CAA News Today

Renate Wiedenhoeft is president of Saskia Ltd. and Scholars Resource.

Ronald V. Wiedenhoeft

Ronald V. Wiedenhoeft, an art and architectural historian and the principal photographer of the Saskia Archive, died on August 14, 2010, after a lengthy illness. He was 73.

Wiedenhoeft graduated from Cornell University as a civil engineer in 1959 and earned a PhD in art history at Columbia University in 1971. He received numerous scholarships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Bavarian State in Germany, and two Fulbright grants. Wiedenhoeft taught at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, the University of Utah, and, for twenty-one years, the Colorado School of Mines. He was also a visiting professor at the Technical Universities in Vienna and Graz, Austria. His publications include Cities for People: Practical Measures for Improving Urban Environments in 1981, Berlin’s Housing Revolutions: German Reform in the 1920s in 1985, and many articles (in German) on urban planning.

Beginning in 1966, yearly photographic campaigns took us to Europe to document works of art in major art collections. Slides and images from our jointly owned company Saskia Ltd. formed the basis for many visual-resource collections and enhance the teaching of art history for so many students. A special project in the late 1970s to document all monuments in St. Peter’s Cathedral resulted in an exhibition at the Denver Art Museum, among others. All Saskia images will continue to live on in Scholars Resource.

Wiedenhoeft is survived by his second wife, Emily; our three children, Sonja, Sabina, and Kurt; and six grandchildren.