Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1983-2000. His father was John Joseph Walsh, Sr., (b. 1909). Walsh graduated from Yale University in 1961. He continued to graduate school at Columbia University, studying baroque art under Julius S. Held. Walsh became a lecturer and curatorial assistant for the Frick Collection in New York, 1966-1968. He spent a year researching his dissertation at the University in Leiden. Walsh was appointed associate curator at the Metropolitan Museum of art in 1968.