Gisela Richter

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Gisela Richter
Mounting a sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1918
Born14 or 15 August 1882
London
DiedDecember 24, 1972(1972-12-24) (aged 90)
Resting placeProtestant Cemetery, Rome
CitizenshipAmerican
Occupation(s)Art historian and classical archaeologist
Academic background
Education
Academic work
InstitutionsMetropolitan Museum of Art

Gisela Marie Augusta Richter (14 or 15 August 1882 – 24 December 1972) was a British-American classical archaeologist and art historian.[1] She was a prominent figure and an authority in her field.

Early life[edit]

Gisela Richter was born in London, England, the daughter of Jean Paul and Louise (Schwaab) Richter.[2] Both of her parents and her sister, Irma, were art historians specialised in Italian Renaissance. Richter was educated at Maida Vale School, one of the finest schools for women at the time. She decided to become a classical archaeologist while attending Emmanuel Loewy's lectures at the University of Rome around 1896. In 1901, she began attending Girton College at the University of Cambridge. At Girton, Richter's six closest friends included Lady Dorothy Georgiana Howard, the daughter of the 9th Earl and "Radical Countess" of Carlisle, and future candidate for Roman Catholic Sainthood Anna Abrikosova. Richter was included when all seven girls were brought by Lady Dorothy to Castle Howard and Naworth Castle as honored guests during college vacations.[3]

Richter left Girton in 1904 without a degree, since women at the time could not graduate, and she spent a year at the British School at Athens between 1904 and 1905.[4] Richter moved to the U.S. in 1905 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1917.

Career[edit]

Richter joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as an assistant in 1905,[5] where she was asked to create a catalogue for a collection of Greek vases recently acquired by the Met from the Canessa Brothers, the famous European art dealers.[6] She became assistant curator in 1910, promoted to associate curator in 1922, and curator of Greek and Roman art in 1925, a position she held until 1948 when she retired. Richter became honorary curator until her death in 1972. She became the first woman to hold the title of curator at the Met when she was appointed to the post in 1925.[7][8] As curator, she was one of the most influential people in classical art history at the time.

Richter lectured at Columbia University, Yale University, Bryn Mawr College, and Oberlin College. As author of numerous popular books on classical art, she had a great influence on the general public's understanding and appreciation of the subject. In 1944, she received the Achievement Award from the American Association of University Women. In 1952, she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Oxford.[9] In 1968, she received the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement from the Archaeological Institute of America.[10]

She was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1942.[11]

Death and legacy[edit]

Richter's grave in the cimitero acattolico in Rome

In 1952, Richter moved to Rome, Italy, where she died in 1972.[12] She is buried in Rome's Protestant Cemetery. Writing 30 years after Richter's death, Camille Paglia paid tribute to her "for her clarity and rigor of mind; her fineness of sensibility and connoisseurship; her attention to detail and her power of observation and deduction; her mastery of form and design".

Selected publications[edit]

Necrology[edit]

References and sources[edit]

References
  1. ^ Judy Barrett Litoff; Judith McDonnell (1994). European Immigrant Women in the United States: A Biographical Dictionary. Taylor & Francis. pp. 245–. ISBN 978-0-8240-5306-2.
  2. ^ Richter, Gisela M[arie] A[ugusta] Dictionary of Art Historians, 2013. Retrieved 16 September 2013. Archived here.
  3. ^ Richter, Gisela M. (1972), My Memoirs: Recollections of an Archaeologist's Life, Published in Rome, pp. 8–9.
  4. ^ Carnes, Mark, ed. (2002). Invisible giants : fifty Americans who shaped the nation but missed the history books. New York ; Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 236. ISBN 0195168836.
  5. ^ Dyson, Stephen L. (January 1998). Ancient Marbles to American Shores: Classical Archaeology in the United States. University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 147–. ISBN 0-8122-3446-4.
  6. ^ Levkoff, Mary L. (2008). Hearst the Collector, Museum Edition. New York: Harry N Abrams Inc. p. 205. ISBN 978-0810982437.
  7. ^ Puma, Carlos A. Picón; et al. (2007). Art of the classical world in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome. New York: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 8. ISBN 978-1588392176.
  8. ^ Carnes, Mark (2002). Invisible giants: fifty Americans who shaped the nation but missed the history books. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 237. ISBN 0195168836.
  9. ^ "GISELA RICHTER, ART CURATOR, DIES". The New York Times. 26 December 1972.
  10. ^ "Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement – Archaeological Institute of America". www.archaeological.org. Retrieved 11 November 2018.
  11. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  12. ^ Sicherman, Barbara; Hurd Green, Carol, eds. (1993). Notable American women: the modern period; a biographical dictionary (6th ed.). Cambridge, Mass [u.a.]: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press. p. 577. ISBN 978-0674627338.
Sources
  • My Memoirs: Recollections of an Archaeologist's Life, by Gisela Richter, 1972.
  • "Gisela Richter," in Notable American Women, ed. Barbara Sicherman and Carol H. Green, 1980.
  • "Scholar of Classical Art and Museum Archaeologist," in Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts, 1820–1979, ed. Claire R. Sherman,1981
  • "Gisela Richter", in Invisible Giants: 50 Americans That Shaped the Nation but Missed the History Books, Oxford University Press; March 2002.

External links[edit]

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