Lorenz Eitner

Lorenz Edwin Alfred Eitner (born August 27, 1919 in Brno , Czechoslovakia , † March 11, 2009 in Stanford , California, United States ) was an art historian and museum director.

Life

Eitner's mother was a daughter of the Thonet dynasty, which had distinguished itself with furniture production in the 19th century; his father worked in the administration of the company.

He spent his childhood and educational years in Frankfurt and Berlin. The family emigrated first to Brussels and then to the US state of South Carolina in 1935. He received his first university degree in 1940 summa cum laude from Duke University . He worked for the American Office of Strategic Services during World War II, with assignments in Washington DC, London, Paris and Salzburg. During the Nuremberg trials, he worked in the research department under chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson . He met his wife Trudi von Kathrein in Austria.

After the war he was sponsored (1948) and PhD (1952) from Princeton University ; his dissertation on Géricault was published in 1952 by Princeton University Press. After 14 years at the University of Minnesota , Eitner joined Stanford University's art history faculty as dean in 1963 . As such, he was also responsible for the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts - the oldest art museum west of the Mississippi. At the time, many works of art had been damaged since the 1906 earthquake; there were no exhibition rooms. Eitner stood up for the essential development and expansion of the collection and acquired additional works, mostly prints and drawings from the 19th century. These included works by Joseph Mallord William Turner and Théodore Géricault . Through intensive public relations and fundraising, he expanded the exhibition space from 1,400 square feet to 33,000. A new building for the faculty and its specialized library, the Cummings Art Building , was completed in 1968.

Eitner's own research dealt with European art of the 18th and 19th centuries; his original subject, the work of Théodore Géricault, he remained true to life and put forward several publications; many were issued multiple times, and some were translated into other languages. He wrote a catalog of the 1,100 drawings owned by the Stanford Museum.

He succeeded in bringing internationally recognized artists such as Nathan Oliveira, Richard Diebenkorn and Frank Lobdell to Palo Alto on the Stanford campus. He won Michael Sullivan and Kurt Forster as teachers. Above all, Albert Elsen, an expert on the work of Auguste Rodin , came to Stanford at Eitner's invitation and shaped the campus with the Rodin statues that are characteristic of Stanford today. In 1988 Eitner was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Eitner retired in 1989. Two months later, the Loma Prieta earthquake brought the Stanford Museum to a standstill again: it remained closed for ten years.

Awards

• Fulbright Fellow (1952–53) in Brussels
• Guggenheim Fellow (1956–57) in Munich
• National Endowment for the Humanities Research Grant
• Mitchell Prize for the History of Art
• Charles Rufus Morey Book Award of the College Art Association
• Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1988)
• Stanfords Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching (1986)
• Gold Medal for Services to the Republic of Austria (1990).

Works (in selection)

• The Drawing Collection (Stanford [Stanford Museum of Art] 1993).
• Neoclassicism and Romanticism 1750-1850. Sources and Documents (New York 1989).
• An Outline of 19th Century European Painting. From David through Cezanne (New York 1987).
• Géricault. His Life and Work (London 1983).
• Introduction to Art, an Illustrated Topical Manual (Minneapolis 1961).

literature

• Stanford University Obituary

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter E. (PDF; 477 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved June 14, 2018 .