Dietrich von Bothmer, Curator and Art Historian, Dies at 90
Dietrich von Bothmer, who was regarded by art historians as the world’s leading expert on ancient Greek vases and who was a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for more than 60 years, died in Manhattan on Monday. He was 90 and lived in Manhattan and Oyster Bay, N.Y.
The death was confirmed by his son, Bernard von Bothmer.
Dr. von Bothmer (pronounced BOAT-mare) made his reputation working with the legendary Sir John Beazley, his teacher at Oxford. Together, in an extraordinary display of research and connoisseurship, they identified the individual hands and workshops behind hundreds of Greek vases, transforming the understanding of ancient Greek art.
After taking up a curatorial post at the Met in 1946, Dr. von Bothmer continued this work of attribution, which he presented to the public in “The Amasis Painter and His World,” the first one-man show of an artist from the ancient world.
As the Met’s curator of Greek and Roman Art he acquired many of the museum’s most valuable works. One in particular, acquired in 1972, embroiled him in one of the Met’s longest-running disputes. With Thomas P. F. Hoving, then the Met’s director, he persuaded the museum’s board to pay $1 million for a Greek vase known as the Euphronios krater, named for its maker.
Evidence soon came to light suggesting that the vase had been looted from an Etruscan site just north of Rome, and for the next 30 years the Italian government campaigned for its return. After resisting for decades, the Met gave back the vase in January 2008.
“Dietrich von Bothmer was the greatest connoisseur of Greek art of his generation, and the most important and productive classical curator of the 20th century in the United States,” said Jasper Gaunt, the curator of Greek and Roman art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University. “He was an institution in his own right.”
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The death was confirmed by his son, Bernard von Bothmer.
Dr. von Bothmer (pronounced BOAT-mare) made his reputation working with the legendary Sir John Beazley, his teacher at Oxford. Together, in an extraordinary display of research and connoisseurship, they identified the individual hands and workshops behind hundreds of Greek vases, transforming the understanding of ancient Greek art.
After taking up a curatorial post at the Met in 1946, Dr. von Bothmer continued this work of attribution, which he presented to the public in “The Amasis Painter and His World,” the first one-man show of an artist from the ancient world.
As the Met’s curator of Greek and Roman Art he acquired many of the museum’s most valuable works. One in particular, acquired in 1972, embroiled him in one of the Met’s longest-running disputes. With Thomas P. F. Hoving, then the Met’s director, he persuaded the museum’s board to pay $1 million for a Greek vase known as the Euphronios krater, named for its maker.
Evidence soon came to light suggesting that the vase had been looted from an Etruscan site just north of Rome, and for the next 30 years the Italian government campaigned for its return. After resisting for decades, the Met gave back the vase in January 2008.
“Dietrich von Bothmer was the greatest connoisseur of Greek art of his generation, and the most important and productive classical curator of the 20th century in the United States,” said Jasper Gaunt, the curator of Greek and Roman art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University. “He was an institution in his own right.”