Full Name: Hill, Dorothy Kent
Gender: female
Date Born: 1907
Date Died: 1986
Place Born: New York, NY, USA
Place Died: USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): Classical
Career(s): curators
Overview
First curator of classical art at the Walters Gallery, Baltimore. Hill studied at Vassar (class of 1928) and continued Johns Hopkins University, graduating in 1933. Her dissertation, on Greek pottery, was titled Conventions of Attic Black-figured Drawing, written under David Moore Robinson (1880-1958). Hill was immediately hired by the nascent Walters Art Gallery. Henry Walters had bequeathed over 23,000 art works in 1931 to the city. Other curators hired for the new museum included Dorothy E. Miner. Hill set about cataloging the collection of ancient art, rising to curator of Classical Art in 1937. In 1948 she began editing the Journal of the Walters Art Gallery. Hill was part of the Archaeology Club, an informal group of classical art historians, whose ranks included Otto J. Brendel of Columbia University and his wife Maria, Homer Thompson (1906-2000) and his wife Dorothy Burr Thompson of the Institute for Advanced Study, Frances Follin Jones of the Princeton Art Gallery, and Evelyn B. Harrison. Hill retired in 1977 and was succeeded by Diana Buitron [Oliver]. He died returning from Princeton, NJ.
Sources
Poultney, James. W., and Low, Theodore L. “Dorothy Kent Hill Retires.” Walters Art Gallery Bulletin (February 1977): 1-2; [obituary:] Poultney, James. W. “Dorothy Kent Hill, 1907-1986.” American Journal of Archaeology 90, no. 4 (October 1986): 473-474.