Background

Sidney Fiske Kimball was born on December 8, 1888 in Newton, Massachusetts, United States, the son of Edwin Fiske Kimball, an educator, and Ellen Leora Ripley Kimball.

Education

Kimball received the Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard in 1909, the Master of Architecture degree from the University of Michigan in 1912 and Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1915.

Career

In 1912-1913 Kimball was instructor of art and architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana. From 1913 to 1915 he was instructor in architecture at the University of Michigan and in 1915 he was made assistant professor of architecture. The following year he held a Sachs fellowship for research, and in 1918-1919 he was assistant professor of fine arts at Michigan. In 1919 he became professor of art and established a department of architecture at the University of Virginia, where he remained until 1923. He then became chairman of the department of fine arts at New York University and Morse professor of the literature of the arts of design; he served in these posts until 1925.

Kimball's academic career overlapped his career as an architect. While still at Harvard he designed cottages in Maine; he drew up the plans for housing developments during his tenure at Michigan; and at the University of Virginia, where he was also supervising architect, he designed the Memorial Gymnasium, completed the building for faculty housing, and designed the McIntire Amphitheater. He also designed for himself a small, elegant pavilion, Shack Mountain, in which he employed a Jeffersonian idiom. At New York University he was associated with Mead, McKim and White in drawing up plans for university buildings; he continued to serve as the university's architect until his death. He served on the advisory board for New York's Rockefeller Center and was an adviser on art to President Harry S. Truman. Kimball believed that the history of art should serve public purposes.

Much of his writing was concerned with the architecture of Thomas Jefferson--indeed, his Thomas Jefferson, Architect, published in 1916, revealed for the first time the extent of Jefferson's achievements in that field. Kimball's other works on American art and architecture include his articles on Jefferson portraits and "Creators of the Chippendale Style, " and Mr. Samuel McIntire, Carver, the Architect of Salem (1940). His many other articles were published in both scholarly and popular journals; his Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic (1922) was considered one of his most seminal studies.

During summer vacations in Europe, Kimball became interested in the architecture of France. It had, he said, "more windows and more light than American buildings. " In his definitive The Creation of the Rococo (1943), he astonished French architectural scholars by demonstrating that the inspiration for the rococo style had come from Great Britain to France, rather than the other way around. (The incongruity between the brusque, often domineering Kimball and the airy, graceful style that he studied and loved was frequently remarked by his colleagues and friends. )

Kimball's another important contribution to art was made when he was appointed a director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1925. He believed that the first function of a museum was educational and that it should include the artifacts of a wide variety of cultures, comprising both the fine and decorative arts. He acquired a number of remarkable collections for Philadelphia, among them the John G. Johnson collection of Flemish primitives, the Foule collection of medieval and Renaissance art, the Crozier collection of oriental art, the Gallatin collection of twentieth-century art, the Barnard collection of sculpture, and the Louise and Walter Arensberg collection of pre-Columbian and modern art. His taste for French decorative arts was reflected in his acquisition of the lovely Louis XIV room from, one of his most successful installations. Kimball died in Munich, Germany, where he had been taken after suffering a heart attack in Ravenna, Italy. He was collecting material on the baroque for a companion volume to his study of the rococo at the time of his death.

Achievements

• Kimball's primary achievement was his work for the Philadelphia Museum of Art. By the time he retired he had made it into one of the world's leading art institutions. He was involved in a number of important restoration projects, among them Colonial Williamsburg, Stratford Hall (the home of the Lee family), the Fairmount Park houses in Philadelphia, Gunston Hall (the home of George Mason), and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. As an author, he was noted for his work "Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic" (1922), which became a landmark of American scholarship.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic (Dover Architecture)

    ( Pioneering book, profusely illustrated with 219 photogr...)

  • The creation of the rococo decorative style

    (100% Satisfaction is Guaranteed! There are no problems in...)

  • American Architecture.

    (First Edition bound in black cloth with gold lettering. 4...)

  • Great Paintings in America - One Hunderd and One Masterpieces in Color
  • Thomas Jefferson, Architect: Original Designs in the Coolidge Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society
  • Mr. Samuel McIntire, Carver: The Architect of Salem
  • A history of architecture,

Connections

In 1913 Kimball married Marie Goebel. His wife was collaborated with him in his work as well as publishing several books on her own, most notably her three-volume Biographical Study of Jefferson (1943 - 1950).

Father:

Edwin Fiske Kimball

educator

Mother:

Ellen Leora Ripley Kimball

Spouse:

Marie Goebel

References

• Triumph on Fairmount: Fiske Kimball and the Philadelphia Museum of Art