John Currie Wilmerding, (born 1938), is an American art professor and curator whose writings on American art have made him one of the most defining and highly regarded figures within the field.

Biography

Educated at Harvard, Wilmerding received his A. B. in 1960, his masters in 1961 and his Ph.D., in 1965. He served senior curator from 1977 to 1983 at the National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...

, Washington, DC, and deputy director from 1983 to 1988. Wilmerding currently serves the Christopher Binyon Sarofim Professor of American Art at Princeton

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

. At the opening of the National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...

's "American Masters from Bingham to Eakins" exhibit Wilmerding announced that his entire collection of art, consisting of works from nearly a dozen famous American artists, would remain at the museum. His contribution added many examples of art the museum had not yet acquired.

Publications

• American Marine Painting (Harry N. Abrams, 1987)
• American Views (Princeton University Press, 1991)
• The Artist's Mount Desert: American Painters on the Maine Coast (Princeton University Press, 1994)
• Compass and Clock (Harry N. Abrams, 1999)
• Signs of the Artist: Signatures and Self-Expression in American Painting (Yale University Press, 2003)

External Links

• Biography of John Wilmerding, National Gallery of Art.