Architectural historian, Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Chair of the Department of Art, University of Virginia. Kimball's father was Edwin Fiske Kimball, a teacher, and mother Ellen Leora Ripley (Kimball). He was raised in the Boston area and received both his BA and MA in architecture from Harvard, 1909 and 1912, respectively. After a year of teaching architecture at the University of Illinois (1912-13), he moved to the University of Michigan to teach and complete his Ph.D. At Michigan Kimball produced two books.