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Sandler, Irving

Full Name: Sandler, Irving

Other Names:

  • Irving Sandler

Gender: male

Date Born: 22 July 1925

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Career(s): art critics


Overview

Art critic and writer; professor of art at SUNY Purchase 1972-. Sandler was born to Harry Sandler and Diana Drori (Sandler). His father was a school teacher. Sandler joined the Marine Corps during War War II, receiving some training at Franklin and Marshall College between1943-1944. He rose to the rank of second lieutenant. After the war he attended Temple University where he was awarded a B.A. in 1948. He continued at University of Pennsylvania, gaining an M.A. in 1950. Sandler ran a private New York Gallery from 1956 to 1959 and was senior critic for the magazine Art News between 1956-62. He came to personally know many of the abstract expressionist artists of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Sandler married the art historian Lucy Freeman Sandler in 1958. He and NYU professor Robert Goldwater wrote the book Three American Sculptors: Ferber, Hare, Lassaw in 1959. After receiving a Tona Shepherd grant for research in Germany and Austria for 1960, he joined the New York Post as art critic the following year which he held until 1964. Sandler was a signer of the infamous 1961 “Letter to the New York Times” chastising its critic, John Canaday, for disparaging modern art. In 1963 he was appointed a lecturer in art history at New York University. Sandler was a 1965 Guggenheim fellow. In 1970 he authored an important memoir/history of the abstract expressionist movement, The Triumph of American Painting. Sandler was a major force in the organization of “Artist’s Space,” an alternative exhibition space for young artists, in 1972. Sandler was appointed professor of art at the State University of New York College at Purchase, NY, in 1972. He completed his Ph.D., from New York University in 1976. He gained a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1977. He was a board member of the College Art Association 1985-89. His papers are housed at the Getty Center Research Institute. Sandler’s writing on Abstract Expressionist art was criticized in 1983 by Serge Guilbaut in his book How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art as icorporating historical idealism. Charging that Sandler had ignored political ramifications of Abstract Expressionsim, particularly how the U.S. state department used it as an advertisement for freedom of expression.


Selected Bibliography

and Goossen, E. C., and Goldwater, Robert. Three American Sculptors: Ferber, Hare, Lassaw. New York: Grove Press, 1959; The Triumph of American Painting: a History of Abstract Expressionism. New York: Harper & Row, 1970; Alex Katz: a Retrospective. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998; Alex Katz. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1979; Art of the Postmodern Era: from the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s. New York: IconEditions, 1996; edited, and Newman, Amy. Defining Modern Art: Selected Writings of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. New York: Abrams, 1986;


Sources

Sandler, Irving. A Sweeper-up After Artists: a Memoir. London: Thames & Hudson, 2003.




Citation

"Sandler, Irving." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/sandleri/.


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Art critic and writer; professor of art at SUNY Purchase 1972-. Sandler was born to Harry Sandler and Diana Drori (Sandler). His father was a school teacher. Sandler joined the Marine Corps during War War II, receiving some training at Franklin an

Sandler, Lucy Freeman

Full Name: Sandler, Lucy Freeman

Other Names:

  • Lucy Freeman Sandler

Gender: female

Date Born: 1930

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)

Career(s): educators


Overview

Medievalist and professor of art history, New York University, 1964-2003. Sandler was born Lucy Freeman to Otto Freeman and Frances Glass (Freeman). She attended Queens College, Flushing, NY, receiving a B.A. in studio art in 1951. A watercolorist working in a semi-abstract style, an interest in art history had been encouraged by an art professor Frances Bryant Godwin (1892-1975). She continued to Columbia University for a master’s degree in art history. At Columbia, Freeman studied under the medievalists Meyer Schapiro and John H. Plummer where the latter’s enthusiasm for manscripts drew her to the topic (Smith). Her M.A. was granted in 1957 with a topic on medieval manuscript marginalia. She married the art critic and historian Irving Sandler in 1958. Freeman, now Sandler, entered the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, for her Ph.D. Studying under Harry Bober, she received her degree in 1964 with a dissertation topic on the Psalter of Robert de Lisle. She was appointed assistant professor at the University the same year by department chair Horst Woldemar Janson. Publication of her dissertation was initially thwarted by rerproduction permission for the images. Sandler received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for the 1967-1968 year. Sandler was promoted to associate professor in 1970. Her book The Peterborough Psalter in Brussels and Other Fenland Manuscripts, appeared in 1974. She became full professor, 1975, acting as the chairman of department of Art between 1975-1989. Sandler received a second NEH fellowship in 1977. She was president of the College Art Association, 1981-1984. Sandler was finally able to revise and publish form of her dissertation in 1983 as The Paslter of Robert de Lisle in the British Library. She began lecturing at NYU’s graduate school, the Institute of Fine Arts, in the 1980s. In 1985 she was named Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of Art History. The following year she wrote the volume on Gothic fourteenth-century manuscripts in the important Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, edited by Jonathan J. G. Alexander. She received a Guggenheim fellowship for the 1988-1989 year. This resulted in her book Omne Bonum, Sandler was name professor emerita in 2003. Sandler’s work built on the scholarship of earlier scholars of British medieval illumination, notably Eric G. Millar and Margaret Rickert (Smith). Her work on medieval marginalia and proverbs was expanded on by Michael Camille. She was editor of both the Art Bulletin and Gesta.


Selected Bibliography

[master’s thesis:] Formal Principles of Marginal Illustration in English Psalters of the Thirteenth Century. Columbia University, 1957; [dissertation:] The Psalter of Robert de Lisle. New York University, 1964, revised and published asThe Paslter of Robert de Lisle in the British Library. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983; [bibliography to 2003:] Smith, Kathryn A., and Krinsky, Carol Herselle, eds. Tributes to Lucy Freeman Sandler: Studies in Illuminated Manuscripts. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2007, pp. 15-19; The Peterborough Psalter in Brussels and Other Fenland Manuscripts. London: Harvey Miller/ New York Graphic Society, 1974; Gothic Manuscripts, 1285-1385. London: Harvey Miller Publishers/Oxford University Press, 1986; Omne Bonum: a Fourteenth-century Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge: British Library MSS Royal 6 E VI-6 E VII. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 1996; The Lichtenthal Psalter and the Manuscript Patronage of the Bohun Family. London: Harvey Miller, 2004.


Sources

Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1981; Times Literary Supplement, July 3, 1987; Nelson, Robert S., and Seidel, Linda. “Michael Camille: A Memorial.” Gesta 41 no. 1, no. 2 (2002): 138; Smith, Kathryn A. “Lucy Freeman Sandler: An Appreciation,” and Krinsky, Carol Herselle. “Lucy Freeman Sandler: From a Colleague and Friend.” in Smith, Kathryn A., and Krinsky, Carol Herselle, eds. Tributes to Lucy Freeman Sandler: Studies in Illuminated Manuscripts. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2007, pp. 9-12 and 13-14; “Notes on the Contributors.” in Hourihane, Colum, ed. Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn. University Park, Pa: Penn State Press, 2008, p. xiv.



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Sandler, Lucy Freeman." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/sandlerl/.


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Medievalist and professor of art history, New York University, 1964-2003. Sandler was born Lucy Freeman to Otto Freeman and Frances Glass (Freeman). She attended Queens College, Flushing, NY, receiving a B.A. in studio art in 1951. A watercolorist

Saalman, Howard

Full Name: Saalman, Howard

Gender: male

Date Born: 1928

Date Died: 1995

Place Born: Szczecin, West Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland

Place Died: Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, Allegheny, PA

Home Country/ies: United States

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

Career(s): educators


Overview

Architectural historian of the medieval and renaissance periods; Carnegie-mellon University professor, 1958-1993. Saalman was the son of Walter Guenter Saalman and Gertrude Robert (Saalman). He was born in Stettin, Germany, which is present-day Szczecin, Poland. As Jews in Nazi Germany, his family fled in 1938 to the United States to escape persecution. Saalman attended the City College (modern City College, City University of New York, CUNY) receiving his A. B. in 1949. He entered New York University where he met fellow student Jeanne Eloise Farr whom he married in1954. A 1952 seminar with Richard Krautheimer led to his interest in Brunelleschi. Saalman wrote his master’s thesis in 1955, continuing for his Ph.D. He participated in the excavations at Santa Trinità, Florence, 1957-58, completing his dissertation in 1960 on that church under Krautheimer. Saalman published the findings of his Master’s thesis in the Art Bulletin in 1958, which brought him worldwide attention as a scholar. Rudolf Wittkower commissioned Saalman to author the Zwemmer series monograph on Brunelleschi which appeared in three volumes (1970, 1981, 1993). He joined Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, in 1958 as professor of architectural history. In 1962 Saalman wrote the Medieval Architecture survey volume for the Braziller series on architecture. He was Kress fellow in Florence, for the 1964-65 year. His dissertation appeared in a revised form in 1965. He was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1968 and Harvard University, 1969. In 1970 he was named Andrew Mellon Professor of Architecture. He continued to lectured in various German universities. In 1984 he was named a Guggenheim fellow. Saalman received the Alexander von Humboldt Prize in 1992. He was named professor emeritus at Carnegie-Mellon in 1993. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage after chairing the Alberti Symposium in Mantua in 1994 and died at his Squirrel Hill (Pennsylvania) home the following year. He is buried at Beth Olam Cemetery, Middletown, RI. Saalman’s architectural history showed great insight. His Life of Brunelleschi combined contemporary Italian Renaissance biographies with detailed notes. Saalman saw Brunelleschi less of the founder of the renaissance architectural type, as Jacob Burckhardt had contended, but more as an architect on the cusp a period of innovation (Frommel). It was Alberti, according to Saalman, who was the innovator. Two of his monographs were selected for the Monographs on Archaeology and Fine Arts of the College Art Association.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] The Church of Santa Trinità in Florence. Ph.D., New York University, 1960, published under the same title, New York: Archaeological Institute of America/College Art Association 1965; Medieval Cities. New York: Braziller, 1968; The Bigallo: The Oratory and Residence of the Compagnia del Bigallo e della Misoricordia in Florence. New York: Archaeological Institute of America/ and College Art Association, 1969; Edited, Manetti, Antonio. The Life of Brunelleschi by Antonio Manetti. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970; Haussmann: Paris Transformed. New York: Braziller, 1971; Filippo Brunelleschi: The Cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore. London: Zwemmer, 1980; Filippo Brunelleschi: The Buildings. London: Zwemmer, 1993; The Transformation of Buildings and the City in the Renaissance, 1300-1500: A Graphic Introduction. Champlain, NY: Astrion Publishing, 1996.


Sources

“Howard Saalman, ‘Brilliant’ Professor had Passion for Life.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette October 21, 1995, p. D4; “Howard Saalman, Art Historian, 67.” New York Times (October 24, 1995): B8; Frommel, Christoph L. “Howard Saalman (1928-1995).” The Burlington Magazine 138, no. 1116 (March 1996): 192-193.




Citation

"Saalman, Howard." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/saalmanh/.


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Architectural historian of the medieval and renaissance periods; Carnegie-mellon University professor, 1958-1993. Saalman was the son of Walter Guenter Saalman and Gertrude Robert (Saalman). He was born in Stettin, Germany, which is present-day Sz

Sachs, Paul J.

Full Name: Sachs, Paul J.

Other Names:

  • Paul Sachs
  • Paul Joseph Sachs

Gender: male

Date Born: 24 November 1878

Date Died: 18 February 1965

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Place Died: Cambridge, Middlesex, MA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): museology and museums (institutions)

Career(s): directors (administrators) and museum directors


Overview

Harvard associate director of the Fogg Art Museum; developer of one of the early museum studies courses in the United States. Sachs was the eldest son of Samuel Sachs (1951-1935) and Louisa Goldman, the youngest daughter of Marcus Goldman, a partner of the investment firm Goldman Sachs. Paul Sachs attended the School for Boys and Collegiate Institution before graduating from Harvard University in 1900. As a student, Sachs collected prints and drawings with fellow classmate Edward Waldo Forbes. After graduating, Sachs went to work in the family business, becoming a partner in 1904. He married Meta Pollak. When Forbes succeeded Charles H. Moore as the director of the William Hayes Fogg Art Museum in 1909, Forbes looked around for a competent person to be his assistant director. Sachs had been making donations to the Fogg since 1911, then only a small art collection consisting mostly of Italian primitives.

In 1912 Sachs was appointed to the museum’s Visiting Committee. In 1914 he persuaded Sachs to leave his investment business to become assistant curator, despite Sachs having no curatorial background. Sachs spent that summer in Italy, seeing as much as as he could before his arrival at Harvard in the autumn of 1915. Sach’s first lectures in art history occurred in 1916-1917 at Wellesley College where he had been appointed “Lecturer in Art.” He was made an assistant professor in the department of fines arts at Harvard in 1917. Together, Forbes and Sachs formed a team of fundraising, teaching and museum development which set a standard for academic museum direction. The two were so closely associated that Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell described them as “mendicant Siamese twins.”

Forbes took a leave of absence from the museum briefly for war service in World War I. Because of his height (5 feet, 2 inches), Sachs was ineligible for the army, but served as a major with the American Red Cross. After returning, Sachs was made an associate director of the Fogg in 1923. The year before, he had begun his celebrated course in museum curatorship, Fine Arts 15a, “Museum Work and Museum Problems,” known to students as “the museum course.” Sachs’ business experience helped in teaching administrative skills to his students. His position as a collector and person of wealth opened doors to private collections for many of his students. He even included in his course suggestions on how to throw an appropriate cocktail party (Lieberman. Meech). He was appointed full professor in 1927. That same year the Fogg moved to new quarters.

Sachs hired Smith graduate Agnes Mongan to assist in cataloging the burgeoning Fogg collection. In 1929 he advised Abby Aldrich Rockefeller to hire one of his students, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., to be the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Sachs also became one of seven founding members of the Museum and gave it its first drawing, a George Grosz portrait of the artist’s mother, 1926-1927. Sachs’ other important art connections included a friendship with Sears-Roebuck magnate Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932), and Rosenwald’s daughter, the collector and (later MoMA trustee) Adele Levy (1892-1960).

Sachs set about developing a program of museum education, developing what he termed the “connoisseur-scholar.” One aspect included what was commonly called “the Print Course,” a seminar-style analysis of prints and drawings drawn largely from Sach’s personal collection. From 1935 onward, he served regularly as chair of the Division of Fine Arts as the department was then known. In 1936, Sachs participated in the celebrated “Albertina Affair.” Archduke Albrecht, in a bid to gain the title of Emperor of Hungary, attempted a secret negotiation with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to sell his print and drawing collection–the Albertina, the greatest one in the world and part of the cultural legacy of Austria. Sachs and Mongan traveled secretly to Vienna with Boston curator of Prints and Drawing’s Henry P. Rossiter, authenticating hundreds of drawings until the Austrian government learned of the plan. The collection was seized and nationalized, however, Sachs had nearly acquired the greatest single collection of drawings in the world.

Harvard awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1942. In 1945 Sachs and Forbes retired together from the museum, Sachs remaining in the department until 1948 when he was named a professor emeritus. In 1961 his wife preceded him in death. He died at his desk at Shady Hill while working on his memoirs. His students–those who benefited from his museum courses or were placed by him in positions of prestige, included Bill Liebermann, A. Everett Austin, Jr.
, Walter Pach, Eddie Warburg, Frederick B. Deknatel, Agnes Mongan, John Walker III, James Rorimer, Perry T. Rathbone, Sydney Joseph Freedberg, George M.A. Hanfmann, John P. Coolidge, Milton W. Brown, Beaumont Newhall, Eleanor Sayre, Henry P. McIlhenny and the collector Joseph Pulitzer, jr. (1913-1993).

Sachs’ contribution to art museology was his famous “Museum Course” a seminar conducted Mondays out of his home, Shady Hill (the former residence of Charles Eliot Norton) in Cambridge and Fridays at the Fogg. The class amounted to a detailed connoisseur-style discussion of art. The course was one of the earliest ones in museum studies and through it Sachs trained a great many of the next generation of museum directors. During the era when art museums were being founded or reestablished as serious institutions, a great many board trustees contacted Sachs for a recently graduated student to head their institution. Universities creating departments of art history also found Sachs willing to outline programs to fit academic requirements. He was an editor of the Art Bulletin from 1919-1940.

Sachs was the kind of person about whom legends quickly arose. Due to his short stature, he hung the paintings at the Fogg to fit his own view. As many of Sach’s students eventually were responsible for installations in major museums, they all tended to hang pictures low, assuming Sach’s habit to be the museum norm. Students called him “Uncle Paul” for his avuncular countenance–but never to his face. Others, notably Julian Levy, characterized him as “pompous and willful.” (Marquis). One assistant, Otto Wittmann, Jr., recalled Sachs taking advantage of the war to buy Degas estate drawings (Degas had died in 1917) sending them home.


Selected Bibliography

  • Drawings in the Fogg Museum of Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940;
  • A Loan Exhibition of Early Italian Engravings (intaglio) Fogg Art Museum. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1915;
  • Modern Prints & Drawings: a Guide to a Better Understanding of Modern Draftsmanship. New York: Knopf, 1954;
  • The Pocket Book of Great Drawings. New York, Pocket Books, 1951.

Sources

  • [obituaries:] “Dr. Paul J. Sachs Dead at 86; Art Expert Led Fogg Museum.” New York Times. February 19, 1965, p. 35; “Paul J. Sachs.” Art Journal 25 no. 1 (Fall 1965): 50-52;
  • Mongan, Agnes. “Introduction.” Memorial Exhibition: Works of Art from the Collection of Paul J. Sachs. Cambridge, MA: Fogg Art Museum, 1965, pp. 7-13;
  • [unpublished memoir] Sachs, Paul J. “Tales of an Epoch,” Harvard University Art Museums Archives;
  • Rossiter, Henry P. “Albertina for Boston?” Apollo 96 (August 1972): 135-7;
  • Marquis, Alice Goldfarb. Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary for the Modern. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989, p. 36;
  • [transcript] Smith, Richard Cándida, interviewer. Otto Wittmann: The Museum in the Creation of Community. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 1995, p. 32;
  • Duncan, Sally Anne. Paul J. Sachs and the Institutionalization of Museum Culture between the World Wars. Ph. D., dissertation, Tufts University, 2001;
  • Tassel, Janet. “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Director.” Harvard Magazine 105 no. 1 (September-October 2002): 51;
  • Meech, Julia.  “William Slattery Lieberman (1923-2005): Curator and Collector.”  Impressions: official publication of the Ukiyo-e Society of America 28 no. 3 (March 2006): 106;
  • Duncan, Sally Anne.  The Art of Curating: Paul J. Sachs and the Museum Course at Harvard.  Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2018.



Citation

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Harvard associate director of the Fogg Art Museum; developer of one of the early museum studies courses in the United States. Sachs was the eldest son of Samuel Sachs (1951-1935) and Louisa Goldman, the youngest daughter of Marcus Goldman, a partner

Salas y Bosch, Xavier de

Full Name: Salas y Bosch, Xavier de

Other Names:

  • Francisco Xavier de Salas y Bosch

Gender: male

Date Born: 1907

Date Died: 1982

Place Born: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Place Died: Madrid, Spain

Home Country/ies: Spain

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


Overview

Historian of Spanish painting from the 17th-19th centuries and museum director. Salas began studying art history at the Universidad de Barcelona, and later studied in Vienna and Berlin. He was appointed Professor of Art History at the Universidad Compultense de Madrid, and attended the salons of the Academia Breve de Critica de Arte in 1946-7, organized by Eugene d’Ors. In 1947, Salas moved to London, and wrote for the magazine Goya about museum collections. He completed monographs on Vel’squez and Goya, and published articles in several Spanish journals. In 1961, Salas served as the Deputy Director of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, becoming the Director in 1970. He spent his the last part of his life in Trujillo, where he owned a castle, studying the city’s urban heritage and participating in restoration projects.



Sources

The Dictionary of Art




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"Salas y Bosch, Xavier de." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/salasx/.


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Historian of Spanish painting from the 17th-19th centuries and museum director. Salas began studying art history at the Universidad de Barcelona, and later studied in Vienna and Berlin. He was appointed Professor of Art History at the Universidad