John Walsh (art historian)

John Joseph Walsh, Jr. (* 1937 in Mason City , Washington ) is an American art historian . He was director of the J. Paul Getty Museum from 1983 to 2000 .

Life

John Walsh studied art history at Yale University in New Haven (Connecticut) until 1961 and then moved to Columbia University in New York, where he deepened his studies in Baroque art with Julius Held . He received his doctorate in 1971 on the Dutch marine painter Jan Porcellis and his son Julius Porcellis . At the same time he worked from 1966 to 1968 as a lecturer at the New York Frick Collection and spent a year studying at the University of Leiden . In 1968 he began working as a research assistant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art . There he became a curator for European painting in 1970 and began teaching at Columbia University and Barnard College , which he continued until 1977. He left the Metropolitan Museum in 1975 after arguments with its director Thomas Hoving . From 1977 he worked as a painting curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston . In 1979 he also taught as a visiting professor at Harvard University .

In 1983 Walsh was appointed director of the J. Paul Getty Museum . During his tenure, which lasted until 2000, the planning and construction of the Getty Center in Brentwood (Los Angeles) fell . The new building designed by Richard Meier has housed large parts of the museum collection and various research facilities since 1997. At the previous museum location, the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades , only the museum's collection of antiquities has since been located. Under the direction of Walsh, the museum was also able to expand its collections considerably. These include several purchases of important paintings such as Irises by Vincent van Gogh , Venus and Adonis by Titian , The Halberdier by Jacopo da Pontormo , Adoration of the Magi by Andrea Mantegna , La Promenade by Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Entry of Christ into Brussels by James Ensor , walk at dusk by Caspar David Friedrich , view of the Grand Canal from Canaletto , Pope Clement VII from Sebastiano del Piombo , Rue Mosnier with flags by Édouard Manet and The Entombment by Peter Paul Rubens .

After working at the Getty Museum, Walsh took on various other roles. He lectured at Yale University and became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and on the board of directors of the Armand Hammer Museum of Art . In 1997 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

The Dutch Marine Painters Jan and Julius Porcellis
- I: Jan's Early Career . In: The Burlington Magazine Vol. 116, No. 860, 1974, pp. 653-662.
- II: Jan's Maturity and 'de jonge Porcellis'. In: The Burlington Magazine Vol. 116, No. 861, 1974, pp. 734-745.
with Cynthia P. Schneider: A mirror of nature, Dutch paintings from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Edward William Carter. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles 1981, ISBN 0-87587-103-8 .
Jan Steen, The drawing lesson. J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu 1996, ISBN 0-89236-392-4 .
with Deborah Ann Gribbon: The J. Paul Getty Museum and its collections, a museum for the new century J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 1997, ISBN 0-89236-475-0 .