Papers of Agnes Mongan, 1914-1993

Art curator and the first woman director of a major art museum in the United States, Agnes Mongan was born on January 21, 1905 to Charles Edward Mongan, a well-to-do physician, and Elizabeth Teresa O'Brien Mongan in Somerville, Massachusetts. Her three siblings were Charles Edward Mongan (1903), John Anthony Mongan (1907), and Elizabeth Mongan (1909). Mongan attended the Cambridge School, and received her B.A. in 1927 from Bryn Mawr College, where she studied art history and English literature. From 1927-1928 she studied Italian art in Florence through the Smith College Year Abroad Program, and received her A.M. from Smith in 1929. In 1928, she began working at the Fogg Museum as a special student. From 1929-1937 she worked as a research assistant for Paul J. Sachs, creating a catalog of his collection of drawings. From 1937-1947, her title was Keeper of Drawings, and in 1947 she became Curator of Drawings. She was the first female curator at the Fogg, and kept the title through her retirement in 1975. From 1951-1964 she was also the Assistant Director of the Fogg, from 1964-1968 Associate Director, from 1968-1969 Acting Director, and from 1969-1971 Director. She was the first woman to direct a major art museum in the United States. From 1960-1975 she also held the title of Martin A. Ryerson Lecturer on the Fine Arts. After she retired from the position of Director in 1971, she stayed on as Curator of Drawings until her retirement from Harvard in 1975.

Her career also included stints as Acting Director of the Timken Gallery in Balboa Park, San Diego, California, and visiting professor for various institutions, including the University of Texas at Austin. Some of her major publications include the 1940 Drawings in the Fogg Museum of Art, The Ingres Centennial Exhibition, 1867-1967, published in 1967, One Hundred Master Drawings, presented in honor of Paul J. Sachs in 1949, and David to Corot: French Drawings in the Fogg Museum of Art, 1996. Agnes Mongan was the recipient of seven honorary degrees: L.H.D.s from Smith College (1941), Wheaton College (1954), and the University of Massachusetts (1970); and D.F.A.s from LaSalle (1973), Collby College (1973), the University of Notre Dame (1980), and Boston College (1985). She was honored by Harvard University in 1994 when the Agnes Mongan Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs opened at the Fogg. According to James Cuno, the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the University Art Museums from 1991 to 2002, "She was, in a way, not unlike the work of the artist she most admired and for whom her scholarly work is best known, the French painter and draughtsman, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Like Ingres' work, she offered us a twist on the traditional that was, in the end, more modern than old-fashioned. She was, in her tastes, habits, and courage, in no way conventional" (Harvard University Gazette, September 19, 1991). Agnes Mongan died on September 15, 1996.

Born in 1909, Elizabeth Mongan graduated from Miss Haskell's School for Girls in 1927. She received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr in 1931, where she majored in art history. In July 1931, she started working at the Lyman-Allyn Museum, New London, CT, under director Winslow Ames. She took art courses with Paul J. Sachs in 1933-1934, and 1936-1937. From 1935-1936 she taught at Sheldon Nixon School, Florence, and in 1937 became curator for Lessing J. Rosenwald, Jenkintown, PA. When the collection moved to the National Gallery of Art, she became its curator there, and was later named Curator of Graphic Arts. She left the National Gallery of Art in 1963, when she went to Paris to work on a catalogue of Paul Gaugin prints. She taught a graphics arts course at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, in 1964-1965. She became the Acting Director and Curator of Prints and Drawings of the Smith College Museum of Art, where she was the Associate Director until 1975. In 1973, she became the Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor at Williams College, and in 1975, Acting Director of the Timken Gallery, San Diego. In 1979, she worked as visiting curator in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Elizabeth Mongan died in June 2002.