CAA News Today

Paula Carabell received her PhD from Columbia University in 1994 with a dissertation on the work of Michelangelo and Titian. She has published on Renaissance and contemporary art and currently teaches at Pratt Institute.

David Rosand

It is with great sadness that I write that David Rosand, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History Emeritus at Columbia University, died on August 8, 2014, at the age of 75. Known for his work on Titian and Veronese and for his breadth of knowledge in the field, he maintained a long association with Columbia, which he attended as both an undergraduate and a graduate student, subsequently joining the faculty of the Department of Art History and Archaeology in 1964, where he remained until he taught his last class in 2013. Rosand’s many students will remember him as a kind, generous, erudite, and elegant scholar who extended his expertise and help even to those whose areas of research went beyond his own field, the Italian Renaissance.

Rosand was, above all, a passionate and dedicated advocate of the art of Renaissance Venice, An active member of Save Venice, he served on the foundation’s board of directors from 1998 onward and acted as project director from 2003 until his death. So that future generations might also come to know and love Venice, he was instrumental in acquiring the residence of one his own mentors and colleagues, Michelangelo Murano, past director of the Ca’ d’Oro museum, which now serves as the Columbia University Center for Study in Venice at Casa Murano. This seems a fitting legacy for one who, as a graduate student, expressed concern to his teacher, the legendary Rudolf Wittkower, that Venice was sinking—to which Wittkower replied, “Tsk, tsk, it will be there as long as you need it.” And thankfully for all who heard him lecture or who read his work, so it was.

It was, of course, to the art of Titian that he dedicated the largest part of his career. As an undergraduate at Columbia in the 1950s, Rosand, who had been an editor and cartoonist for the school’s humor magazine the Jester, had considered becoming a painter and, as such, would have become part of the Abstract Expressionist movement. This, however, never came to pass despite encouragement and an offer of studio space from his undergraduate mentor. In an oft-repeated story, Rosand recalled that “the prospect of being alone with a canvas so frightened me that I came back and threw myself into art history.” It was, however, the idea of the brushstroke and the painterly gesture that ultimately stayed with him, and the transition from the New York School of painting to the art of the Serenissima proved to be a natural one. As the artist Willem de Kooning had pointed out, “flesh is the reason that oil paint was invented,” and Rosand explored this notion most thoroughly in the work of Titian. Standing with him once at the Titian, Prince of Painters exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, I marveled at how intensely he searched the surface of the canvas, how he seemed to perceive nuances of painterly gesture that it appeared only he could see. And indeed it was the interaction of oil paint and canvas, of pen and paper, of chisel and stone, to which Rosand always returned. His injunction to “always start with the object” proved to be sound advice in an age of art-historical scholarship that all too often turned to issues that seemed to eschew the very act of image making.

David Rosand at the Accadenua Gallery in Venice

Rosand was an eloquent writer who instilled in his students an appreciation for the poetic aspects of both word and image. Whether it was about Titian’s sensual poesia created for Philip II or the final Pietà that the artist had intended for his own tomb, Rosand made one aware of the deeper levels of meaning that adhered to the work itself, most notably, the pathos inherent in the art of painting.

It is to that sense of pathos that we return upon his passing. It is not only that we will be deprived of further publications like his many contributions to scholarly journals or such major works as Painting in Cinquecento Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto (1982), The Meaning of the Mark: Leonardo and Titian (1988), and Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State (2001), plus important monographs on Titian and Veronese, but to the man himself. To those who knew him, we will miss the way that Rosand seem to glide through the halls of Schermerhorn, how in the classroom his lectures seemed to meander in an evocative circle of images and ideas and then culminate in a burst of wisdom and insight, and, of course, his favorite call to arms, “coraggio,” when we began to question our own work.

Rosand was accorded many honors and earned the Great Teacher Award from the Society of Columbia Graduates in 1997 and the Award for Distinguished Service to the Core Curriculum from the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia in 2000. He received recognition from such organizations as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In May 2014, Rosand was awarded the degree of doctor of letters, honoris causa, from Columbia to recognize his many contributions to the field of art history and to the life of the university.

David Rosand, who died of cardiac amyloidosis, is survived by his wife Ellen Rosand, professor of music at Yale University; by his sons Jonathan, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Eric, a senior counterterrorism policy official at the US State Department; and by five grandsons. He will be greatly missed by the many whose lives he touched.

Richard Edwards is professor emeritus of the history of Chinese art at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

John M. Rosenfield

My recollections of John M. Rosenfield, one of the preeminent historians and curators of Asian Art who taught for decades at Harvard University, are vivid and convey my sense of loss upon learning of his death, on December 16, 2013, at the age of 89. We shared the same “vibrations” as we passed through the life of our careers, hopefully to our mutual profit but certainly to mine. His book on Chōgen’s wooden portraiture is beside me as I write these words.

Rosenfield was a consistently energetic force in our field from the time we were in graduate school together. Our view of the Far East was nurtured during the 1950s in the musty yet friendly basement environment of Harvard’s Rubell Library, where the books on Asian art were kept, under the guiding hand of Benjamin Rowland.

John had an extraordinary sense of personal relations. We will never forget how closely related he was to this personal approach. He was not just a professional. He was a great man because he was a warm-hearted person, one whom you could always meet on a personal level, a quality seldom found in those too wrapped up in their professional duties and accomplishments.

It goes without saying we shared an interest in the world of art, but in addition his memory is warmly related to activities of our whole family. Along with his intellectual skill, this made him a great man to us. We lived in the same rented house serially, at Teramachi Imadegawa-angaru Junenji-mai in Kyoto, not far from the Imperial Palace grounds, in 1958–59. Later the Rosenfields lived there in 1964, and we took up occupancy again in the summer of 1964 after their departure.

John reached out to my children and family, who remember how welcoming he and his wife Ella were when we stopped over in Los Angeles and stayed with them on our way to the Far East. He was especially helpful to my daughter, Joan, a college sophomore at the time (1968/69), who was apartment hunting in Boston having found a summer job there. She did not meet with immediate success, and as John drove her to various locations he reassured her that the “Perfect Pumpkin is somewhere,” instilling hope that the ideal apartment was just around the corner. If one is willing to share family matters with a friend, it isa clear indication of resilience in dealing with the inevitable problems of living.

His kindness to our family was an emanation of warmth from his own with Ella and his two children, Sarah and Paul Thomas. My lateness in expressing my thoughts in no way diminishes the shock and bereavement felt at having to relinquish such a constant friend and insightful scholar so superior in humanity. Would that he were still working among us.

David E. Nathan is the author of this obituary.

Sam Hunter, the founding director of the Rose Art Museum, whose keen insights into the art of his day allowed him to build the museum’s acclaimed collection of modern and contemporary art, died on July 27, 2014, in Princeton, New Jersey. He was 91.

Financed by a $50,000 gift from Leon Mnuchin and his wife, Harriet Gevirtz-Mnuchin, Hunter made acquisitions in the early 1960s that established the Rose as a major force in the art world. The works he collected, masterpieces by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and other leading artists, form the core of the Rose’s beloved collection and continue to set the tone for the museum’s collecting and exhibition practices.

“Sam Hunter played an integral role in the early days of the Rose Art Museum, and his prescient purchases propelled the museum into the consciousness of the art world just a few years after its founding,” said Frederick M. Lawrence, president of Brandeis University. “The way in which he built the early collection, a discrete number of outstanding acquisitions, none for more than $5,000, is one of the iconic stories of the early years of Brandeis University. His impact on the Rose in particular and the university in general continues to this day.”

Hunter came to Brandeis in 1960 as director of the Poses Institute of Fine Arts, and shortly thereafter become the first director of the Rose. Organizers of the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle approached him about curating an exhibition for the Fine Arts Pavilion. The resulting collection of 114 works from 87 artists, including many by artists whose work he would later purchase for the Rose, was subsequently displayed at Brandeis.

In late 1962, Mnuchin called from New York to announce that he and his wife had inherited $50,000, which they wished to donate to the Rose to fund a contemporary art collection. Hunter and Mnuchin immediately began exploring the galleries of New York, often with Robert Scull, a friend of Mnuchin and a prominent collector of Pop art.

“The guiding principle of the selection was individual quality rather than tendency,” Hunter wrote for the brochure accompanying the collection’s exhibition. “As a matter of policy, the collection focused on younger artists with only a token representation of the older generation…. Abstract Expressionism is the collection’s point of departure, taken at a point of subtle but significant transition.”

Although Hunter and Mnuchin set a limit of $5,000 per painting, they managed to gather early and important works by Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Tom Wesselmann, James Rosenquist, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Marisol, Morris Louis, Johns, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Warhol, and many others.

“It is very difficult to imagine a more significant founding director than Sam Hunter has proved to be,” said Christopher Bedford, the Henry and Lois Foster Director of the Rose. “Just as Brandeis established its academic reputation with incredible rapidity, so Sam made sure the same happened to the Rose through the acquisitions he made and the exhibitions he organized. The status we enjoy today is in large part due to his vision in the 1960s.”

Bedford also pointed out that Hunter was a towering figure in both curatorial and academic spheres. “He had one foot in the world of museums and one foot in the world of scholarship, a model for how the Rose thinks of itself today,” he said. “He was as much a director/curator as he was a scholar, and that dual commitment continues to represent the Rose in the work we do today.”

Upon learning of Hunter’s death, Bedford decided to name the Rose’s newly established emerging artists fund in his memory. “The fund lacked a name,” Bedford said, “and today it became very apparent what the name of the fund should be. It seems incongruous to apply this term today, but the Gevirtz-Mnuchin fund was an emerging artists fund in the early 1960s: Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and Ellsworth Kelly were the emerging artists of their day. It’s only just that we would perpetuate Hunter’s legacy with a fund that boasts his name.”

A native of Springfield, Massachusetts, Hunter graduated from Williams College in 1943. He served in the United States Navy from 1943 to 1946, rising to the rank of lieutenant junior grade and receiving five battle stars.

Hunter began his professional art career in 1947, when he joined the New York Times as an art critic for a two-year stint. He studied at the University of Florence through the Hubbard Hutchinson Fellowship, earning a certificate of studies in 1951. He spent a year as an editor with art publisher Harry N. Abrams before serving as editor of Arts magazine.

In 1955, Hunter was appointed associate professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, but left in 1956 to become curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Two years later, he moved to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts as chief curator and acting director.

After leaving Brandeis in 1965, he was appointed director of the Jewish Museum and lectured as a visiting professor at Cornell University. In 1969, he became professor of art history at Princeton University and curator of modern art at the university’s art museum. He retired from Princeton as professor emeritus in 1991.

Hunter is survived by his wife, Maïa; their son, Harry; two daughters, Emmy and Alexa, from his previous marriage to Edys Merrill; and one grandchild, Isabella. A funeral service was scheduled for July 30 in the Princeton University Chapel.

Alison Hilton is Wright Family Professor of Art History and director of the MA program in art and museum studies at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and Irina Karasik works at the State Russian Museum.

Grigorii Iurevich Sternin, a distinguished scholar of Russian nineteenth and early twentieth century art, chief scientific officer and senior researcher at the Institute of Art History of the Ministry of Culture, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts, died in Moscow on November 23, 2013. He was 86.

Sternin was among the most influential art historians of his generation, those who began their academic careers just after World War II, during the Cold War. Born in 1927, Sternin studied art history at Moscow State University, graduating in 1950, and continued his postgraduate work in the Department of Russian Art under the eminent professor A. A. Fedorov-Davydov. After defending his candidate’s dissertation on Russian book illustration of the 1840s in 1953, Sternin worked at one of Moscow’s leading art-history publishing houses, Iskusstvo (Art). He became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR in 1957.

Sternin’s career is most closely connected with the Institute of Art History of the Ministry of Culture in Moscow, where he worked until the end of his life. He served as research scholar and head of the Sector on Fine Arts and Architecture of the Peoples of the USSR between 1962 and 1975, a difficult period marked by signs of liberalization that were not sustained, when artists, writers, and administrators of arts institutions faced obstacles that are hard to appreciate today. Perhaps as a way of finding a perspective on his own times, Sternin became interested in what made artistic innovation happen in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and this was the subject of his doctoral dissertation. “Artistic Life in Russia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries” explored the many elements, some crucial and some tangential, that made up “artistic culture” in a period of complex political and social change. Sternin earned his doctorate in 1973 (in Russia this signifies substantial scholarly achievement beyond the first, candidate’s degree; it is roughly equivalent to full professorship).

Much of Sternin’s research continued to probe the interrelationships among the arts and other aspects of Russian culture. His publications, more than two hundred books and articles, are noted for their breadth of conception and their scrupulous attention to detail; many include chronicles of events with citations from artists’ writings and contemporary periodicals. Among his major works are: Khudozhestvennaia Zhizn’ Rossii na rubezhe XIX – XX vekov (Artistic Life in Russia at the Turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, 1970); Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’ Rossii nachala XX veka (Artistic Life in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, 1976); Vzaimosviaz’ iskusstv v khudozhestvennom razvitii vtoroi poloviny XIX veka; ideinye printsipy, strukturnye osobennosti (Interconnections of the arts in the artistic evolution of the second half of the 19th century; conceptual principles, structural peculiarities, edited volume, 1982); Russkaia khudozhestvennaia kul’tura vtoroi poloviny XIX – nachala XX veka (Russian Artistic Culture of the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, 1984); Ilia Repin (with Elena Kirillina and others, 1985, 2011); Russkii modern (Russian Art Nouveau, with Elena Borisova, 1988); Khudozestvennaia Zhizn’ Rossii 1900-1910-kh godov (Artistic Life in Russia 1900–1910s, 1991); Khudozhestvennaia Zhizn’ Rossii vtoroi poloviny XIХ veka, 70-80-e gody (Artistic life in Russia in the second half of the 19th century: the 1870s-80s, 1997); Obrazy i liudi Serebrianogo veka (Images and People of the Silver Age, coauthored with L. S. Aleshina, 2002); Khudozhestvennaia Zhizn Rossii 30-40-kh godov 19-ogo veka (Artistic Life in Russia in the 1830s–40s, 2005), Dva veka: Ocherki russkoi khudozhestvennoi kul’tury (Two Centuries: Sketches of Russian Artistic Culture, 2007), Ot Repina do Grigor’eva (From Repin to Grigoriev, 2009). Sternin was an author and editor of the authoritative Istoriia Russkogo Iskusstva (History of Russian Art published by the Academy of Sciences, 1952–1964), specifically volume 10 on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; he was closely involved in the conception, editing, and writing of a new History of Russian Art (22 volumes planned) and was the editor of volume 14 on the first third of the nineteenth century, published in 2011.

The Russian scholarly community recognized Sternin’s contributions. He was named an Honored Artist of Russia in 1994, elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1997, and designated a Laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation in 2004. At the memorial service at the Institute of Art History in November 2013, colleagues and former students recalled his constant attention to human relationships, both as part of his approach to art history and in his daily life as a teacher and mentor. Generous in providing books, articles, and advice to his students and even to visiting researchers, he was also an astute critic. He could identify problems of interpretation and actively seek ways of finding solutions, without ever dictating or imposing his views. Sternin’s empathetic responsiveness to colleagues and students will be missed as much as his brilliance as a scholar.

He is survived by his wife, the art historian Liliia Stepanovna Aleshina.

Elaine Wilson is an artist and a former colleague of the deceased at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Frederick Horowitz, an artist, art educator, writer, and passionate champion of the work and teaching philosophy of Josef Albers, died on September 12, 2013, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was 75 years old.

Horowitz was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended Yale University, earning a BA in English in 1960 and a BFA in painting in 1962. His life was forever changed when he enrolled in Albers’s drawing class. Although Horowitz later received an MFA in painting at the University of Michigan in 1964, his contact with Albers at Yale was defining. In the book Josef Albers: To Open Eyes (New York: Phaidon, 2006), coauthored with Brenda Danilowitz, Horowitz recounts the comment Albers made about one of his drawings of the textural quality of a log of wood:

In his crit of one day’s results, Albers singled out a drawing in which repeated black strokes of a soft pencil had jabbed a hole in the newsprint. “Yah,” he exclaimed with delight, and only half ironically, “this boy is getting into it!”

The 12 x 18 inch newsprint pad in which Horowitz did many of the exercises for this class is preserved today, signaling the importance he placed on his experience in this course.

Horowitz spent thirty-five years teaching drawing, design, color, and art appreciation at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor. He was widely respected in southeast Michigan as a teacher with authority and integrity. He mentored countless students who went on to become artists, transferring to four-year art programs around the country. Many of his students were older individuals whose lives were deeply enriched by his courses.

At Washtenaw Horowitz taught the art-appreciation course and wrote More Than You See: A Guide to Art (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985) for use in it, while also widening the book’s scope for a broader audience. More Than You See departs from many textbooks for art appreciation and art history: instead of presenting artworks in a chronological order or grouping them by “ism,” it presents a series of questions about looking at a wide range of paintings and objects without necessarily providing the answers. These questions continually challenge readers to think for themselves.

One chapter, titled “Looking over the Artist’s Shoulder,” compares and contrasts an Italian Renaissance painting, Guercino’s Esther before Ahasuerus (1639) and the preparatory drawings for it, with a miniature painting from India and its preparatory drawing. Another chapter, “Reading Paintings,” examines the formal characteristics of several works of art. Horowitz was especially interested in process and in the artist’s choices. By including works from the museums and galleries close to his school, such as the University of Michigan Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts, he tied the book to the experience of his students whom he regularly took to these institutions to see the real thing.

In 1992 Horowitz began thinking about writing a book on Albers’s teaching. Brenda Danilowitz, chief curator at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany, Connecticut, worked with him and coauthored the book. Horowitz interviewed numerous artists who had studied with Albers, asking them about the teacher’s presence in the classroom and studio and about the impact and import of the particular projects he assigned. Research at the archives of the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, Yale University, and the Albers Foundation yielded a rich trove of material, which Horowitz and Danilowitz eventually worked into Josef Albers: To Open Eyes. This groundbreaking book has already changed the teaching of numerous younger artists and art professors, reinvigorating their work in the studio classroom.

While writing To Open Eyes, Horowitz began two courses—on design and on color—at Washtenaw Community College, putting into practice the ideas he was acquiring from his research. His own experience taking the color class at Yale with Albers’s own student, Sewell “Si” Sillman, meant that he was well prepared.

As a teacher Horowitz was disciplined and demanding, a tough but kind critic and grader. He required a great deal from his students, but when he saw a need to mentor and foster the talent of particular individuals he went above and beyond his regular duties to help them. This approach led to developing personal relationships that would last well beyond their time at Washtenaw.

Horowitz’s mentoring did not stop with students. He routinely worked with the part-time faculty that he recruited to teach many sections of the studio-art and art-appreciation classes, discussing with them course assignments and curricula, student behavior, grading policy, and even their students’ artwork. He created an atmosphere of cooperation and collegiality within the college’s art area that made it a laboratory for good teaching, a unique place for the overworked and underpaid instructors to work in. He was honest and generous with everyone, while holding all to his own high standards.

After retiring from Washtenaw Community College in 2003, Horowitz continued to lecture around the country and give workshops on Albers and on color and design (including presentations at the Foundations in Art: Theory and Education conference in 1997 and 2003 and at Black Mountain College Museum and Art Center in Asheville, North Carolina.) Abroad he taught workshops at art schools in Mexico City and Jerusalem.

Horowitz’s recent research at the Albers Foundation included close examinations of several Homage to the Square paintings. He developed his thoughts into a manuscript, now awaiting publication. This text—unlike any other of which I know about this body of work—looks closely at how Albers’s color choices interact with each other in specific ways; it also describes poetically their effect after extended looking. Most people don’t spend the amount of time in front of these works to have the experience Horowitz recounts, but hopefully more of them will. In addition, Horowitz speaks about Albers’s color course in the new digital format of the artist’s influential book Interaction of Color (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. He was also part of a new online art-appreciation course being developed at Washtenaw Community College.

At a memorial celebration of Horowitz’s life at Washtenaw in late October 2013, family, friends, and colleagues remembered him as deeply humane, curious, warm, devoted to his family, funny, and generous with his time, intellect, and heart. He leaves behind a trail of people who loved him and a host of younger artists who, thanks to his inspiration, are devoted to teaching well.

Joseph Anthony “Joe” Gatto, a noted jewelry artist and the founding visual-art dean of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, died on November 13, 2013. He was 78 years old.

Born on December 22, 1934, in Pueblo, Colorado, Gatto was the son of immigrants. His father was a shoveler in the steel industry, and his mother was a garment worker. The family moved west, and Gatto attended Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, California, where he aspired to attend college. He worked bagging groceries, studied, and lettered in four sports. After military service at Fort Lewis, Washington, he attended California State University, Los Angeles, and Pepperdine University in Malibu, where he earned a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art and education. Gatto was the first in his family to graduate from college and earn advanced degrees.

An award-winning jewelry artist, painter, photographer, and author of several books on teaching art, Gatto cofounded the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA), where he was visual-arts dean from 1985 to 2002. He was a recipient of the California “Bravo” Teacher of the Year Award and was honored at the White House by both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Always active in his church and community, Gatto supported the parish and school at Our Mother of Good Counsel Church and participated in local politics. In 2004 he fulfilled a lifelong dream, serving as delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

Joe Gatto, Nesting Bird 3, gold, coral, pearl, and found objects (artwork © Joe Gatto)

After retiring from LACHSA, Gatto continued to teach figure drawing and art-education courses at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He exhibited and gained national acclaim for his finely crafted art jewelry shown under his brand Wear Art Now. A dedicated father and grandfather, avid gardener, collector, and world traveler, Gatto lived life to its fullest while he nurtured the creative lives of others.

Gatto is survived by brothers Don and Frank, his daughter Nicole and her husband Mark, his son Mike and his wife Danielle, his daughter Mariann and her fiancé Eric, his grandchildren Damian, Elliana, and Evangelina, and his former wife Isolde, plus countless cousins, admiring students, and loving friends.

Memorial services were held on November 22, 2013, in Los Angeles, with hundreds in attendance. The Los Angeles Police Department is continuing its investigation into Gatto’s untimely death. Donations in his memory can be made to one of his favorite charities: (1) Historic Italian Hall Foundation, 125 Paseo De la Plaza, Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 90012; (2) Los Angeles Community Garden Council, 4470 West Sunset Boulevard, No. 381, Los Angeles, CA 90027; or (3) Tuition Magician, Joe Gatto Arts Scholarship, 4470 West Sunset Boulevard, PMB 378, Los Angeles, CA 90027.

Sherry Fowler is associate professor of Japanese art history at the University of Kansas. She earned her doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1994.

Donald F. McCallum

Donald F. McCallum, a celebrated art historian and treasured teacher, passed away peacefully in his home on October 23, 2013, after battling sudden metastatic prostate cancer. He was 74 years old.

McCallum had a long distinguished career as a scholar of Japanese art history, over seven years of which were spent doing research and fieldwork in Japan. In June 2013, he retired from his position as professor in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was a beloved teacher known for his serious commitment to education alongside a sharp sense of humor. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on May 23, 1939, McCallum earned his PhD at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and his AB at University of California, Berkeley.

He began teaching at UCLA in 1969 and served as chair of its Department of Art History, interim director for the UCLA Center for Japanese Studies, director of the University of California Tokyo Study Center, Toyota Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Franklin D. Murphy Lecturer at the University of Kansas, and Hooker Distinguished Visiting Professor at McMaster University. His numerous awards include fellowships from the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art, the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science, the Korean Cultural Service, the Japan Foundation, and the John D. Rockefeller III Fund.

Donald F. McCallum, Hakuhō Sculpture (2012)

McCallum’s research on Japanese art had a wide breadth, but his main area was Japanese Buddhist art in which he published three books: Hakuhō Sculpture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012); The Four Great Temples: Buddhist Archaeology, Architecture, and Icons of Seventh-Century Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009); and Zenkoji and Its Icon: A Study in Medieval Japanese Religious Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). His interests expanded to Korean art, modern Japanese art, and even tattoos, as exemplified in his articles “Korean Influence on Early Japanese Buddhist Sculpture,” in Korean Culture (1982); “Three Taisho Artists: Yorozu Tetsugoro, Koide Narashige, and Kishida Ryusei,” in Paris in Japan: The Japanese Encounter with European Painting (1987); and “Historical and Cultural Dimensions of the Tattoo in Japan,” in Marks of Civilization: Artistic Transformations of the Human Body (1988). In addition to his books, McCallum’s published articles and book reviews that number over seventy will continue to have a significant impact on the field for years to come.

As a dedicated teacher at UCLA for forty-four years, McCallum shared his passion and knowledge with thousands of students and patiently served as dissertation advisor to eleven graduate students. His rigorous training style and strong, personal commitment toward his students, even after they started their own professional careers, was instrumental toward enabling some to become leaders in Japanese art history. Among them are tenured faculty members at Yale University, Portland State University, the University of Kansas, the University of Regina, Taiwan National Central University, California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, and the University of Maryland. Aside from helping his own graduate students, McCallum enthusiastically and generously supported nearly the entire next generation of younger scholars in Japanese art history with great encouragement and by writing thoroughly researched letters of support for tenure and promotion.

McCallum will be dearly missed by many, both in and outside academia. He is survived by his wife Toshiko, his son Kenneth and his daughter-in-law Takayo, his daughter Sumako and his son-in-law James Turner, and his grandchildren Ella Sachiko and Jackson James Turner. Anyone who has ever talked with him or heard him lecture knows how devoted he was to his family and was more than likely treated to many humorous tales about his cherished grandchildren.

The Donald F. McCallum Memorial Fund has been established to support the Department of Art History and the UCLA Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies. Memorial gifts to support the fund can be made out to the UCLA Foundation and sent to: Alexa Almazán, UCLA College Development, Division of Humanities, 1309 Murphy Hall, Box 951413, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1413.