Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule III

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Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule, III (born 1925, Cobh, Ireland) is a contemporary scholar of ancient art and was curator of classical art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from 1957 to 1996.

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[edit] Family background

Born in Ireland, Vermeule was the grandson of Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule I (1859-1950), a prominent civil engineer in New Jersey and New York. His father, Colonel Cornelius Vermeule II (1896-1943) served as director of the New Jersey Public Works Administration. Vermeule entered Harvard University in 1943 but the suicide of his father and onset of World War II caused him to join the U.S. Army.

Vermeule married the archaeologist Emily Dickinson Townsend Vermeule in 1957. He is the father of Emily Dickinson Blake Vermeule aka Blakey Vermeule, a professor of English at Stanford University and Adrian Vermeule, a law professor at Harvard Law School.

[edit] Military service

In the Army he studied Japanese and was sent to the Pacific Theater, where he stayed in Japan after the war as a language expert, attaining the rank of captain.

[edit] Graduate education

He completed his A.B. at Harvard in 1947 and his A.M. in 1951 under George M.A. Hanfmann. He earned his Ph. D. at the University of London (1953).

[edit] Career in art and archaeology

From 1953 to 1955 he taught fine arts at the University of Michigan. From there he shifted to Bryn Mawr College as Professor of archaeology until 1957 when was appointed curator of classical collections for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He married a Bryn Mawr student, Emily Dickinson Townsend Vermeule that same year. While at the Museum, Vermeule was also a Lecturer in fine arts at Smith College . He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1969.

Vermeule assumed the directorship of the Museum of Fine Arts in the 1970s. His term as curator was marked by the purchase of two large vases portraying the fall of Troy and the death of Agamemnon, a Roman portrait of an old man, and a Minoan gold double ax. He trained several curators, including Marion True of the J. Paul Getty Museum and Carlos Picon. Vermeule was independently wealthy and reportedly never drew a salary from the Museum.

His curatorial decisions were tarnished by accusations of unethical acquisitions practice. He and the museum were accused of knowingly obtaining objects (more than 60) that had been illegally excavated. Despite scrutiny and increasingly tight practices, Vermeule bought and collected objects of dubious provenance, especially from Robert Hecht Jr..

[edit] References

  • Robinson, Walter V. "New MFA Link Seen to Looted Artifacts." Boston Globe December 27, 1998, p. 1. article
  • Temin, Christine. "A Not-So-Classic Curator." Boston Globe September 10, 1995, p. 16.
  • "Former PWA Chief Found Dead on Ferry, Apparently a Suicide." New York Times August 8, 1943, p. 32.

[edit] Works

  • Art and Archaeology of Antiquity. 4 vols. London: Pindar Press, 2001-2003.
  • [as Isao Tsukinabe] Old Bodrum. Somerset Society, 1964.
  • A Bibliography of Applied Numismatics in the Fields of Greek and Roman Archaeology and the Fine Arts. (London, 1956).
  • with Neuerburg, Norman, and Helen Lattimore. Catalogue of the Ancient Art in the J. Paul Getty Museum: the Larger Statuary, Wall Paintings and Mosaics. (Malibu, 1973).
  • European Art and the Classical Past. (Cambridge, 1964).
  • The Cult Images of Imperial Rome. (Rome, 1987).
  • Greek Sculpture and Roman Taste: the Purpose and Setting of Graeco-Roman Art in Italy and the Greek Imperial East. (Ann Arbor, 1977).