William Ivins, Jr.

William Mills Ivins, Jr. (1881 – 1961) was curator of the department of prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from its founding in 1916 until 1946.

The son of William Mills Ivins, Sr. (1851 – 1915), a New York public utility lawyer, Ivins studied at Harvard College and the University of Munich before graduating in law from Columbia University in 1907.

After nine years' legal practice, he was asked to take on the conservation and interpretation of the Met's print collection. He built up the remarkable collections that can be seen there today, and he wrote many prefaces to exhibition catalogues, as well as other, occasional pieces which were later collected and published. His best-known book is "Prints and Visual Communication" (MIT Press, 1969, ISBN 0-262-59002-6 (first published 1953 by Harvard University Press)).

External links

* [http://www.lib.duke.edu/lilly/artlibry/dah/ivinsw.htm Obituary]
* [http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/findingaids/index.cfm/fuseaction/Collections.ViewCollection/CollectionID/8805 William Mills Ivins papers at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art]

ee also

*Visual communication