William Henry Goodyear

William Henry Goodyear (1846 - 1923) was a noted American archaeologist, art historian, and museum curator. He was the son of Charles Goodyear (1800-1860), inventor of rubber vulcanization, and Clarissa Beecher Goodyear.

Goodyear was born in New Haven, Connecticut, spent much of his childhood in England and France, and graduated from Yale University in 1867 with a degree in history. He then relocated to Italy, then Berlin (where he studied Roman law and history), and subsequently Heidelberg where he studied art history under archaeologist Karl Friedrichs (1831-1871). In 1869 Goodyear traveled with Friedrichs to Syria and Cyprus, then spent 1870 in Venice and Pisa where he studied the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

In 1871 he married Sarah Sanford, his first of three wives, and taught at Cooper Union until 1882, when he was hired as first curator of the new Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1888 Goodyear published a popular survey of art history, and in 1890 was appointed curator of art at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (today the Brooklyn Museum of Art). From 1895-1914 he conducted a series of studies in which he photographed and measured European buildings. He died of pneumonia in 1923 and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn.

Selected works

• A History of Art, New York: A. S. Barnes, 1888.
• The Grammar of the Lotus: a New History of Classic Ornament as a Development of Sun Worship, London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1891.
• Renaissance and Modern Art, New York: Macmillan, 1900.
• Illustrated Catalogue of Photographs & Surveys of Architectural Refinements in Medieval Buildings lent by the Brooklyn Museum of Arts and Sciences, Edinburgh: Morrison and Gibb, 1905.
• Greek Refinements: Studies in Temperamental Architecture, New Haven: The Yale University Press, 1912.

References

• Dictionary of Art Historians entry
• The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 19, 1926: pages 455-456.
• Dictionary of American Biography, 7, 1931: pages 416-417.
• "Prof. W. H. Goodyear, Archaeologist, Dies: Curator of Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences a Victim of Pneumonia at 77.", New York Times, February 20, 1923, page 17.