Full Name: Weismann, Elizabeth Wilder
Other Names:
- Elizabeth Wilder Weismann
- Elizabeth Weismann
Gender: female
Date Born: 10 September 1907
Date Died: 1989
Home Country/ies: United States
Career(s): art historians
Institution(s): Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Overview
Scholar of Latin American colonial art and architecture. Weismann received her A.B. in 1928 from Smith College. She served as an instructor in Art at the Smith (1928-1929) where she received her A.M. in 1932 She published her thesis, The Unfinished Monument by Andrea Del Verrocchio to the Cardinal Niccolo Forteguerri at Pistoia the same year, a book with photographs by Clarence Kennedy. She taught at several girl’s boarding schools, Burnham School in Greenfield, Massachusetts, (1934-1935), and art history teacher at Westover School, Middlebury, Connecticut, (1935-1938, 1939-1940), before becoming an Assistant Keeper of the Archive of Hispanic Culture at the Library of Congress (starting 1940). A Guggenheim Fellowship was awarded to her for two consecutive years, 1944 and 1945.
Her later books include A Guide to the Art of Latin America (1948), Mexico in Sculpture: 1521-1821 (1950), translation of Manuel Toussaint’s Colonial Art in Mexico (1967), Americas: The Decorative Arts in Latin America in the Era of the Revolution (1976) and Art and Time in Mexico: From the Conquest to the Revolution (1985).
In 1985, Wesimann donated her collection of photographs and card files of art and architecture in Mexico and other Latin American countries to the Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin. The collection is named the Elizabeth Wilder Weismann Collection. She also taught and researched at Wellesley College and Ohio State University before moving to Austin, Texas, where she died in 1989.
Wesimann’s Mexico in Sculpture 1521-1821 was considered on par with George Kubler’s Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century (1948) and Harold Wethey’s Peruvian Architecture and Sculpture of the Colonial Period (1949), in the field of Mexico art (Neumeyer).
Selected Bibliography
- and Kennedy, Clarence (photographs). The Unfinished Monument by Andrea Del Verrocchio to the Cardinal Niccolo Forteguerri at Pistoia. (Studies in the History and Criticism of Sculpture, Smith College 7). Northampton, MA: Smith College, 1932.
- A Guide to the Art of Latin America. United States: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948.
- Mexico in Sculpture: 1521-1821. Cambridge, MA:: Harvard University Press, 1950.
- “Manuel Toussaint 1890-1955.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 36, no. 2 (1956): 268–270.
- [translator] Toussaint, Manuel. Colonial Art in Mexico. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1967.
- “The History of Art in Latin America 1500-1800 Some Trends and Challenges in the Last Decade.” Latin American Research Review 10, no. 1 (1975): 7–50.
- Americas: The Decorative Arts in Latin America in the Era of the Revolution. United States: Renwick Gallery of the National Collection of Fine Arts, 1976.
- Art and Time in Mexico: From the Conquest to the Revolution. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.
Sources
- Elizabeth Wilder Weismann Collection, ca. 1930-ca. 1979, Benson Latin American Collection, General Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.
- [review of Mexico in Sculpture 1521-1821] Neumeyer, Alfred. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 9, no. 4 (1951): 338–39.
- Patrick Kennedy, J. “The Art of Mexico.” Houston Chronicle, December 22, 1985, p. 21.
Contributors: Yuhuan Zhang