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John McAndrew
A Brooklyn, N.Y. native who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, McAndrew worked in an architectural firm until joining the faculty at Vassar College, in 1931. He left Vassar in 1937 to become curator of architecture at New York City's Museum of Modern Art, an institution that combined pioneering and leadership roles in the art world. It was a dream job for a young intellectual who loved art as well as architecture, and who relished research and writing. McAndrew also enjoyed the social aspects of developing a museum collection. He met his curatorial responsibilities with imagination and discernment, organizing about 25 exhibitions during his five years at the Museum of Modern Art. During that time, McAndrew also edited books by Frank Lloyd Wright and Alvar Aalto in conjunction with exhibitions of their work. This level of productivity did not keep him from earning a master of architecture degree from Harvard in 1940 and winning a Sachs traveling fellowship the same year. McAndrews' assignment as coordinator of inter-American affairs for the United States Department of State during World War II permitted him to live in Mexico, where he became an expert on pre-Columbian Mexican art and colonial architecture. His passion for Mexican architecture culminated in a book titled The Open Air Churches of Sixteenth Century Mexico, Atrios, Posas, Open Air Chapels and Other Studies, which won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award for the most distinguished work of scholarship in the history of architecture published by a North American scholar during the year 1965. McAndrew came to Wellesley in 1945. Sydney J. Freedberg, an art department colleague who was also a major art historian, later recalled that "For 23 years, until his retirement in 1968, he was [the] department's most brilliant and influential teacher." Feldberg Professor of Art Peter J. Fergusson, in his memorial essay on McAndrew, noted, "Untypical of the profession today, [McAndrew] taught in many fields: medieval architecture, early Netherlandish painting, Renaissance and baroque architecture, 19th and 20th century art and architecture."
McAndrew's wide travels included teaching appointments and lectureships at universities and museums in the United States and also in Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and Yugoslavia. He published extensively, too, most often in scholarly journals. Search the Wellesley College Library online catalog for a list of his books. His many and diverse trusteeships and board memberships included Hancock Shaker Village in western Massachusetts and Bear Run, the foundation that supports "Fallingwater," one of Frank Lloyd Wright's best-loved houses. He served on several visiting committees, most notably those for the Department of Fine Arts at Harvard University and the Department of Classical Arts of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Besides his professional accomplishments, McAndrew was an exceptional ballroom dancer, an enthusiastic gardener, and a fan of all the arts. He also loved socializing and was someone others wanted to be with. Following his retirement, McAndrew continued to research architectural sites. His affection for Venice was such that he and his wife lived there for half of every year; they spent the other half in Boston. In 1970, after learning that Venice would sink into the water in about twenty years unless a large-scale preservation plan could be implemented, McAndrew founded Save Venice, Inc., the achievement for which he is most widely remembered. He led the organization -- selecting projects, exercising the diplomacy necessary for obtaining permission for restoration work, and raising money -- until his death in 1978. For this work, McAndrew was thrice decorated by the government of Italy. In 1974 he was given the rank of Grande Officiale of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy, an honor only rarely bestowed on a foreigner. According to McAndrew's Boston Globe obituary, "He once estimated that Venice held 450 palaces, 200 churches and thousands of artworks from the Byzantine to the Baroque periods, all in danger of extinction. 'The point is, these things can be saved . . . . And if they are not saved, the loss is not just to Venice but to the whole . . . world.'" The obituary also quotes from McAndrew's contribution to his 50th Harvard reunion book, reporting that his work with Save Venice "has been very much mixed up with pleasure, for what I had to do for funds was often what I would have been doing for fun (and also from a recurrent Yankee sense of duty) - a wonderfully lucky coincidence." Written by Sally Linden
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John
McAndrew, who retired from Wellesley's art department in 1968 as
professor emeritus, was one of the College's most beloved faculty
members. His legacy can be viewed on the walls of the Davis Museum
and Cultural Center as well as in the art and architecture of Venice.
Lisa
McDermott, registrar at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, states
in her Person of the Week nomination, "I cannot count the number
of times I have heard alumnae reminisce about Professor McAndrew's
teaching style, and I know from my own experience with the collection
objects just how many wonderful things he is personally responsible
for acquiring." Along with his teaching responsibilities, McAndrew
served as director of the Wellesley College art museum from 1947
until 1957. (At that time, the museum was in the Farnsworth Art
Building, later demolished to provide space for the Jewett Arts
Center, which opened in the fall of 1958.) According to Professor
Fergusson, McAndrew "transformed what had until then been a
polyglot collection into one of the best college museums in the
country. This he accomplished without acquisition funds, either
by purchasing works of art out of his own pocket and donating them
anonymously or by encouraging others to give and share his vision
of what the museum could become."
