Thomas Scharman Buechner (pronounced BEAK-ner; September 25, 1926 – June 13, 2010) was an artist who turned to working at museums, who became the founding director of the

Corning Museum of Glass The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning, New York in the United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Glass Works and currently has a collection of more than 50,000 glass obje ...

and director of 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 ...

, where he oversaw a major transformation in its operation and displays.

Early life and education

Buechner was born in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

on September 25, 1926. He was raised in

Bronxville, New York Bronxville is a village in Westchester County, New York, United States, located approximately north of Midtown Manhattan. It is part of the town of Eastchester. The village comprises one square mile (2.5 km2) of land in its entirety, a ...

and attended the

Lawrenceville School The Lawrenceville School is a coeducational preparatory school for boarding and day students located in the Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. Lawrenceville is a member of the Eight Schoo ...

Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey Lawrence Township is a township in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. Located at the cross-roads between the Delaware Valley region to the south and the Raritan Valley region to the north, the township is an outer-ring suburb of New Yo ...

. After completing high school he was assigned to attend a training program at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

as part of his service in the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

. After completing his military service he spent a year working for the

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...

tourism board so that he could learn the

Spanish language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a world language, global language with more than 500 millio ...

. He came back to New York City, working as a night elevator operator at the

Plaza Hotel The Plaza Hotel (also known as The Plaza) is a luxury hotel and condominium apartment building in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is located on the western side of Grand Army Plaza, after which it is named, just west of Fifth Avenue, a ...

while he studied at the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

. He studied at the

École des Beaux-Arts École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth century ...

in Paris and under M.M. van Dantzig in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

.Thomas S. Buechner profile
personal website. Accessed June 19, 2010. After studying painting in Europe, he returned to the United States and took a position as an assistant manager at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

as a way to have a career in art without being an artist.Grimes, William
"Thomas S. Buechner, Former Director of Brooklyn Museum, Dies at 83"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', June 17, 2010. Accessed June 19, 2010.

Professional career

In 1951, he was named as the founding director of the

Corning, New York Corning is a city in Steuben County, New York, United States, on the Chemung River. The population was 10,551 at the 2020 census. It is named for Erastus Corning, an Albany financier and railroad executive who was an investor in the company t ...

which he created as a place where historic and modern glass works were displayed. Many of the exhibits he developed went on tour to other museums around the country. He established the ''

Journal of Glass Studies A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to: *Bullet journal, a method of personal organization *Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period *Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...

'', which covers the history of glassmaking to the mid-20th century and '' New Glass Review'', "an annual survey of glass in contemporary art, architecture, craft, and design". He was named as director of the

in 1960, making him, at 33, one of the youngest museum directors in the country. There he oversaw a program in which the museum's storage and display standards were upgraded, and many of the thousand works that had been languishing in storage were placed on view to the public. A sculpture garden he created displayed such items as capitals from

Louis Sullivan Louis Henry Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924) was an American architect, and has been called a "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism". He was an influential architect of the Chicago School, a mentor to Frank Lloy ...

's Bayard-Condict Building. He rescued sculptures by

Daniel Chester French Daniel Chester French (April 20, 1850 – October 7, 1931) was an American sculptor of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, best known for his 1874 sculpture ''The Minute Man'' in Concord, Massachusetts, and his 1920 monume ...

representing Brooklyn and Manhattan which had sat at the Brooklyn plaza of the

Manhattan Bridge The Manhattan Bridge is a suspension bridge that crosses the East River in New York City, connecting Lower Manhattan at Canal Street with Downtown Brooklyn at the Flatbush Avenue Extension. The main span is long, with the suspension cables be ...

and that were removed as part of construction on the bridge's approaches, and placed them at the entrance to the museum. Buechner requested that the city give the sculptures to the museum after they were threatened with destruction as part of a project to connect the bridge to expressways on either side of the

East River The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...

. He was hired by

Corning Glass Corning Incorporated is an American multinational technology company that specializes in specialty glass, ceramics, and related materials and technologies including advanced optics, primarily for industrial and scientific applications. The co ...

in 1971, where he served as president of the firm's

Steuben Glass Steuben Glass is an American art glass manufacturer, founded in the summer of 1903 by Frederick Carder and Thomas G. Hawkes in Corning, New York, which is in Steuben County, from which the company name was derived. Hawkes was the owner of the la ...

division from 1973 to 1982 and headed the Glass Museum there from 1973 to 1980. He retired from Corning in 1987 and devoted his time to painting, including a portrait of

Alice Tully Alice Bigelow Tully (September 14, 1902 – December 10, 1993) was an American singer of opera and recital, music promoter, patron of the arts and philanthropist from New York. She was a second cousin of the American actress Katharine Hepburn. ...

that is on display in the foyer of Lincoln Center's

Alice Tully Hall Alice Tully Hall is a concert hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The hall is named for Alice Tully, a New York performer and philanthropist whose donations assist ...

. Lincoln Center had commissioned Buechner to paint the full-length portrait in honor of Tully's 85th birthday. Buechner died of

lymphoma Lymphoma is a group of blood and lymph tumors that develop from lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell). In current usage the name usually refers to just the cancerous versions rather than all such tumours. Signs and symptoms may include enlar ...

at age 83 on June 13, 2010, in his home in Corning, New York. He was survived by his wife, the former Mary Hawkins, as well as by a daughter, two sons and seven grandchildren. Buechner was second cousin of the writer

William Zinsser William Knowlton Zinsser (October 7, 1922 – May 12, 2015) was an American writer, editor, literary critic, and teacher. He began his career as a journalist for the ''New York Herald Tribune'', where he worked as a feature writer, drama editor, ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Buechner, Thomas S. 1926 births 2010 deaths Art Students League of New York alumni Deaths from cancer in New York (state) Deaths from lymphoma Directors of museums in the United States People from Bronxville, New York Princeton University alumni American alumni of the École des Beaux-Arts People from Corning, New York People associated with the Corning Museum of Glass