September 24, 2006 - January 7, 2007
Arthur
K. Wheelock Jr., who is curator of northern baroque painting at the National
Gallery of Art and professor of art history at the University of Maryland,
was raised in Uxbridge, Massachusetts before attending Phillips Exeter
Academy, Williams College, and Harvard University, where he received his
Ph.D in 1973. He came to the National Gallery of Art in 1973 as the David
E. Finley Fellow, after which he was named Research Curator. At the same
time, he began his teaching career at the University of Maryland. He was
appointed curator of Dutch and Flemish painting at the National Gallery
in 1975.
Wheelock, who has lectured widely on Dutch and Flemish art, has written
a number of books, including Perspective, Optics, and Delft Artists around
1650 (1977); Jan Vermeer (1981); Vermeer and the Art of Painting (1995);
the catalogue of the Dutch collection at the National Gallery, Dutch Paintings
of the Seventeenth Century (1995); and the catalogue of the Flemish collection
at the National Gallery, Flemish Paintings of the Seventeenth Century
(2005). Among the many articles he has written are: “Rembrandt Self-Portraits:
The Creation of a Myth,” in Rembrandt, Rubens, and the Art of their
Time: Recent Perspectives (1997); “The Queen, the Dwarf, and the
Court: Van Dyck and the Ideals of the English Monarchy,” in Van
Dyck 1599-1999: Conjectures and Refutations (2001); and “The Appreciation
of Vermeer in Twentieth-Century America” (co-author with Marguerite
Glass), The Cambridge Companion to Vermeer (2001).
He has organized a number of major exhibitions at the National Gallery,
including Gods, Saints, & Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt
(1980); Anthony van Dyck (1990); Johannes Vermeer (1995); Jan Steen: Painter
and Storyteller (1996); A Collector’s Cabinet (1998); From Botany
to Bouquets: Flowers in Northern Art (1999); Gerrit Dou: Master Painter
in the Age of Rembrandt (2000); Aelbert Cuyp (2001); Gerard ter Borch
(2004); and Rembrandt's Late Religious Portraits (2005). He also organized
The Public and Private in the Age of Vermeer at the Osaka Municipal Museum,
Japan, in 2000.
He has received a number of honors throughout his career. In 1982, at
the time of the Dutch-American Bicentennial, he was named Knight Officer
in the Order of the Orange-Nassau by the Dutch government. In 1993 he
received the College Art Association/National Institute for Conservation
Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation. In 1996 he received
the Minda de Gunzburg Prize for the best exhibition catalogue of 1995
(Johannes Vermeer); the Johannes Vermeer Prize for Outstanding Achievement
in Dutch Art, which was presented by the Johannes Vermeer Stichting; the
Bicentennial Medal from Williams College; and the Dutch-American Achievement
Award, presented by The Netherlands American Amity Trust.