Full Name: Millon, Henry Armand
Other Names:
- Henry A. Millon
- Hank Millon
Gender: male
Date Born: 22 February 1927
Date Died: 02 April 2018
Place Born: Altoona, Blair, PA, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)
Career(s): administrators and art historians
Overview
Architectural historian of the Renaissance and Baroque era. Millon’s father, Henri Francois Millon, was an aerial photographer and his mother, Louise de Serent (Millon), was the daughter of the publisher of a French newspaper in New York. Millon graduated from Brownsville, Texas, high school in 1942. He entered Navy ROTC (then called the Navy V-12 program) in 1943 at Tulane University. He served in active duty immediately after World War II in 1946. He returned to Tulane where he earned multiple bachelor’s degrees in English, physics and architecture. He spent a year in Paris with a maternal grandmother before entering Harvard University where he received a master’s degree in architecture and urban design, and a second Master’s degree (and eventually Ph.D.) in History of Art. At Harvard his classes included the legendary seminars taught by Jakob Rosenberg, Sydney Joseph Freedberg and George M. A. Hanfmann. A deep impression was made on him during the two summer courses taught by Rudolf Wittkower at the Fogg Museum. A Fulbright Fellowship and a subsequent fellowship at the American Academy in Rome allowed him to study in Italy for three years. He returned to beginning teaching at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Visiting Professor in 1960. In the 1950’s, Millon met Craig Hugh Smyth the Princeton-trained NYU art historian, twelve years his senior, whom Millon would collaborate on many projects. Following three years of research in Italy first as a Fulbright Fellow and then as a fellow for the American Academy in Rome, 1957-1960, under the directorship of Laurance Page Roberts, he returned to the United States to teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1960 as an assistant professor of architecture. His 1964 dissertation on Guarino Guarini was directed by Wittkower. He married Judith Rice in 1966. Millon was appointed professor at MIT in 1969. Together with Smyth, the two published a series of articles on Michelangelo’s architecture between 1969 and 1983 fundamentally changing contemporary thinking on Michelangelo’s contributions to the design of St. Peter’s. Millon was vice-chair of the Boston Landmarks Commission, 1970-1973. In 1974 he was appointed the Director of the American Academy in Rome, which he held until 1977. He retained his Visiting Faculty status at MIT the rest of his career. In 1980, when the National Gallery of Art in Washgington, D. C., inaugurated the Center for Advanced Study of the Visual Arts, Millon was its first Dean. He and Smyth summarized their research on Michelangelo’s architecture in the 1988 NGA exhibition, “Michelangelo, Architect.” He retired from CASVA in 2000.Architectural historian and first director, CASVA, 1979-2000.
Millonheld grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Getty Research Institute, and a Senior Fulbright. He has received awards from the American Institute of Architects; Academie des sciences morale et politique, Institut de France; and the College Art Association.
Scientific Secretary, Thesarus Artis Universalis Working Group of the International Committee for the History of Art; Chair, Dumbarton Oaks Senior Fellows Committee, Program in History of Landscape Architecture; President, International Union of Academies of Archaeology, History and History of Art in Rome; Vice-Chair, Boston Landmarks Commission, and Co-Chair, he served as Curator, American Philosophical Society.
Selected Bibliography
- [dissertation:] Guarino Guarini and the Palazzo Caarignano in Turin. Harvard University, 1964;
- Baroque & Rococo Architecture. New York: George Braziller, 1961;
- and Millon, Judith Rice. St. Paul’s Wthin-the-walls in Rome: a Building History and Guide, 1870-1980. Dublin, NH: W. L. Bauhan, 1982;
- Filippo Juvarra. Drawings from the Roman Period, Part I (1984), Part II, with A. Griseri, S. McPhee, and M. Viale Ferrero. 1999;
- and Smyth, Craig Hugh. Michelangelo architetto: la facciata di San Lorenzo e la cupola di San Pietro. Milan: Olivetti, 1988, English, Michelangelo Architect: the Facade of San Lorenzo and the Drum and Dome of St. Peter’s. Milan: Olivetti, 1988;
- and Lampugnani, Vittorio Magnago. The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: the Representation of Architecture. Milan: Bompiani, 1994;
- Italian Renaissance Architecture from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996;
- edited, The Triumph of the Baroque: Architecture in Europe, 1600-1750. New York: Rizzoli 1999;
- A Life of Learning: Charles Homer Haskins lecture for 2002. New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 2002.
Sources
- [obituary:] “Henry Millon.” Member News. Society of Architectural Historians (website) http://www.sah.org/about-sah/member-news/2018/04/09/obituary-henry-a.-millon-1927-2018;
- “In Memoriam: Henry Millon.” American Academy in Rome, News/Features. https://www.aarome.org/news/features/memoriam-henry-millon ;
- Millon, Henry A. A Life of Learning: Charles Homer Haskins lecture for 2002. New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 2002;