Papers of Daniel Robbins and Seymour Slive, 1959-2003

Daniel J. Robbins was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1932. He attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate, receiving an A.B. in 1951 at age 19. Robbins then attended Yale University, where he received an M.A. in Art History in 1955. He taught at Indiana University for one academic year (1955-1956), then began doctoral work at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. He studied under Robert Goldwater, writing his dissertation on the Cubist painter and theoretician Albert Gleizes. Robbins was a Fulbright scholar in Paris in 1958, and he became research assistant to the chief curator of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1959, a position he held until 1961. He married Eugenia Scandrett in 1959; the couple would have two daughters, Juliette and Miranda.

In 1961, Robbins moved to New York to become a curator at the Guggenheim Museum, and in 1965 he left the Guggenheim to become Director of the Art Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He was at RISD from 1965 until 1971, when he became director of the Fogg Museum at Harvard. Robbins was at the Fogg from 1971 to 1974, when he resigned from the directorship; he was also a lecturer in Fine Arts at Harvard. In the fall of 1972, he conducted a seminar on the artist Jacques Villon, and in the following years he collaborated with the students from the class to organize the first major Villon retrospective held in the U.S. (at the Fogg Museum from January 17 to February 29, 1976) and to edit and contribute to the exhibition's catalogue. Robbins completed his dissertation, which had been put on hold due to professional demands and responsibilities, in 1975. He held a professorship at Dartmouth College from 1975 to 1980 and was also a guest lecturer at Yale University, Williams College, Hunter College, the University of Iowa, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In 1980, Robbins accepted a permanent position at Union College, a position he held until his death from lymphoma in January 1995.

Seymour Slive was born in Chicago on September 15, 1920. He attended the University of Chicago for all his degrees, receiving an A.B. in 1943 and a Ph.D. in 1952. He wrote his dissertation, Rembrandt and His Critics: 1630-1730, under Ulrich Middeldorf. Slive's studies were interrupted while he served in the Naval Reserve and on active duty in the Pacific Theater from 1942 to 1946. In 1946 he married Zoya Gregorevna Sandomirsky; they would have three children together. Slive was a lecturer in the humanities at the City of Chicago Junior College from 1947 to 1950. He received a Fulbright Fellowship to the Netherlands in 1951-1952, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1956-1957, and a Fulbright Research Scholarship to the University of Utrecht from 1959-1960. He was given an honorary A.M. from Harvard in 1958 and an honorary M.A. from the University of Oxford in 1972.

Before coming to Harvard, Slive taught at Oberlin College (1950-1951) and Pomona College (1952-1954). He joined the Harvard faculty in 1954 and remained for the duration of his academic career. He was Assistant Professor of Fine Arts from 1954 to 1957, Associate Professor from 1957 to 1961, and Professor of Fine Arts from 1961 to 1973. In 1973, he was named Gleason Professor of Fine Arts, a position he held until his retirement in June 1991. Slive also served as Chairman of the Fine Arts Department from 1968 to 1971. In September 1974, upon Daniel Robbins' departure, Slive was named acting director of the Fogg Museum; in March 1975 he was appointed its director. He remained in the position until 1982 and was instrumental in raising funds and planning for the construction of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. He is often referred to as the founding director of the Sackler Museum.

Beyond his teaching and museum work, Slive had long been an internationally renowned Rembrandt scholar and expert on Dutch art of the seventeenth century. He authored dozens of monographs on Dutch art, notably on Rembrandt, Frans Hals (including the 3-volume catalogue raisonné), and Jacob van Ruisdael (including the catalogue raisonné of Ruisdael's landscapes). He was instrumental in the mounting of groundbreaking museum exhibitions of Dutch art and wrote prolifically. Slive died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on June 14, 2014.