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Geldzahler, Henry

November 8, 2023April 18, 2024

Full Name: Geldzahler, Henry

Gender: male

Date Born: 1935

Date Died: 1994

Place Born: Antwerp, Flanders, Belgium

Place Died: Southampton, Suffolk, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

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

Career(s): curators

Overview

Modernist art historian and curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Geldzahler was born to Belgian parents Joseph and Charlotte Geldzahler. His father was a diamond dealer. The family emigrated to New York in 1940 at the beginning of World War II. At age 15, Geldzahler attended the 1951 exhibition of Arshile Gorky’s work at the Whitney, an experience that won him over to modern art, although the initial experience he recalled made him ill. Geldzahler graduated from Yale University in 1957 and entered Harvard with the intention of pursuing a Ph.D. in art history. He left Harvard in 1960 to join the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His close involvement with contemporary artists in New York at first rankled the some of the Board of Trustees at the Met. In 1966 he was appointed United States Commissioner for Art at the Venice Biennale, the international show exhibiting the best art from all countries. Geldzahler took a leave of absence that same year to be the first director of the Visual Arts program for the National Endowment for the Arts. Working through the Endowment, he was responsible for many $5000 grants to fledgling artists. Geldzaher was promoted to direct a newly created department of contemporary arts, later changed to the Department of Twentieth-century Art at the Metropolitan. In 1969, at age 33, he mounted the blockbuster exhibition “New York Painting: 1940-1970” effectively launching a salvo at the Museum of Modern Art that the Met could be a leader in contemporary art. Mayor Ed Koch appointed Geldzahler the Cultural Affairs Commissioner in 1977, a position he held until 1982. He was succeeded at the Metropolitan by Thomas B. Hess. As commissioner, he successfully attracted private corporations to fund city art funds. After leaving city government in 1982, Geldzahler worked as a private curator, most notably for New York’s P.S. 1 and later for the Dia Art Foundation’s Bridgehampton’s gallery in Long Island. He died of cancer at age 59. Geldzahler’s personal rapport with many of the artists he selected for exhibition gave him special insight into their work. David Hockney’s 1969 double portrait of Geldzahler and Geldzahler’s then partner Christopher Scott remains an important work of Hockney’s oeuvre. Other Geldzahler portraits include those by Alice Neel, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol and Larry Rivers, sculptural portraits by Marisol and George Segal. Andy Warhol produced a 90-minute film consisting nothing more than Geldzahler smoking a cigar. His written work focused exclusively on contemporary artists and much of his writing is more criticism than art history.

Selected Bibliography

American Painting in the Twentieth Century. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art,1965; Andy Warhol: Portraits of the Seventies and Eighties. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993; Charles Bell: the Complete Works, 1970-1990. New York: Abrams, 1991; New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970. New York, Dutton,1969.

Sources

Tomkins, Calvin. “Profiles: Henry Geldzahler.” New Yorker 47 (November 6, 1971): 58-60; “Barbaralee Diamonstein interviews Henry Geldzahler.” [videorecording] WNYC-TV program recorded July 7, 1978; Inside New York’s Art World. [Henry Geldzahler interviewed by Barbaralee Diamonstein] [videorecording] 1986? ; [obituary:] Goldberger, Paul. “Henry Geldzahler, 59, Critic, Public Official And Contemporary Art’s Champion, Is Dead.” New York Times. Aug 17, 1994. p. B11.

Gelli, Giovanni Battista

November 8, 2023April 18, 2024

Full Name: Gelli, Giovanni Battista

Gender: male

Date Born: 1498

Date Died: 1563

Home Country/ies: Italy

Subject Area(s): biography (general genre) and Florentine

Overview

wrote work about Florentine artists (1550), (published in 1896)

Sources

KGK 34, Bazin 37

wrote work about Florentine artists (1550), (published in 1896)

Gerdts, William

November 8, 2023April 18, 2024

Full Name: Gerdts, William

Other Names:

William H. Gerdts

Gender: male

Date Born: 1929

Place Born: Jersey City, Hudson, NJ, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): American (North American)

Overview

Americanist art historian. Professor, Graduate Center, City University of New York. Gerdts attended Amherst College beginning in 1945 where fellow student Walter Spink (later professor of art, University of Michigan) encouraged him to take classes with Charles Morgan. Morgan, a classicist, taught American and 19th-century European art history as a subspecialty. Morgan instilled in his students an appreciation for all of the art of a period, not just the currently acclaimed masters. According to Gerdts, Morgan and Louise Dresser, curator of the Worster Art Museum, developed in him an early appreciation of American art. He received his BA from Amherst College(1949). Although enrolled in Harvard Law School, Gerdts switched to the Department of Fine Arts where he studied under Benjamin Rowland, Jr. He achieved both master’s degree (1950) and Ph.D., (1966). After graduation, he was curator at the Norfolk Museum of Art and Sciences (now, Chrysler Museum) between 1953-54 and the Newark [N. J.] Museum (1954-66). From 1966-69 he taught as associate professor, University of Maryland, then Brooklyn College 1971-74, and as full professor at Brooklyn College 1974-85. In 1985 he became professor, Graduate Center, City University of New York. He received an honorary doctor of fine arts from Syracuse University (1996).

Selected Bibliography

American Luminism: a Benefit for The Lighthouse, the New York Association for the Blind, October 25th to November 25th, 1978. New York: Coe Kerr Gallery, 1978; American Impressionism. New York: Abbeville Press, c1984; American Neo-Classic Sculpture; the Marble Resurrection. New York: Viking Press, 1973; American Still-Life Painting.(with Russell Burke). New York: Praeger, 1971. 0.DOA

Sources

C. McGee. “Lost in Americana.” New York 23 (September 10, 1990): 25; Who’s Who in American Art 22 (1997-98): 425; William H. Gerdts. “A Personal Re-Collection.” For Beauty and For Truth: The William and Abigail Gerdts Collection of American Still Life. Amherst, MA: Mead Art Museum, 1998, pp. 10-30.

Gere, John Arthur

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Gere, John Arthur Giles

Other Names:

J.A. Gere

Gender: male

Date Born: 07 October 1921

Date Died: 01 January 1995

Place Born: UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Career(s): art historians

Institution(s): British Museum

Overview

British Museum curator and connoisseur of sixteenth-century Italian drawings. Gere was born to Edward Arnold, a British patent examiner, and Catherina Giles (Gere). His artistic interests and passion as a collector were strongly influenced by his upbringing. His father’s half-brother Charles March Gere (1869-1957), and two sisters were artists at the Birmingham school and his mother was associated with the Vorticist circle of Wyndham Lewis. Initially beginning his higher education at Winchester, he left in 1939 and joined the King’s Royal Rifle Corps––but he was forced to leave due to health complications. He entered Oxford University in 1940 receiving a BA in 1943 in English at Balliol. The Rosetti scholar John Bryson (1896-1976), who encouraged his scholarly interests in the Pre-Raphaelites. After finishing at Oxford, he volunteered at the Tate Museum until he quarreled with the cantankerous director, John Rothenstein.

In 1946, Gere was appointed an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Prints and Drawings under the supervision of the Keeper Edward “Teddy” Croft-Murray (1907-1980). He made his debut as an author in 1948 when he co-authored with Robin Ironside (1912-1965) on the “Pre-Raphaelite Painters,” published in Alphabet and Image and the same year an article in the The Burlington Magazine. His preliminary work revolved assisting Keepers A. E. Popham and Philip Pouncey on preparing for the revision and publication of the catalog of the early Italian drawings in the British Museum. Gere and Pouncey further collaborated to compile more catalogs of the department’s drawings and published Raphael and his Circle in 1962. These catalogs were commended for their original judgment, precision, and concision, which set new standards in the connoisseurship of their fields. His early education and success with the catalog inspired his original research on the drawings of Taddeo Zuccaro. In the 1960s, he published a series of articles in The Burlington Magazine to the catalog. and selection of the exhibition reviews Disegui degli Zuccari at the Uffizi 1966, Dessius de Taddeo et Federico Zuccaro at the Louvre in 1969, and the publication of Taddeo Zuccaro: His development studied in his drawings, also in the same year. Being the first to define a corpus of work by Taddeo, Gere’s convictions provided a study to distinguish Taddeo’s compositions from those by Federico, his previously better-known brother, and being a key moment in sixteenth-century art. Gere also assisted Virginia Surtees with her catalogue raisonné on Rossetti which appeared in 1971.

After serving his role as Assistant Keeper for twenty years, he became Keeper in 1973 at the retirement of Croft-Murray. He was responsible for the acquisition in the field of Italian drawings was of the highest quality (Mantegna, Bronzino, and Sebastiano del Piombo among them). Keeper Nicholas Turner (b. 1947) and Gere collaborated to assemble the great exhibitions of drawings by Michelangelo in 1976, and by Raphael in 1983. Gere retired from the Museum in 1981, but he continued to supplement his research and collaborate with colleagues. He worked once more with Pouncey to co-author Artists Working in Rome c. 1550 to 1640 in 1983. He continued to collect and curate art until his death in 1995.

Selected Bibliography

Pre-Raphaelite Drawings. Alphabet and Image 6. 1948.;and Ironside, Robin. Pre-Raphaelite Painters. London: Phaidon Press, 1948;
British Museum A. E Popham Philip Pouncey Johannes Wilde John A Gere and Nicholas Turner. 1950. Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. London;
Mostra Di Disegni Degli Zuccari : (Taddeo E Federico Zuccari E Raffaellino Da Reggio). Florence: L.S. Olschki. 1996;
Taddeo Zuccaro His Development Studied in His Drawings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969;
and Nicholas Turner. Drawings by Raphael: From the Royal Library the Ashmolean the British Museum Chatsworth and Other English Collections. London: Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum, 1983;.
The Study of Italian Drawings: The Contribution of Philip Pouncey. London: Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press, 1994;
and Nicholas Turner. Pre-Raphaelite Drawings in the British Museum. London: Trustees of the British Museum, British Museum Press, 1994;

Sources

Gere, J. A. “Taddeo Zuccaro as a Designer for Maiolica.” The Burlington Magazine 105, no. 724 (1963): 306–304;
Penny, Nicholas. “John Gere (1921-95).” The Burlington Magazine 137, no. 1106 (1995): 319–21;
White Christopher. “John Arthur Giles Gere 1921-1995.” Proceedings of the British Academy 90,Lectures and Memoirs:1995 1996.

Contributors: Doriz Concepcion

Gerhard, Eduard

November 8, 2023April 18, 2024

Full Name: Gerhard, Eduard

Other Names:

Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard Gerhard

Gender: male

Date Born: 29 November 1795

Date Died: 12 May 1867

Place Born: Poznań, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland

Place Died: Berlin, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), and Roman (ancient Italian culture or period)

Overview

Scholar of ancient Greek and Roman art; early creator of corpora; co-founder of the early group later to become the Deutsches archäologisches Institut. He was born in Posen, Prussia, which is present-day, Poznań, Poland. Gerhard studied philology at the universities of Breslau and Berlin, the latter under the classicist August Böckh (1785-1867). A trip to Italy in 1819-20 excited an interest in archaeology, which he continued at Bonn (1821). He returned to Rome the following year where he met fellow northern European classical scholars, including Theodor S. Panofka, August Kestner, and Otto von Stackelberg (1787-1837) with whom he formed a group known as the Roman Hyperboreans’ Association (Hyperboreisch-römische Gesellschaft). The result of his association with the Gesellschaft was Gerhard’s 1823 book on the Roman Forum, Della Basilica Giulia ed alcuni siti del Foro Romano, where he established the exact site of the basilica. He also made the Roman acquaintance of Christian Josias Bunsen (1791-1860), Carlo Fèa, the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844). Sensing a need for a basic scholarly inventory of major archaeological collections, he and Panofka wrote the first volume of a corpus of sculptures in the Museo Archeologico in Naples, Neapels antike Bildwerke. Panofka cataloged the vases of the museum and Gerhard the classical sculpture. No further volumes, however, appeared. He also assisted in Bunsen’s Beschreibung der Stadt Rom, 1829. The success of the Hyperboreans suggested that they should open their membership to a larger audience. In 1829, too, the Instituto Corrispondenza Archeologica or Institut für archäologisches Korrespondenz (Institute for Archaeological Correspondence) was established. In 1831, Gerhard issued his “Rapporto intorno i vasi volcenti” in the organ for the Institute, the Annali dell’Istituto. In it, Gerhard described the Etruscan excavations at Vulci first-hand and suggested the outline of the four major vase types of Greek painted vases. The seminal publication also supported the analysis by Luigi Antonio Lanzi that the vases were Greek in origin, simply discovered in Etruscan tombs. Gerhard moved to Berlin in 1834 and began publishing the Berlins antike Bildwerke, a projected monographic series on the classical objects in that city. Two years later the first and only volume appeared. Gerhard was now occupied with an inventory of Greek vases, the Auserlesene griechische Vasenbilder, which began in 1839. In 1840 his corpus of Etruscan mirrors, Etruskische Spiegel, began. Vasenbilder appeared fully in his lifetime (four volumes, complete in 1858) and Etruskische Spiegel completed by colleagues. Gerhard was appointed professor of archaeology at the University in Berlin in 1843. In 1855 he assumed the duties of director of the sculpture collection (Antiquarium) of the Königliches Museum, Berlin. He wrote a Griechische Mythologie (1854, 55) during these final years. Upon his death in 1867 he was succeeded in Berlin by Ernst Curtius. His students included Alexander Conze and those who studied with him included Reinhard Kekulé. Gerhard continued the aestheticising tradition of Winckelmann in studying a wide range of ancient art. Gerhard’s commitment to intellectual institutions, such as his cofounding of the Institut für archäologisches Korrespondenz was significant for its later development into the German Archaeological Institute (Deutsches archäologisches Institut) in 1871. Gerhard served as Director of the IfAK for most of the first three decades of its existence. Among his many contributions, his dedication to publicizing antique objects, heretofore only know through first-hand acquaintance and much travel, remains paramount. Auserlesene griechische Vasenbilder and Etruskische Spiegel represent a serious systematic account and scholarly treatments of their subject. His arrangement and methodology because the basis by which most other classical and art-historical corpora were designed. His reliance on iconography and subject according to modern standards appears forced (Elliott).

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] “Eduard Gerhard, Verzeichnis seiner Schriften.” Dem Archäologen Eduard Gerhard 1795-1867 zu seinem 200. Geburtstag. Berlin: W. Arenhövel, 1997, pp. 16-24; and Panofka, Theodor. Monumenti inediti pubblicati dall’Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica. Rome: Institut de correspondance arche´ologique, 1829-1833; “Rapporto intorno i vasi volcenti.” Annali dell’Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica 3 (1831): 5-218; Thatsachen des archäologischen Instituts in Rom. Berlin: Gedruckt in der Druckerei der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1832; Neuerworbene antike Denkmäler des Königlichen Museums zu Berlin. 3 vols in 1. Berlin: Druckerei der K. Akademie de Wissenschaften, 1836; Antike Bildwerke zum ersten Male bekannt gemacht. Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1827; Berlins antike Bildwerke. Part I. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1836; Etruskische und kampanische vasenbilder des Königlichen museums zu Berlin. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1843; Etruskische Spiegel. 5 vols. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1843-1897; “über archaologische Apparate und Musseen.” in: AZ 16, nos. 116, 117 (August-September 1858); Trinkschalen und Gefässe des Königlichen Museums zu Berlin und anderer Sammlungen. 2 vols. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1848-1850; Griechische Mythologie. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1854-1855; über Orpheus und die Orphiker eine akademische Abhandlung. Berlin: Druckerei der Königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften (In Commission bei Dümmler), 1861.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 20-22; Kästner, Ursula, and Borbein, Adolf Heinrich. 150 Jahre Archäologische Gesellschaft zu Berlin. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1993; Suzanne L. Marchand. Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996: 54-60; Elliott, John A. “Gerhard, Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 489-491; Wrede, Henning, ed. Dem Archäologen Eduard Gerhard 1795-1867 zu seinem 200. Geburtstag. Berlin: W. Arenhövel, 1997;

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Gerkan, Armin von

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Gerkan, Armin von

Other Names:

Armin von Gerkan

Gender: male

Date Born: 1884

Date Died: 1969

Place Born: Subbath, Kurland, Germany

Place Died: Hamburg, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), architecture (object genre), Classical, Roman (ancient Italian culture or period), and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Greek and Roman architectural historian. Gerkan was born in a small town on the Baltic coast. He initially studied at Riga, Latvia, but during the insurgency with Russian in 1906, he switched to Dresden (though he received his diploma from Riga). He traveled to Greece and Asia Minor after graduation. Wilhelm Dörpfeld secured him a position at the excavations at Miletos, Didyma and Samos (1908-1914) under the direction of Theodor Wiegand. He served as a Russian officer during World War I and after 1918 volunteering in a German military unit. In 1920 he was appointed to the Berlin museum, where Wiegand was director of the Antiquities section and which had sponsored the pre-war excavations. Gerkan published the Miletos excavations in three volumes for the museum. He completed a dissertation at the university in Greifswald on city planning in ancient Greece (Griechische Stadteanlagen). In 1923 he accepted the post of Second Secretary of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) in Rome. During these years he researched and publish the topography of ancient Rome and revived the archaeological course in Pompeii. He served as first secretary for the DAI in both Athens and Rome, but was passed over for the directorship in Athens for political reasons in favor of a Nazi candidate in 1936. Following the retirement (dismissal by the Nazi’s) of Ludwig Curtius in 1938, he assumed the provisional directorship of the DAI in Rome. He left Rome at its capture by the Allies in 1944. After the war, taught as a guest professor at the University of Bonn, 1948-1954 and at Göttingen, then at Cologne and Hamburg. Gerkan is a seminal figure in ancient architectural history. His Griechische Stadteanlage is still consulted today as a basic text for ancient city planning and his methodology has been widely adopted.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Griechische Städteanlagen. Greifswald, 1924, published as, Griechische Städteanlagen: Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung des Städtebaues im Altertlum. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1924; and Müller-Wiener, Wolfgang. Das Theater von Epidauros. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1961; and L’Orange, Hans Peter. Der spätantike Bildschmuck des Konstantinsbogens. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1939; and Rehm, Albert. Die Stadtmauern. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1935; Der Altar des Artemis-tempels in Magnesia am Mäander. Berlin: H. Schoetz, 1929; and Krischen, Fritz, and Drexel, Friedrich, and Neugebauer, Karl Anton, and Rehm, Albert, and Wiegand, Theodor. Thermen und Palaestren. Berlin,: H. Schoetz, 1928; Kalabaktepe, Athenatempel und Umgebung. Berlin: Verlag von Schoetz und Parrhysius, 1925; Das Stadion. Berlin: Vereiningung wissenschaftlicher Verleger, 1921; Der Poseidonaltar bei kap Monodendri. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1915.

Sources

Naumann, R. “Gerkan, Armin von.” Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 226-227; “Gerkan, Armin von.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 491, and mentioned 493.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Gardner, Paul

November 8, 2023April 18, 2024

**Image Credit:** National Portrait Gallery

Full Name: Gardner, Paul

Other Names:

Joseph Paul DeGrasse Gardner

Gender: male

Date Born: 1894

Date Died: 1972

Place Born: Somerville, Middlesex, MA, USA

Place Died: Lincoln, NM, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Overview

First director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1933-1953. Gardner received a B.A. from MIT and an M.A. in European history from George Washington University. He also studied ballet performance. Gardner entered Harvard University for his Ph.D., taking Paul J. Sachs museum course. While working on his dissertation, he was hired as an assistant to the University of Missouri trustees (the group mandated to establish the new Museum of art by the estate of William Rockhill Nelson) to set up the museum. Before taking on these duties, the board sent Gardner on a tour of Europe to study objects and their installation. Upon returning he assisted in the final arrangments for the Museum which was still under construction. Gardner was advanced to the director position, the museum’s first, in 1933. The same year he hired Otto Wittmann, Jr., to be his registrar, along with Philip C. Beam and Richard B. Freeman. The trustees also appointed Laurence Sickman to be the curator of Oriental art, upon Sickman’s return from his Harvard fellowship in 1935. Gardner made most of his acquisitions through an agent, Harold Woodbury Parsons. Gardner was drafted by the army in 1942 to fight in World War II. He rose to the rank of major, assigned to the Italian theater where he safeguarded art treasures. He resumed his duties as director in 1945. For the next eight years he worked to acquire works and continue the education program. Gardner retired from the Museum in 1953, succeeded by Sickman. He moved to New Mexico in retirement where he died twenty years later at his home near Lincoln, NM, “Los Olmos.”. He never completed his Ph.D.

Sources

Wolferman, Kristie C. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Culture Comes to Kansas City. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1993, pp. 105-113; Will of Probate, Joseph Paul Gardner, Lincoln County, NM, no. 102, 1972; [transcript] Interview with Otto Wittmann, October 25, 1981. Archives of American Art, p. 4-5.

Gardner, Percy

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Gardner, Percy

Gender: male

Date Born: 1846

Date Died: 1937

Place Born: Hackney, London, Greater London, England, UK

Place Died: Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style) and numismatics

Overview

Oxford historian of Greek art and numismatics. Gardner was the son of Thomas Gardner, a stockbroker, and Ann Pearse. Gardner graduated from Christ’s College Cambridge in 1865, after a unsuccessful attempt working at the stock exchange. He attended the City of London School until fifteen when he left to enter his father’s business. Gardner was unsuccessful, however, and entered Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1865. Much behind his classmates, he read philosophy on his own, obtaining ranks in classical studies (the classical tripos) and in the moral sciences in 1869. He was appointed an assistant in the department of coins and medals at the British Museum in 1871. Together with Reginald Stuart Poole and Barclay Vincent Head he wrote the first collections catalogs for Greek coins in British Museum (1876, 1877, 1879, and 1887). Gardner was awarded a fellowship at Christ’s Church in 1872. His enthusiasm for scholarship cost him his marriage to Agnes Reid (d. 1933), in 1874. Gardner’s interest in coinage was highly art-historical. His Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias co-authored with Friedrich Imhoof-Blumer (1838-1920) in 1887, demonstrated how the study of numismatics could aid the study of ancient sculpture. Gardner traveled to Greece in 1877 with the vase scholar Charles T. Newton to evaluate excavation of Mycenae at Olympia of Heinrich Schliemann. His observations, even today an important primary document for Schliemann scholarship, were published in The Academy 21 and 28 (April 1877). Upon his return, he championed the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, assuming the first editorship of the Journal of Hellenic Studies between 1879-1895. That same year, 1879, he was appointed to the Disney Chair of archaeology at Cambridge, which he held until 1886. His Types of Greek Coins appeared in1883, the first of the modern account of classical numismatics is still consulted today. Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias appeared in 1887. In 1887, too, Gardner move to Oxford University, elected to the recently established Lincoln and Merton professorship of classical archaeology. There, Gardner worked hard for the admission of archaeology as a discipline, something which came slowly given the University’s priority on teaching rather than research. Gardner’s privately-printed 1889 pamphlet, Classical Archaeology at Oxford related his frustrations in some detail. He established an archaeological library with Arthur J. Evans. His Oxford years saw the books that characterized him as an art historian, including A Manual of Greek Antiquities, co-written with Frank B. Jevons (1858-1936) in 1895, The Sculptured Tombs of Hellas in 1896, The Grammar of Greek Art in 1905 and A History of Ancient Coinage 700-300 B.C. in 1918. His Greek art book was republished in 1914 as The Principles of Greek Art, long a staple for students of the subject. A longer castigation of his university’s lethargy at becoming a research center for archaeology, Oxford at the Crossroads, was published in 1903. His final publishing years were given over to his Christian faith, beginning in 1899 with his treatise, Exploratio evangelica. After his retirement from Oxford in 1925, his final contribution to art history, New Chapters in Greek Art appeared in 1926. At Oxford, Gardner struggled to make research–and not pedagogy–the core of his efforts. He supervised the repairing the Arundel marbles in the University Galleries from clumsy earlier restorations, built an archaeological library, and assembled a collection of classical sculpture casts. He left the department of archaeology at the Ashmolean Museum with an international reputation for Greek-vase and Roman studies. He was, in the words of Martin Robertson, “largely responsible for introducing the study of Greet art in Oxford.” His most lasting contribution was the scholars he helped trained for succeeding generations, among them, J. D. Beazley, who succeeded him as Lincoln Chair in 1925. He also wisely advised Bernard Ashmole to pursue archaeology as opposed to classics (Honour Mods.), and thereby launching that scholar’s brilliant career. Gardner led the notion, vogue for his time, that Greek art of 600 B.C. to 300 B.C. was the acme of ancient achievement and that Roman art was but degenerate derivative. He brought historic rather than strictly aesthetic principles to the study of Greek art and feared the specialization of classical art studies, e.g., portraiture scholars. His books today are outdated because of newer finds, yet remain valid by their fine attention to detail and plain writing. Gardner’s genuine Christian devotion also led him to publish numerous books on the historical aspects of the church. Although benevolent to women students in his classes, he steadfastly fought against their full admission to the University. His youngest brother, Ernest A. Gardner, was also a classical scholar and art historian, and his sister, Alice Gardner, an historian.

Selected Bibliography

The Parthian Coinage. London: Trübner & Co., 1877; Catalogue of Greek Coins. Thessaly to Aetolia. London: The Trustees of the British Museum, 1883; Classical Archaeology at Oxford. Oxford: Horace Hart, 1889; New Chapters in Greek History, Historical Results of Recent Excavations in Greece and Asia Minor. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892; and Jevons, Frank Byron. A Manual of Greek Antiquities. London: Charles Griffin, 1895; Sculptured Tombs of Hellas. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1896; Oxford at the Crossroads: a Criticism of the Course of Litterae Humaniores in the University. London: A. and C. Black, 1903; A History of Ancient Coinage, 700-300 B.C. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918; New Chapters in Greek Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926.

Sources

Dictionary of National Biography, 1931-1940 supplement, 306-308; Toynbee, J. M. C., Major, H. D. A., and Boardman, John. “Percy Gardener.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Gardner, Percy. Autobiographica. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1933; Hill, G. “Percy Gardner, 1846-1937.” Publications of the British Academy 23 (1937): 459-469; Robertson, Martin. “Bernard Ashmole, 1894-1988.” Publications of the British Academy 75 (1989): 314; An Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1996, pp. 478-9; mentioned, Boardman, John. The History of Greek Vases. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2001, pp 132.

Gardner, Stephen

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Gardner, Stephen

Other Names:

William Stephen Gardner

Gender: male

Date Born: 11 March 1948

Date Died: 18 August 1991

Place Born: AR, USA

Place Died: Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Medieval (European), and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Medievalist architectural historian. Gardner was raised in Arkansas. [mother’s maiden name: Boyette?]. He graduated with a B.A. in art history from Duke University in 1970, continuing graduate work at Princeton University, earning his M.A. and Ph.D in 1976. His thesis, on the topic of British Romanesque planning was supervised by Alan Borg and Robert Branner of Columbia University. He taught as a graduate instructor at Boston University. When Branner died in 1973, several temporary hires were made until ultimately Gardner was appointed as his tenure-track replacement. Gardner supervised many of the dissertations of Branner’s graduate students and well as attracting his own. A homosexual, Gardner had been active in the lifestyle but not public to his colleagues. In 1985 his partner died of an AIDS-related disease the same year his bid for tenure appointment at Columbia was denied. Gardner spent his terminal year as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. Gardner contracted AIDS shortly before moving to Santa Barbara where he joined the Department of Art History at the University there. In May of 1991, his health declining, a symposium in his honor was organized by his former students and held at Riverside Church, New York. Gardner succumbed to an AIDS-related illness in 1991. He was succeeded at Santa Barbara by C. Edson Armi. Gardner’s papers, including his unfinished manuscript on the origins of Gothic in the Ile-de-France, are deposited at The Cloisters Museum NYC.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation] The Role of Central Planning in English Romanesque Chapter House Design. Princeton University, 1976; “Notes on a view of St. Lucien at Beauvais.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (November 1980): 149-156; “The Nave Galleries of Durham Cathedral.” Art Bulletin 64 no 4 (December 1982): 564-579; “Two Campaigns in Suger’s Western Block at St.-Denis.” Art Bulletin 66 no. 4 (December 1984): 574-587;”Sources for the Façade of Saint-Lucien in Beauvais.” Gesta 25 no 1, (1986): 93-100; “L’église Saint-Julien de Marolles-en-Brie et ses rapports avec l’architecture parisienne de la génération de Saint-Denis.” Bulletin Monumental 144 no.1 (1986): 7-31.

Sources

Duke University Alumni Association archives; Columbia University Archives; [Mary Parvo, personal correspondence, February 2012].

Garger, Ernst von

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Garger, Ernst von

Gender: male

Date Born: c. 1892-1893

Date Died: 1948

Home Country/ies: Austria

Overview

Director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Arts and Industry Museum), Vienna. In 1933 he secured the assistance of Ludwig Münz in reorganizing the antiquities collection of the Kunstgewerbemuseum, which was regarded as a model of its kind (Burlington Magazine).

Sources

N. M. “Dr Ludwig Münz.” Burlington Magazine 99 no. 657 (Dec., 1957), pp. 419-420; Österreichisches biographisches Lexikon 1815-1950; Neue Deutsche Biographie. Berlin: , 1953 ff.; Czeike, Felix. Historisches Lexikon Wien. Wien: Kremayr & Scheriau, 1992-1997, www.kremayr-scheriau.at; Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie. Munich: Saur, 1995-1999.

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