Little, Charles T.

Full Name: Little, Charles T.

Other Names:

• Chuch Little

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)

Career(s): curators

Institution(s): Metropolitan Museum of Art

Overview

Medievalist of ivory carving and sculpture; curator of the Met. Charles Little was raised in Cleveland, Ohio. His first exposure to art came from the Cleveland Museum of Art. He lived in Germany in the mid-60s and toured Europe to see the monuments of art. While studying art history at Case Western Reserve University, Little was drawn to ancient history, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. In 1968, Little went to New York intending to study with Erwin Panofsky at the Institute for Advanced Study. With Panofsky’s death, he entered the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. The same year, he encountered the Raymond Pitcairn collection in the exhibition Medieval Art from Private Collections at The Cloisters.

In 1970, his internship in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Medieval Department under Thomas Hoving cemented his interest in museums. He joined the Medieval Art Department in 1973 as an assistant curator and became a successor of the retired William Forsyth. Soon after, he went on trips to Pitcairns’ private collection (today Glencairn Museum) in Bryn Athyn, PA, assisting Jane Hayward, specialist in Medieval glasswork. While studying for Ph.D, he curated an exhibition on Irish art at the Met. In 1977, he earned a Ph.D with dissertation The Magdeburg Ivory Group: A Tenth-Centry New Testament Narrative Cycle, written under Harry Bober. In 1994, He co-authored, with Elizabeth C. Parker, The Cloister Cross: Its Art and Meaning, which is believed to have the status of an “official” biography (Heslop). Little was the President of the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) from 1996 to 1999. In 2006, the exhibition Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture was organized by Little in part to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the ICMA. He also edited the exhibition catalog with key articles by himself and Willibald Sauerländer. In 2012, he was the Fulbright Senior Specialist to the Museum of National Taipei University of Education. Little retired from the Met as curator emeritus in 2016.

Little, as a museum professional, stated that he engaged with objects. He is fascinated with museum work and research work at Glencairn. For the installation of the exhibition Set in Stone (2006), he and designers devised the height, angle and lighting of the exhibits to better “explain something of their original contexts” (Wioxm). His work on the Cloisters Cross (1994) was also considered a “fascinating piece of detective work” that requires physical connoisseurship and critical analysis (Jacoby).

Selected Bibliography

• [dissertation]: The Magdeburg Ivory Group: A Tenth-Centry New Testament Narrative Cycle. New York University. 1977.
• and Parker, Elizabeth C. The Cloisters Cross: Its Art and Meaning. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/H. N. Abrams, 1994.
• edited, Set in stone: the face in medieval sculpture. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/ New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Sources

• Heslop, T. A. [Review of The Cloisters Cross: Its Art and Meaning by Elizabeth C. Parker, Charles T. Little.] The Burlington Magazine 136, no. 1096 (1994): 459–60.
• Jacoby, Thomas. [Review of The Cloisters Cross: Its Art and Meaning by Elizabeth C. Parker, Charles T. Little.] Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 13, no. 4 (1994): 37–38.
• mentioned, Forsyth, Ilene. “Historian of Art (1928- ).” in, Chance, Jane, ed. Women Medievalists in the Academy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, pp. 848.
• Wixom, William D. “Set in Stone. New York.” The Burlington Magazine 148, no. 1245 (2006): 876–77.
• “Interview with Dr. Charles T. Little: Reflections on the Early Days of Glencairn Museum.” 2020. Glencairn Museum. April 13, 2020. https://www.glencairnmuseum.org/newsletter/2020/4/8/interview-with-dr-charles-t-little-reflections-on-the-early-days-of-glencairn-museum.

• “About the ICMA.” n.d. International Center of Medieval Art. Accessed July 11, 2024. https://www.medievalart.org/about-us.

• “Meet the Staff.” n.d. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accessed July 11, 2024. https://www3.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/collection-areas/medieval-art-and-the-cloisters/staff-list.
• “Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture – The Metropolitan Museum of Art.” n.d.-a. Accessed July 11, 2024. https://www.metmuseum.org/met-publications/set-in-stone-the-face-in-medieval-sculpture.
• “Working Abroad.” n.d. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accessed July 11, 2024. https://www3.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/collection-areas/curatorial-studies/charles-little.

Contributors: Yuhuan Zhang