Eleanor Tufts
Eleanor May Tufts (1927 – December 2, 1991) was a feminist art historian and professor of art history at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
Biography
Tufts was born in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1927 to a businessman and a schoolteacher.[1] She graduated from Simmons College with a B.S. in Spanish in 1949,[1] after which she worked as an executive secretary at Boston University before returning to school for her master's. After earning her master's degree in art history from Harvard University in 1957,[1] the Council on International Educational Exchange in New York City hired her as their director of program development. She then served as associate director of World University Service, New York. In 1964, she obtained her first faculty position,assistant professor of art history at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. In 1966, she became associate professor of art history at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven.
Tufts received her Ph.D. from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts in 1971. She defended her dissertation on Spanish artist Luis Egidio Meléndez under the direction of José Lopez-Rey. After receiving her doctorate, she was appointed full professor of art history and chair of the Division of Art at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.[1] In 1985, she helped organized a Meléndez exhibition at the National Academy of Design in New York City.[2] In 1987 the first director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Anne-Imelda Radice, asked Tufts to curate the traveling exhibition, "American Women Artists, 1830-1930", a show that received extensive and controversial coverage.[3][4]
Tufts befriended Texas art historian Alessandra Comini,[5] developing shared feminist approaches toward art and making a home in Dallas. They spent summers tracking down works by women artists for their books to raise curatorial awareness of important works by women that had been relegated in storage.[6] Tufts died on December 2, 1991 at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.[1]
Publications
- Our Hidden Heritage: Five Centuries of Women Artists (1974)
- Luis Melendez, 18th-Century Master of the Spanish Still Life (1985)
- American Women Artists, 1830-1930 with introductory essays by Gail Levin, Alessandra Comini and Wanda M. Corn (1987)
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 Sorensen, Lee. "Tufts, Eleanor May". Dictionary of Art Historians. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
- ↑ "Eleanor Tufts, Art History Professor, 64." New York Times. December 10, 1991, p B20
- ↑ Comini, Alessandra. In Passionate Pursuit: a Memoir. New York: George Braziller, 2004, pp. 155-157. ISBN 9780807615232
- ↑ Eleanor Tufts papers at SMU. Texas Archival Resources. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
- ↑ "Eleanor Tufts 1927-1991." Woman's Art Journal 13, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 55
- ↑ NEH Grant details: Women Artists of Bologna in the Reaniassance and Baroque Periods. National Endowment for the Humanities. February 5, 2016. Retrieved March 10, 2016.