Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr.
Biography

Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr.
Curator of Northern Baroque Painting in front of Johannes Vermeer's
A Lady Writing (c. 1665)
National Gallery of Art

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., who is curator of northern baroque painting at the National Gallery of Art and professor of art history at the University of Maryland, was raised in Uxbridge, Massachusetts before attending Phillips Exeter Academy, Williams College, and Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D in 1973. He came to the National Gallery of Art in 1973 as the David E. Finley Fellow, after which he was named Research Curator. At the same time, he began his teaching career at the University of Maryland. He was appointed curator of Dutch and Flemish painting at the National Gallery in 1975.

Wheelock, who has lectured widely on Dutch and Flemish art, has written a number of books and articles, including Perspective, Optics, and Delft Artists around 1650 (1977); Jan Vermeer (1981); Vermeer and the Art of Painting (1995); the catalogue of the Dutch collection at the National Gallery, Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (1995); “The Story of Two Vermeer Forgeries,” in Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive (1995); “Rembrandt Self-Portraits: The Creation of a Myth,” in Rembrandt, Rubens, and the Art of their Time: Recent Perspectives (1997); “The Queen, the Dwarf, and the Court: Van Dyck and the Ideals of the English Monarchy,” in Van Dyck 1599-1999: Conjectures and Rufutations (2001); and “The Appreciation of Vermeer in Twentieth-Century America” (co-author with Marguerite Glass), The Cambridge Companion to Vermeer (2001). He has also organized a number of major exhibitions at the National Gallery, including Gods, Saints, & Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt (1980); Anthony van Dyck (1990); Johannes Vermeer (1995); Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller (1996); A Collector’s Cabinet (1998); From Botany to Boquets: Flowers in Northern Art (1999); Gerrit Dou: Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt (2000); and Aelbert Cuyp (2001). He also organized The Public and Private in the Age of Vermeer at the Osaka Municipal Museum, Japan, in 2000.

He has received a number of honors throughout his career. In 1982, at the time of the Dutch-American Bicentennial, he was named Knight Officer in the Order of the Orange-Nassau by the Dutch government. In 1993 he received the College Art Association/National Institute for Conservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation. In 1996 he received the Minda de Gunzburg Prize for the best exhibition catalogue of 1995 (Johannes Vermeer); the Johannes Vermeer Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Dutch Art, which was presented by the Johannes Vermeer Stichting; the Bicentennial Medal from Williams College; and the Dutch-American Achievement Award, presented by The Netherlands American Amity Trust.

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Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. Biography

Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr.
Biography