Richard Harold Wendorf (born 17 March 1948) is an American and British art historian, literary critic, and museum and library director. He served as the director of the American Museum & Gardens near Bath, England (formerly the American Museum in Britain) from January 2010 until his retirement in December 2021.
Wendorf began his academic career in the English department at Northwestern University: as assistant professor (1976–1981), associate professor (1981–1985), and professor (1985–1989). In 1985 he was also made a professor of art history. He served for four years as the associate dean for undergraduate studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern (1984–1988) and was awarded a Distinguished Teaching Prize in 1978.
Wendorf became Librarian (now the Florence Fearrington Librarian) of the Houghton Library at Harvard in 1989, and also served as senior lecturer on the fine arts. Founded in 1942, the Houghton Library is the principal rare-book library at Harvard University and one of the most important collections of its kind in the world, with significant holdings in American, British, and European rare books, literary and historical manuscripts, printing and graphic arts, and theatre history. Wendorf led the library through its fiftieth anniversary with several exhibitions and publications, the acquisition of the Houghton Mifflin archive, and an international symposium on the future of rare book and manuscript libraries.
In 1997 he moved to the Boston Athenæum, serving for 12 years as the director and librarian. Founded in 1807, it is one of the nation's oldest cultural institutions. With 7,000 members and collections that include 600,000 books and significant holdings of prints, photographs, paintings, statues, and manuscripts, the Athenæum is a center for scholarly research as well as a resource for students, writers, and families. The Athenæum completed a $30-million renovation and expansion project and a matching capital campaign in 2002; in 2007 it celebrated its bicentennial with a series of exhibitions and publications, including "Boston Collects" at the Grolier Club in New York.
After retiring from the Boston Athenaeum in 2009, Wendorf was named Director of the American Museum and Gardens, arriving at Bath, England, in January 2010.[1] Founded in 1961, the museum is located in Claverton Manor on the outskirts of Bath. The museum specializes in American decorative arts and folk art, and the manor house, designed by Sir Jeffry Wyatville in 1820, contains a series of period rooms documenting American domestic history from the colonial period through the late nineteenth century. The museum hosts an annual exhibition as well as numerous lectures, concerts, workshops, and historical re-enactments throughout the year. Its Folk Art Gallery, Stables, and Coach House were opened in 2011 during its 50th-anniversary year. 2018 saw the completion of the New American Garden, an award-winning garden designed by Oehme, van Sweden & Associates.
Wendorf was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the son of Harold Albert Wendorf, a retail executive, and Jeanne Hamblin Wendorf, a homemaker and volunteer. His younger brother, James, served as executive director of the National Center for Learning Disabilities in New York City.
Wendorf has held research fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities (at the Newberry Library), the American Council of Learned Societies (senior and junior fellowships), the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Yale Center for British Art, the Huntington Library, the British Academy, and the American Philosophical Society. He served for several years as a Phi Beta Kappa Lecturer and has twice returned to teach at Williams College as a visiting associate professor of English and as the Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor of Art History.
When at Harvard, Wendorf served on the National Committee on the Arts, which established guidelines for the study of art, music, dance, and theater in secondary schools in the United States. He directed six Summer Seminars for College and University Teachers on relations between literature and the visual arts, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
In 2009 Wendorf was honored by the Gibson House Museum for his contributions to the cultural life of Boston, and at the end of that year an endowed exhibition fund was created in his honor at the Boston Athenaeum. He delivered the commencement address at Bath Spa University (2011) and at Wiltshire College (2012).
Wendorf has two children with his former wife Diana French. He currently lives in Bath with his partner, Elizabeth Hilliar.
Published works
Wendorf has specialized in British portraiture, eighteenth-century English literature, the interrelations of literature and the visual arts, and the history of libraries and museums. He is also the author of a murder mystery, The Subtle Thief.
Books
The Subtle Thief [Conrad Press, 2023;ISBN-13: 978-1916966079]
Printing History and Cultural Change: Fashioning the Modern English Text in Eighteenth-Century EnglandOxford University Press, 2022
America’s Membership Libraries (New Castle DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2007).
Rare Book and Manuscript Libraries in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Library, 1993).
Visual and Verbal Portraiture: Word & Image 6.4 (1990).
Articulate Images: The Sister Arts from Hogarth to Tennyson (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1983).
Other writing projects
Wendorf has been a contributing editor to Hyland, the iPad magazine, in which he published articles on Lady Hamilton, William Beckford, and Christopher Hyland's photography collection, which was on exhibition at the American Museum in 2012.
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