Charles Nagel Jr. (1899 –1992) was a

Saint Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which ...

architect, curator, and museum director. Nagel, Jr. was the son of Charles Nagel, a lawyer and politician, and his second wife Anne Shepley. He attended

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

, where he earned three degrees, culminating with an M.F.A. in

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

. He was employed at the Saint Louis architectural firms of Jamieson & Spearl and Hall & Proetz, and with Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch, Abbott in Boston, and later the firm of Nagel & Dunn in Saint Louis. He served as curator of Decorative Arts at Yale's Gallery of Fine Arts and as director of the

Saint Louis Art Museum The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is one of the principal U.S. art museums, with paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from all corners of the world. Its three-story building stands in Forest Park in St. Louis, Mi ...

, the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, and the National Portrait Gallery. At the Brooklyn Museum, Nagel co-organized a major exhibition of Italian design—"Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today"—which traveled to twelve U.S. museums from 1950 to 1953. His co-organizer was Meyric R. Rogers, then the Curator of Decorative and Industrial Arts at the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

. Nagel served as juror and secretary of the

Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Gateway Arch National Park is an American national park located in St. Louis, Missouri, near the starting point of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The memorial was established to commemorate: *the Louisiana Purchase and subsequent westward mov ...

Competition, which led to the selection of the

Gateway Arch The Gateway Arch is a monument in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Clad in stainless steel and built in the form of a weighted catenary arch, it is the world's tallest arch and Missouri's tallest accessible building. Some sources conside ...

design. He died in Massachusetts, on 20 February 1992, and is buried there.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nagel, Charles Architects from Missouri 1899 births 1992 deaths