Helen Gardner (1878–1946) was an American art historian and educator. Her ''
Art Through the Ages'' remains a standard text for American art history classes.
Biography
Gardner was born in
Manchester, New Hampshire
Manchester is a city in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. It is the most populous city in New Hampshire. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 115,644.
Manchester is, along with Nashua, one of two seats of New Ha ...
and attended school in the
Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. In 1901 she graduated with a degree in classics from the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
.
After an interval as a teacher, she returned to the same university to study art history, and received a master's degree in 1918. In 1920 she began lecturing at the School of 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 ...
, where she would spend the rest of her career, with the exception of short appointments at
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
and the University of Chicago.
In 1919, she became the head of the photograph and lantern-slides department at the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago. The next year she started to teach an art history course at the School of the Art Institute. In 1922, she made the choice to resign her position at the library to spare more time for teaching. From the frustration of not being able to find a comprehensive textbook that had a broad enough coverage in art history, she resolved the problem by writing such a book herself, which resulted in a popular art history textbook used for decades, ''Art Through the Ages''.
Her major work, ''Art Through the Ages'' (1926), was the first single-volume textbook to cover the entire range of art history from a global perspective. Frequently revised, it remains a standard textbook at American schools and universities.
In 1932 she also published ''Understanding the Arts'', an art appreciation text directed toward educators. For both volumes, the analytical drawings were supplied by artist
Kathleen Blackshear
Kathleen Blackshear (1897–1988) was an American Modernist artist known for her sensitive depictions of African-American subjects.
Early Life and Education
Kathleen Blackshear was born June 6, 1897, near the Texas Cotton Belt in a city called N ...
.
[Landauer, Susan, and Becky Reese. "Lone Star Spirits." In Patricia Trenton, ed. ''Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890–1945, 199–200''. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995, pp. 199–200.] In 1936, she published a second edition of ''Art Through the Ages'', with its content expanded.
In 1946, aged 68, she died due to cancer. However, despite her illness before her death, she remained in an advisory capacity at the Art Institute.
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Works
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See also
* Women in the art history field
References
External links
* The Ryerson & Burnham Library at the Art institute of Chicago. "Women of the Art Institute" exhibit, July 5 – September 5, 2011
Case 3: Helen Gardner
* The Dictionary of Art Historians
Helen Gardner
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gardner, Helen
1878 births
1946 deaths
American art historians
American textbook writers
Women textbook writers
American women historians
Art Institute of Chicago
University of California, Los Angeles staff
University of Chicago alumni
Women art historians