Joseph J. Rishel (1940–2020)

Since arriving at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1971, Joseph J. Rishel had made his life's work the expansion and research of the museum's collections, the engagement with its international public, and the fulfillment of its potential to contribute to its immediate community. He served there as the Gisela and Dennis Alter Senior Curator of European Painting before 1900 and took a post at the National Gallery of Art as Samuel H. Kress Professor. Through a series of extraordinary exhibitions, including Cézanne (1995-96), The Splendor of 18th Century Rome (2000), Manet and the Sea (2003-04), The Arts in Latin America, 1492-1820 (2006-07), and Cézanne and Beyond (2009), this curator and diplomat has imagined new ways of presenting works both famous and unknown, and he has overcome immense obstacles in realizing these visions. Within the museum profession he is highly regarded for his dedication to the formation of a new generation of curators, and he has been particularly supportive of the combination of technical analysis with historical evidence in research. In Philadelphia he served as chairman of the Barnes Foundation Collection Assessment Advisory Committee. From Mexico City to London and Paris, he was held in the highest esteem as a colleague and convivial companion by artists and scholars alike. He received his M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1962 and is the author or coauthor of a number of works including Delacroix: The Late Work, (with E. Delacroix, et al 1998), Goya: Another Look (2006), and Cezanne and Beyond (with K. Sachs and a team of scholars 2009). He has been honored a number of times, including twice by the French Government, being named Chevalier, l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1996 and Officier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2002. Rishel is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society in 2010. He died on November 5, 2020.