Wilhelm Valentiner

Who was Wilhelm Valentiner?

Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner was a German art historian and critic and museum official. He was born at Karlsruhe, and studied at Heidelberg under Henry Thode, and in the Netherlands with Cornelis Hofstede de Groot and with Abraham Bredius, whose assistant he was at the Gallery of The Hague. In 1905 he was called to Berlin by William Bode, under whom he worked at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum and Kunstgewerbe Museum. In 1906 was his dissertation from 1904 on Rembrandt published: Rembrandt auf der Lateinschule. In 1907 he was appointed curator of the department of decorative arts in the Metropolitan Museum, which under his supervision became one of the foremost in the world. At the start of the World War he returned to Germany to serve in the army. After service at the front in the European War he was, in 1916, attached to the general staff at Berlin. 1924-1945 he was appointed first advisor and then Director of the Detroit Museum which became the Detroit Institute of Arts. Under his leadership the museum developed into one of the leading art institutions in the country. His acquisitions and exhibitions in Detroit were products of his wide ranging scholarship. He was responsible for the series of murals painted by Diego Rivera, revolutionary for Detroit at the time. About 1930 he acquired American citizenship. In 1945 he was required to resign from his post in Detroit due to a city legal age restriction. He was instrumental in the development of both the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum. In 1955 he became the first Director of the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, a position he maintained until his death in September 1958.