Arthur K. Wheelock Jr
COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES, MAY 20, 2018
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
Doctor of Art
Citation presented by Phillip J. Earenfight
Director, The Trout Gallery, and Associate Professor of Art History
Conferring of the degree by Margee M. Ensign, President
Mr. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., we honor you today as the recently retired curator of Northern Baroque Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and professor of art history at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Mr. Wheelock was raised in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, studied at Phillips Exeter Academy and Williams College, and earned his Ph.D. in art history at Harvard University. In 1975, he was appointed curator of Dutch and Flemish painting at The National Gallery.
While many of you would not recognize an art historian per se, let alone a curator, many of you know the painting of Girl with a Pearl Earring. It is, of course, the much-admired work by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. This painting, and those by Vermeer and his contemporaries Rembrandt and Anthony van Dyck, are the subject of much of Mr. Wheelock’s curatorial work.
However, to speak of curatorial work is to raise some confusion. Indeed, the title “curator” has become so overused and meaningless that seemingly anyone and everyone is now a curator of one thing or another. Let us be clear. Curatorial work in the proper sense is deeply challenging work that rests at the core of the humanist endeavor. Those who lived through the culture wars of the 1990s, remember this well. Objects matter. Ideas matter. Curators matter. Museums matter. And we are better for it.
As curator, Mr. Wheelock organized a number of major exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art. In his book the Human Connections in the Age of Vermeer he provides insight into the role of the curator and connecting the past to the present. He writes:
“Vermeer lived and painted in a propitious time in the Dutch Republic, when that complex society, with its many nodes of power and diverse population and religious concerns, had developed a framework for its remarkable growth and international power and prestige through a common language of laws and customs. Its external success, however, was only possible because of an inner strength that came from the ability of its citizens to express their beliefs, their hopes and aspirations, and their feelings of love and disappointment. Fortunately, Dutch artists explored all these facets of human experience… The human endeavors and emotions reflected in them, however, are universal and as relevant today as they were in the seventeenth century.”
Mr. Wheelock has received a number of honors throughout his career. They include The College Art Association Award of Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation and the Johannes Vermeer Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Dutch Art. He has also been elevated to Commander in The Order of Leopold I by the Belgian government and Knight Officer in the Order of the Orange-Nassau by the Dutch government.
President Ensign, for his commitment to sharing his knowledge of art and his outstanding abilities as a curator, it is my honor to present to you Arthur Wheelock for the honorary degree of Doctor of Art.
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Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., upon the recommendation of the Faculty to the Board of Trustees, and by its mandamus, I confer upon you the Degree of Doctor of Art, honoris causa, with all the rights, privileges and distinction thereunto appertaining, in token of which I present you with this diploma and cause you to be invested with the hood of Dickinson College appropriate to the degree.