Frederick B. Deknatel

Who was Frederick B. Deknatel?

Frederick Deknatel was a member of Harvard's Department of Fine Arts for 40 years. Although his graduate training was in the field of medieval art and his Ph.D. dissertation on 13th century Gothic sculpture of the cathedrals of Burgos and León, increasingly he became interested in the art of the 19th and 20th centuries. At Harvard the merit of his service was confirmed by his appointment in 1953 to the senior endowed chair in his department, the William Door Boardman professorship. For the latter 30 years of his career, Deknatel was responsible for the department's courses in modern art, acquiring a powerful reputation as a dynamic and influential teacher.

In 1950, Deknatel joined Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art's director James Plaut in selecting the first exhibition in America of the work of the modern Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch. Deknatel's catalog was the first major writing on the artist in English. The exhibition toured to 10 museums in the United States, and for his efforts, Deknatel was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of St. Olaf, first class, by the Norwegian government.

Frederick and Virginia Deknatel were also devoted collectors of modern art, especially the works of Eugène Delacroix, Paul Cézanne, Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, and Pablo Picasso. To these, Virginia Deknatel would later add sculptures by Henry Moore, David Smith, Anthony Caro, and Michael Steiner, and prints and drawings by Picasso, Georges Braque, David Smith, Jasper Johns, and Helen Frankenthaler, among many others.