Richard Wendorf

Director Richard Wendorf

Richard Wendorf became the fifth Director of the American Museum in Britain in January 2010.  Previous to this appointment he served as the Stanford Calderwood Director and Librarian of the Boston Athenæum for twelve years, from 1997 to 2009.  Before joining the Athenæum, he served for eight years as Librarian (director) of the Houghton Library and Senior Lecturer on the Fine Arts at Harvard University.  Earlier in his career he was Professor of English and Art History at Northwestern University, where he served for four years as the undergraduate academic dean and received the College of Arts and Sciences’ Distinguished Teaching Award.  He has twice served as a visiting professor at Williams College, his alma mater.

As the undergraduate dean at Northwestern, Wendorf was responsible for academic advising and programs, admissions and financial aid, study abroad, curricular development, and pedagogy.  As a library and museum director he has had broad experience in collection development, senior searches, strategic planning, building renovations, exhibitions and publications, fundraising, community outreach, and managing institutions through difficult economic periods.

As a scholar Wendorf specializes in portraiture, eighteenth-century British art, literature, and cultural history, British and American library history, British and American printing history, and the theory and history of collecting.  His book Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society (Harvard Univ. Press and the National Portrait Gallery, London, 1996) won the Annibel Jenkins Biography Prize, awarded every two years by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.  His most recent books are The Scholar-Librarian: Books, Libraries, and the Fine Arts, published by the Athenæum and Oak Knoll in 2005, After Sir Joshua: Essays on British Art and Cultural History (Yale Univ. Press, 2005), and The Literature of Collecting & Other Essays (Oak Knoll and the Boston Athenæum, 2008).  He is currently writing a monograph on printing practices in eighteenth-century London and the American colonies.

Richard Wendorf was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1948.  Educated at Williams (BA 1970), Oxford (BPhil 1972), and Princeton (PhD 1976), he has held fellowships from the ACLS (junior and senior), the NEH (at the Newberry Library), and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.  In 2004 he directed his sixth NEH Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers on the relations between literature and the visual arts.  He served for ten years as a trustee of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and currently serves on the Board of Managers of Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library.  In 1993 he was the Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor of Art History at Williams College and the Clark Art Institute, and he served for several years as a Phi Beta Kappa lecturer.  Wendorf was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2006.  In March 2009 he received the Gibson House Museum’s annual award for his contributions to the cultural life of Boston; in September 2009, when he was feted at the Boston Athenæum for his twelve years of leadership, it was announced that an endowed exhibition fund had been created in his honor.

Richard Wendorf co-edited The Works of William Collins (Clarendon Press, 1979) with Charles Ryskamp; he has also written William Collins and Eighteenth-Century English Poetry (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1981) and The Elements of Life: Biography and Portrait-Painting in Stuart and Georgian England (Clarendon Press, 1990).  In 2007 Oak Knoll published America’s Membership Libraries, which he edited.  He is also the editor of The Boston Athenæum: Bicentennial Essays (2009).

Wendorf’s lectures at the Athenæum can be viewed on WGBH’s forum network.  Recent appearances in the media include: Ellen Steinbaum, “'All Shook Up,' Surrounded by Books,” Boston Globe (7 April 2008); Roger Mummert, “Where Greek Ideals Meet New England Charm,” New York Times (Friday, 7 March 2008); Anne Eisenberg, “Libraries of Gracious Reading,” New York Times (Sunday, 11 June 2006); “Morning Edition,” NPR (13 April 2006 interview on Gilbert Stuart); “At Home with Richard Wendorf,” Boston Globe (7 November 2002);  and “Homeward Bound, ” Boston Globe (3 September 2002).

Founded in 1942, the Houghton Library is the principal rare-book library at Harvard University and one of the most important collections of its kind in the world.  The library has significant holdings in American, British, and European rare books, literary and historical manuscripts, printing and graphic arts, and theatre history.

Founded in 1807, the Boston Athenæum is one of the nation’s oldest cultural institutions.  With 7,000 members and collections that include 600,000 books and significant holdings of prints, photographs, paintings, statues, and manuscripts, the Athenæum is a center for scholarly research as well as the largest membership library in the country.  The Athenæum completed a $30-million renovation and expansion project and a matching capital campaign in 2002; in 2007 it celebrated its bicentennial with a series of exhibitions and publications, including “Boston Collects” at the Grolier Club in New York.

Founded in 1961, the American Museum in Britain is located at Claverton Manor on the outskirts of Bath.  The museum specializes in American decorative arts and folk art, and the manor house, designed by Sir Jeffry Wyatville in 1820, contains a series of period rooms documenting American domestic history from the colonial period through the late nineteenth century.  The museum hosts an annual exhibition in its exhibition gallery as well as numerous lectures, workshops, and historical re-enactments throughout the year.  Its new Folk Art Gallery and American Culture Studies Centre will open in 2011 during its fiftieth anniversary year.

E:  director@americanmuseum.org