1890; Italische Gräberkunde. 2 vols. Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1924-1939; “Eine Bronzestatuette der Heidelberger archäologischen Sammlung.” Abhandlung. Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Sitzungsberichte. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 2 (1911) no. 6. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1911; Pompeji: eine hellenistische Stadt in Italien. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1906; [assumed publiscation after] Matz, Friedrich. Antike Bildwerke in Rom: mit Ausschluss der grösseren Sammlungen. 3 vols. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1881-1882; “über einige Basreliefs und ein römisches Bauwerk der ersten Kaiserzeit.” Instituto Archaeologico centum semestria feliciter peracta, gratulantur juvenes capitolini qui per centesimum instituti semestre in Monte Tarpejo constiterunt. Rome: Typis Salviuccianis, 1879.
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 100-101;Calder, William. “Duhn, Friedrich Carl von (1851-1930).” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 375-76.
Professor of Archaeology at University of Heidelberg, 1880-1920. Duhn was the son of an eminent Lübeck judge. His namesake was his godfather, another famous jurist, Friedrich Karl von Savigny (1779-1861). Duhn was encouraged to study classics by h
Onatas of Aegina. Leiden: Brill, 1977; The Olympia Master and his Collaborators. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987; Le frise est de l’Héphaisteion. Mayence-sur-Rhin: P. von Zabern/Editions archéologiques de l’Université de Genève, 1985; and Boardman, John. and Fuchs, Werner, and Hirmer, Max. Griechische Kunst. 1967 English, (American title:) Greek Art and Architecture. New York, H. N. Abrams, 1967, The Art and architecture of Ancient Greece. London: Thames & Hudson, 1966
Place Born: Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia
Place Died: Naples, Campania, Italy
Home Country/ies: Germany
Overview
Early progressive museum director and professor of art history and Brown University and Bennington College. He was bornin in Königsberg, Germany, present day Kaliningrad, Russia. Dorner came from a long line of distinguished theologians and clergy. His grandfather, Isaak August Dorner (1809-1884), had been a professor at the University of Berlin and rector. His father, August Dorner (1846-1920), was a professor of theology and Philology at Wittenberg; his mother, Alice Hasselmeyer (1862-?), was raised in English-speaking India. Like his parents, Dorner was a free-thinker and adamantly opposed the Prussian imperialism. His father did not allow his mother to teach him English, preferring to read his son Homer and Dante (Wendland). After graduating from the Königsberg gymnasium, Dorner entered the university at Königsberg, but when World War I was declared, the young man alternated military service his studies. In 1915 he transferred to the University of Berlin, studying art history, archaeology, history and philosophy. In Berlin, Dorner comprised part of a distinguished group of graduate students in art history who also included Ida Ledermann, Hans Huth, Erwin Panofsky, and Eberhard Schenk zu Schweinsberg. His dissertation on Romanesque architecture, written under Adolph Goldschmidt, was accepted for his Ph.D. in 1919. Dorner’s habilitation was written the following year and he worked as a Privatdozent. He married Ella Grotewold around this time. Dorner joined the State Museum (Landesmuseum) in Hannover as a curator in 1923, rising to director in 1925 (one of the youngest in Germany). As such, he was responsible for many smaller museums in the Hanover area. His appointment coincided with Walter Gropius’ foundation of the Bauhaus a short distance away in Weimar. Dorner was one of the early and great leaders of avant-garde art collecting in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s concentrating in Constructivist art for the collection focusing on Piet Mondrian, Naum Gabo, Kazimir Malevich, and El Lissitzky. Dorner commissioned from Moholy-Nagy was the “Raum der Gegenwart” (Room of the Present) which was designed to include film projections, although the space was never realized. Dorner taught as an assistant professor at the Technische Hochschule in Hannover, beginning in 1928 (through 1936), contributing to the journal Museum der Gegenwart (The Museum of Today) from 1930 to 1933. As a director, Dorner juxtaposed art with other objects of different periods in his installations, a new method for art museums. His progressivist art policies put him in direct opposition with the Nazi party, who assumed power in Germany in 1933. Dorner led the fight against the Nazi “Entartete Kunst” (degenerate art) exhibition of modern art in 1936. After the government confiscated the Museum’s modern art and accused him of financial impropriety, Dorner resigned from the Museum in 1937. After briefly living in Berlin, he emigrated first to France and then the United States. With the recommendations of Panofsky (now in New York) and Museum of Modern Art director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., he secured the position of director of the Art Museum at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1938. At Rhode Island, Dorner reorganized the traditionally displayed works in the Museum into dramatic installations which appealed to the public. At the outbreak of World War II, Dorner’s anti-Nazi history was ignored and because he was German (and had a brother flying in the Luftwaffe), he was forced to resign from the RISD museum in 1941. He lectured in art history at Brown University beginning in 1941, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1943. After the War, Dorner moved to Bennington, VT, in 1948 to be Professor for Art and Esthetics at Bennington College. He married a second time in the United States to Lydia Nepto. While on a trip to Italy to address Nazi crimes against him, he died of a heart attack in Naples at age 64. His papers are held at the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University. Tall with a dueling scar, Dorner fit the contemporary image of an expatriate German. His philosophy, however, was aNew York Timeshing but elitist. Strongly populist, he worked for installations to appeal to a greater variety of people, driving attendance levels up. His Hanover innovations in exhibition space included grouping objects in rooms by themes rather than by period. At RISD, he removed many of the traditional exhibition cases around objects to make their esthetic appeal greater. The false accusation by the FBI of his Nazi sympathy and removal from the RISD museum hurt Dorner deeply and despite exoneration in the press, Dorner never again worked for a museum.
Selected Bibliography
[complete bibliography:] “Bibliography of Alexander Dorner’s Works.” in, Cauman, Samuel. The Living Museum: Experiences of an Art Historian and Museum Director, Alexander Dorner. New York: New York University Press, 1958, p. 211; Katalog der kunstammlungen im Provinzial-Museum zu Hannover. Berlin: Klinkhardt & Biermann 1930; Meister Bertram von Minden. Berlin: Rembrandt-verlag, 1937; The Way Beyond ‘Art’: the Work of Herbert Bayer. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 1947.
Sources
“Dorner Shown Anti-Nazi, Failure to Rename Him Splits Rhode Island Museum Board.” New York Times October 17, 1941, p. 20; 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. 46 mentioned; Flacke, Monika. Museumskonzeptionen in der Weimarer Republik: die Tätigkeit Alexander Dorners im Provinzialmuseum Hannover. Marburg: Jonas, 1985; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 123-7; Cauman, Samuel. The Living Museum: Experiences of an Art Historian and Museum Director, Alexander Dorner. New York: New York University Press, 1958 [conflicting biographical information]; Flacke, Monka. “Alexander Dorner.” in, Junge, Henricke, ed. Avantgarde und Publikum: zur Rezeption avantagardistischer Kunst in Deutschland, 1905-1933. Vienna: Böhler, 1992, pp. 51-58; Ockman, Joan. “The Road Not Taken: Alexander Dorner’s Way Beyond Art.” in, Somol, Robert. Autonomy and Ideology: Positioning an Avant-garde in America New York: Monacceli Press, 1997; Sandra Loschke, personal correspondence, May 2010; [obituaries:] Gummere, Peggy Mowry “Alexander Dorner, 1893-1958 [sic].” College Art Journal 18, no. 2 (Winter, 1959): 159-160; “Alexander Dorner, Art Historian, Dies, Bennington Professor Had Led Museums.” New York Times November 5, 1957, p. 31.
Early progressive museum director and professor of art history and Brown University and Bennington College. He was bornin in Königsberg, Germany, present day Kaliningrad, Russia. Dorner came from a long line of distinguished theologians and clergy
Subject Area(s): paint (coating) and painting (visual works)
Career(s): educators
Overview
University of Munich painting professor and authority on historic paints and painting material. Dörner was the son of an army officier. He studied at the Bavarian royal academy under Johann Kaspar Herterich (1843-1905) and Wilhelm von Diez (1837-1907). He took an extended Italian study under the painters Arnold Böcklin and Hans von Marees and studied Pompeiian wall painting. He became a member of the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Föderung rationeller Malverfahren (German Society of the Promotion of Rational Methods in Painting), founded by Max von Pettenkofer (1818-1901), Adolf Wilhelm Keim (1851-1913), and Franz von Lenbach (1836-1904). In 1910 he became President of the Society and joined the Munich Fine Arts academy as Dozent (lecturer) in painting technique. As a painter, he worked in an Impressionist style. Dörner advised on many in situ painting conservation projects, including the Tiepolo fresco at the Wurzburg Residenz. He achieved an international reputation for his 1921 book Malmaterial und seine Verwendung im Bilde (The Materials of the Artist and their Use in Painting). He was appointed professor of the practice of painting at the Academy in 1927 (Neuhaus says 1921). When the Society, whose facilities were associated with the Institute of Technology in Munich, ceased to exist, the “Dörner Institut” was founded at the Academy in Munich as an independent testing and research Institute for conservation and historic painting technique (Staatliche Prüf- und Forschungsanstalt für Farbentechnik). Dörner worked in the lab only a brief time before his death in 1939. In 1958, the Institute was merged with the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Bavarian Painting Collection) in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich. Dörner’s Materials of the Artist remains and important survey of painting materials and their historic application by the masters. His book joined that of Charles Lock Eastlake and an important work for artists, conservators and art historians.
Selected Bibliography
Malmaterial und seine Verwendung in Bilde: nach den Vorträgen an der Akademie der bildenden Künste in München. Munich: Verlag für praktische Kunstwissenschaft, 1921, English, The Materials of the Artist and their Use in Painting, with Notes on the Techniques of the Old Masters. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1934; and Karlinger, Hans. Die hochromanische Wandmalerei in Regensburg. Munich: F. Schmidt, 1920.
Sources
Neue deutsche Biographie 4: 1959; Allgeines Künstlerlexikon (Saur) 28: 252; Neuhaus, Eugen. “Postscript.” Doerner, Max. The Materials of the Artist and their Use in Painting. Revised ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962, p. xi.
Citation
"Dörner, Max." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/dornerm/.
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University of Munich painting professor and authority on historic paints and painting material. Dörner was the son of an army officier. He studied at the Bavarian royal academy under Johann Kaspar Herterich (1843-1905) and Wilhelm von Diez (1837-1
Place Born: Barmen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Place Died: Leukas, Ionian Islands, Greece
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), archaeology, architecture (object genre), and sculpture (visual works)
Overview
Archaeologist; specialist in ancient Greek architecture. Dörpfeld studied at the Academy of Architecture (Bauakademie) in Berlin, 1873-1876, under Friedrich Adler, whose daughter he later married. In 1877 Adler sent Dörpfeld to help excavate the Olympia site in Greece. There, Dörpfeld developed the method of dating ancient archaeological sites based on the strata in which objects were found and the type of building materials. Together with Alexander Conze and Carl Humann, he excavated Pergamon (1878-86) uncovering the city and the great altar, now in the Berlin Museum. Among those impressed with his methodology was the amateur archeologist Heinrich Schliemann, whose own archeological work was criticized for its lack of scholarly procedure. Schliemann convinced Dörpfeld to assist him with his excavation of Troy. Dörpfeld began the Troy site in 1882, identifying the strata from which objects were taken and generally organizing the excavation. He also corrected many of Schliemann’s conclusions, including the shaft burial sites at Mycenae. In 1884 Dörpfeld and Schliemann began excavation of the Tiryns site, which became the first major bronze-age discovery. Again, Dörpfeld prevented Schliemann and his team from destroying precious archaeological remains (in this case, decomposed Greek marble walls which Schliemann had taken for more recent Roman mortar masonry). He met the emerging British scholar Jane Ellen Harrison who accompanied him on his archaeological tours. Beginning in 1886 he excavated the Hekatompedon (the pre-Classical Parthenon) on the Acropolis in Athens. In 1887 Dörpfeld became Director of Athens branch of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) which he held until 1912. In 1896, Dörpfeld authored Das griechische Theater, the first study of Greek theater construction. After his retirement, the tenacious Dörpfeld spent much time attacking the views of other archaeologists. During the mid-1930s, Dörpfeld took on a celebrated debate regarding the configuration of the three phases of the Parthenon with the American architectural history William Bell Dinsmoor. He died on the island of Leukas where he had a home, the site of what he believed to be Homer’s Ithaca. Dörpfeld was one of the seminal figures in classical archaeology and art history, both loved and despised. His method remains the core work in archeological site analysis. When his dating proved incorrect, as in the case of Level VI at Tiryns, it was only because of lack of subsequent information and then only slightly. Like Schliemann, he spent much of his energies in the romantic pursuit to prove Homer’s Odyssey was based upon real places. Arthur J. Evans termed Dörpfeld “Schliemann’s greatest discovery.” Dörpfeld’s critical attacks against other scholars with whom he disagreed, at times petty, alienated younger scholars. The Berlin scholarly community, consisting of Berlin Archaeological Institute and classical philology professor Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848-1931) were highly critical of Dörpfeld’s excavations at Leukas and Corfu and the Oxford classicist Percy Gardner characterized Dörpfeld as lacking sober critical judgment. His architectural training blinded him from the importance of many artifacts, such as pottery, for chronology.
Selected Bibliography
and Reisch, Emil. Das griechische Theater: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Dionysos-Theaters in Athen und anderer griechischer Theater. Athens: Barth & von Hirst, 1896; “Geschichte der Ausgrabungen von Troja. Die Bauwerke der verschiedenen Schichten,” in Troja und Ilion: Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen in den vorhistorischen und historischen Schichten von Ilion 1870-1894. 2 vols. Athen: Beck & Barth, 1902 ff.; and Rüter, Heinrich. Homers Odyssee: die Wiederherstellung des ursprünglichen Epos von der Heimkehr des Odysseus nach dem Tageplan, mit Beigaben über homerische Geographie und Kultur. 2 vols. Munich: Buchenau & Reichert, 1925; and Goessler, Peter. Alt-Ithaka: ein Beitrag zur Homer-Frage: Studien und Ausgrabungen aus der Insel Leukas-Ithaka. 2 vols. Munich: R. Uhde, 1927; and Forbat, Fred, and Goessler, Peter. Alt-Olympia: Untersuchungen und Ausgrabungen zur Geschichte des ältesten Heiligtums von Olympia und der älteren griechischen Kunst. 2 vols. Berlin: E. S. Mittler & sohn, 1935; Beiden vorpersischen Tempel unter dem Parthenon des Perikles. vol. 1 of Alt-Athen und seine Agora: Untersuchungen über die Entwicklung der ältesten Burg und Stadt Athen und ihres politischen Mittelpunktes, des Staatsmarktes. Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1937-1939; “Zum alter von Parthenon I und II.” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archaologischen Instituts 52 (1937): 14-16; “Zum tempel der Athena, der schutzherrin von Athen.” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archaologischen Instituts 52 (1937): 220-4; Erechtheion. Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1942. [Parthenon debate] “Der Brand des alten Athena-Tempels und seines Opisthodoms.” American Journal of Archaeology 38 (April 1934): 249-257; reply, continued, “Parthenon I, II und III.” American Journal of Archaeology 39 (October 1935): 497-507; [rejoinder by William Bell Dinsmoor] “The Older Parthenon, Additional Notes.” American Journal of Archaeology 39 (October 1935): 508-509.
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 112-113. Suzanne L. Marchand. Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996: 74; Traill, David A. “Dörpfeld (Doerpfeld) Wilhelm.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 372-74; Medwid, Linda M. The Makers of Classical Archaeology: A Reference Work. New York: Humanity Books, 2000 pp. 93-95; [obituaries:] Picard, Charles. “Tribute.” Revue Archeologique 6 no. v part 17 (January 1941): 71-3; “Wilhelm Dörpfeld.” American Journal of Archaeology 44 (July 1940): 360.
Archaeologist; specialist in ancient Greek architecture. Dörpfeld studied at the Academy of Architecture (Bauakademie) in Berlin, 1873-1876, under Friedrich Adler, whose daughter he later married. In 1877 Adler sent Dörpfeld
