Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner
Karlsruhe, Germany, 1880 - 1958, New York
Oxford Art Online:
American art historian and museum director of German birth. He made his mark as a Rembrandt scholar with the publication of his thesis Rembrandt und seine Umgebung in 1905. Appointed assistant to Wilhelm Bode at the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, Berlin, in 1906, he gained an encyclopedic knowledge of museums and their organization, which was matched by his appetite for writing. His influence was felt especially in American museums, first as curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from 1908 and then as director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. He was friend and adviser to two generations of collectors, reaching new audiences for German Expressionist painting, and he organized important loan exhibitions devoted to Rubens and van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Frans Hals. He also mastered specialized areas from Italian Renaissance sculpture to Islamic pottery. Although he was often unduly generous in his attributions, his publications are notable for their insights and enthusiasm.
(James David Draper. "Valentiner, Wilhelm R." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed July 17, 2015. Accessed July 17, 2015. www.oxfordartonline.com)
Person TypeIndividual
Last Updated8/7/24
Deep River, Connecticut, 1868 - 1953, Princeton, New Jersey
Preston, England, 1868 - 1936, London
