Paul Hayes Tucker
Paul Hayes Tucker is an American art historian, professor, curator, and author. He is regarded as the world’s leading expert on Claude Monet and an authority on French Impressionism. He spent 36 years teaching at the University of Massachusetts Boston, with visiting professorships at Williams College, The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, and the University of California Santa Barbara. He has curated major Monet and Impressionist exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the National Gallery, Washington, The Wadsworth, the Artizon Museum, Tokyo, the Nagoya City Art Museum, and the Hiroshima Museum, among other institutions. He has also authored or edited 11 books.
Early life
Tucker was born in New York City. He grew up in Pelham, New York. Inspired by his grandfather Carlton J. H. Hayes, Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University and United States Ambassador to Spain during World War II, Tucker attended Williams College believing he would be a history major. The shift to art history came while studying under renowned Williams art history professors S. Lane Faison, Whitney Stoddard, and William Pierson, as well as spending a junior year summer in Florence taking art history courses in a program run by the University of Michigan and Sarah Lawrence College. His career trajectory was confirmed by his frequent visits to the Clark Art Institute during his senior year at Williams and a year-long NEH fellowship at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio that he was awarded after graduation.As a graduate of Williams, he was a member of the so-called "Williams Mafia", a legendary group of art historians who matriculated from the college in the 1960s and 1970s and went on to become directors of major museums across America. Tucker also played football and rugby at Williams becoming a Little All-American offensive tackle in 1971.
From the Toledo Museum of Art, he went to Yale, where he earned his PhD in the History of Art in 1979. Tucker studied primarily under Robert L. Herbert, a leading modernist scholar who was responsible for advancing the discipline as a social art historian. Tucker's dissertation on Monet’s classic Impressionist paintings of the 1870s, Monet at Argenteuil, 1871-1878, was the first study of the artist that set his work in a social-political context. It became his first book.
Exhibitions
Tucker set the attendance record at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1990 with Monet in the '90s. The Series Paintings, which attracted 530,000 visitors, only to break his own record with Monet in the 20th Century in 1998 which drew 565,000. Both shows also broke records in London when they were at the Royal Academy of Arts. Monet in the 90s attracted 658,00 visitors in 1990. Monet in the 20th Century counted 813,000 in 1999 which made it the most visited exhibition in British history at the time. The catalogue for the exhibition sold over 125,000 copies, the most illustrated books Yale University Press had ever printed. His Monet. A Retrospective at the Bridgestone Museum, Tokyo, Nagoya City Art Museum, and Hiroshima Museum was the second most visited show in Japan in 1995. Monet's Garden. Impressions of Giverny, which he curated for The New York Botanical Garden, also broke records there. Other noteworthy shows Tucker curated include:Claude Monet. Late Work. Gagosian Gallery, New York, May–June 2010 DoubleTake. From Monet to Lichtenstein. Selections from the Paul G. Allen Collection. Experience Music Project, Seattle, April 2006 – January 2007.The Sculpture of William Tucker. State Street, Santa Barbara, CA, January–June 2002.Renoir. From Outsider to Old Master, 1870–1992. Bridgestone Museum, Tokyo, and Nagoya City Art Museum, Nagoya, February–June 2001.The Impressionists at Argenteuil. National Gallery of Art, Washington, and The Wadsworth, Hartford, May–December 2000.Monet in the 20th-Century. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Royal Academy of Arts, London, September 1998 – April 1999.Claude Monet. A Retrospective. Bridgestone Museum, Tokyo, Nagoya City Art Museum, and Hiroshima Museum of Art, February–July 1994.Tuscany Rediscovered: Richard Upton at Cortona. Everson Museum, Syracuse, N.Y., Krannert Art Gallery, Champaign-Urbana, IL, The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT, and James A. Mitchner Museum, Doylestown, PA, May 1991 – June 1993.Monet in the 90s. The Series Paintings. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Art Institute of Chicago, and Royal Academy of Arts, London, February–December 1990.Masterworks from the Collection of Mr. & Mrs. David Lloyd Kreeger. Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, D.C., February–May 1989.Architectural Drawings for Modern Publish Buildings in New Haven. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, 1974.The Cubist Image in the Graphic Arts. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, 1973.Death: Realism, Allegory, Ritual. Toledo Museum of Art, OH, 1973.Selected publications
*Honors and awards
- International Art Critics’ Award for curating the best exhibition at a commercial gallery in New York City, 2010
- Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Scholarship, UMass Boston, 1999, 1991
- Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Service, UMass Boston, 1991
- Governors’ Award, Yale University Press, 1990
- The Florence Gould Arts Foundation Grant, 1988, 1984
- UMass Boston Faculty Development Grant, 1988, 1981, 1980
- UMass Boston Healy Grant, 1988
- UMass Boston Public Service Grant, 1988
- American Council of Learned Societies Grant, 1985
- Danforth Foundation Associate for Excellence in College Teaching, 1981
- UMass Boston Faculty/Staff Union Grant, 1981
- Samuel H. Kress Foundation Fellowship, 1976–1977
- Samuel H. Kress Foundation Travel Grant, 1975, 1976
- Toledo Museum of Art Fellowship for Advanced Study, 1973–1974
- Toledo Museum of Art, Educational Fellowship, 1972–1973