William H. Gerdts

William Henry Gerdts Jr. (January 18, 1929 – April 14, 2020) was an American

Gerdts was a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University, Rutgers University, and Washington University in St. Louis. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a fellowship from the American Philosophical Society.^[4] In 1992, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by Amherst College, and in 1996 Syracuse University made him an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts.^[4]

In 2008–9 Gerdts was Distinguished Lecturer and Senior Advisor for American Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.^[5]

Complementing his career as an

Following his retirement, Gerdts continued to represent a deeply conservative type of white male-dominated American art history founded in connoisseurship. He became an outspoken opponent of newer approaches to analyzing American art. Among the targets of his criticism were Frances Pohl's influential textbook, Framing America: A Social History of American Art (2002 and later), and John Davis, Jennifer Greenhill, and Jason LaFountain's benchmark anthology, A Companion to American Art (2015), with its diverse sampling of contemporary perspectives on American visual culture.[9]

Death

Gerdts died of complications of COVID-19 at White Plains Hospital in White Plains, New York, on April 14, 2020, at age 91, during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York (state).^[10]

Selected works

Gerdts' writings encompass 342 works in 443 publications in 6 languages and 24,892 library holdings.^[11][12]

• 2016 — Two Centuries of American Still-Llife Painting: The Frank and Michelle Hevrdejs Collection. Exh. cat. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
• 2014 __ "William Blair Bruce in Giverny." In Into the Light: The paintings of William Blair Bruce (1859-1906). Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
• 1997 — The Color of Modernism: The American Fauves. New York: Hollis Taggert Gallery.
• 1996 — William Glackens. Abbeville Press.
• 1994 — Impressionist New York. Abbeville Press.
• 1993 __ Monet's Giverny: An Impressionist Colony. Abbeville Press.
• 1990 — Art Across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting, 1710–1920, 3 vols. Abbeville Press.
• 1987 — The Art of Henry Inman. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
• 1987 __ (with James L. Yarnall) Index to American Art Exhibition Catalogues From the Beginning through the 1876 Centennial Year, 6 vols. G. K. Hall & Co.
• 1985 __ "Through a Glass Brightly." In The New Path: Ruskin and American Pre-Raphaelites. The Brooklyn Museum.
• 1984 — American Impressionism. Abbeville Press. (2nd ed. 2001)
• 1981 — The Art of Healing: Medicine and Science in American Art. Exh. cat. Birmingham Museum of Art.
• 1981 — Painters of the Humble Truth: Masterpieces of American Still Life, 1801–1930. University of Missouri Press.
• 1980 __ American Impressionism. Exh. cat. The Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle.
• 1974 — The Great American Nude: A History in Art. (American Art & Artists series) Praeger.
• 1973 — American Neo-Classic Sculpture: The Marble Resurrection. Viking Press.
• 1972 __ The White Marmorean Flock: Nineteenth Century American Women Neo-Classical Sculptors. Exh. cat. Vassar College Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, New York
• 1971 — (With Russell E. Burke) American Still-Life Painting. (American Art & Artists series) Praeger.
• 1967__ Edmonia Lewis: Ten Afro-American Artists of the Nineteenth Century. Exh. cat. Howard University, Washington, DC
• 1967 — American Still Life Painting, 1913–1967. Exh. cat. American Federation of the Arts.
• 1966 __ Thomas Birch. Exh cat. Philadelphia Maritime Museum.
• 1965 __ Women Artists of America. Exh. cat. Newark Museum.
• 1964 — Painting and Sculpture in New Jersey. [Ph.D. diss. Harvard University.]^[13] Van Nostrand.^[14]
• 1962 __The Drawings of Joseph Stella. Exh. cat. Newark: Rabin and Krueger Gallery.
• 1958 — Nature's Bounty & Man's Delight: American 19th-Century Still-life Painting. Exh. cat. Newark Museum.

Notes