Oral history interview with Winslow Ames, 1987 Apr. 29-June 2
Ames, Winslow,
b. 1907
d. 1990
Art historian, Museum director, Collector
Conn.
Size: Sound recording: 3 sound cassettes.
Collection Summary: An interview of Winslow Ames conducted 1987 Apr. 29-1987 June 2, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
Ames speaks of his childhood in New York, his family's early New England and New York antecedents, his education at Columbia College, and studying fine arts at Harvard under Paul Sachs and Edward Waldo Forbes. He reminisces about his friendship with Edward M.M. Warburg and Lincoln Kirstein and their involvement in his purchase of Gaston Lachaise's "Standing Woman"; his work as the first director of the Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, Connecticut; service as a conscientious objector with the Civilian Public Service Corps during World War II; and assisting in the resettlement of European refugees with the American Friends Service Committee. He discusses directing a museum in Springfield, Missouri, researching and writing his PRINCE ALBERT AND PUBLIC TASTE, and teaching connoisseurship and museum practices at the University of Rhode Island and Brown University.
Biographical/Historical Note: Winslow Ames (1907-1990) was a museum director, art historian, collector, conoisseur of drawings and authority on Victorian art.
These interviews are part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
