William W. Robinson, the Maida and George Abrams curator of drawings, emeritus, at the Harvard Art Museums, a leading authority on northern European drawings, has passed away at the age of 75.
Robinson was a revered member of the Harvard Art Museums community from 1976 until long past his retirement in 2015. Renowned for his wide-ranging expertise in drawings, and a noted authority on drawings by Rembrandt and his school. Robinson studied with art historian Seymour Slive and in 1996 was awarded a Ph.D. in art history from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences after defending his dissertation on Dutch artist Nicolaes Maes. Over the course of his lengthy Harvard career, he rose through the ranks in the Fogg Museum’s drawings department — first as a graduate student intern, to being appointed assistant curator in 1981, acting curator in 1983, and full curator in 1988. Robinson stepped away from Harvard between 1984 and 1988 to serve as the curator of drawings at the Morgan Library and Museum. During that period, he also held the position of editor of Master Drawings, the leading journal in this area of specialization.
At Harvard, Robinson organized more than 10 major traveling drawings exhibitions and contributed to many more, and his tireless research and enthusiasm for the medium also led him to teach several courses, including on the landscape and culture of the Netherlands. Robinson’s numerous exhibition catalogues, articles, and essays remain foundational resources, written to the highest standards of scholarly excellence. His final publication at Harvard, “Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt” (2016), reflected years of intensive research to present 100 of the finest 16th- to 18th-century, Dutch, Flemish, and Netherlandish drawings in the museums’ collections.
Robinson grew the Harvard Art Museums’ collections to reflect more fully the history of European drawing; he linked up with contemporary artists to demonstrate the vitality of drawing today; he cultivated and formed close relationships with donors — including Melvin R. Seiden and George S. Abrams — whose collections have made a huge impact; and he guided new generations of drawing scholars, mentoring many students and curatorial fellows. During the 2008–14 renovation and expansion of the Harvard Art Museums, he served as a leading curatorial voice and was a key visionary in the development of the enormously successful Art Study Center, where visitors can view objects in the collections by appointment.
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