Paul Hayes Tucker

Paul Hayes Tucker (born 1950) is an American art historian, professor, curator and author who spent over 36 years teaching art history at UMass Boston. He has been internationally recognized as one of world’s foremost authorities on Claude Monet,^[1] and an expert on Impressionism.

His work in 19th and 20th Century art spans over 40 years teaching at the University of California Santa Barbara, Williams College, The New York University Institute of Fine Arts, Yale University, and The Toledo Museum of Art. He has had 16 exhibitions, authored 11 books, and has been featured in numerous print, radio, and television features, including an appearance on Charlie Rose in 1995.

Early life

Grandson of Carlton J. H. Hayes, a distinguished history professor at Columbia who served as United States Ambassador to Spain during World War II, Tucker sought to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps as a history scholar. The shift to art history came while studying at Williams College under Whitney Stoddard, Lane Faison, and William Pierson, as well as a trip to Florence to study art in his junior year, and a subsequent fellowship at the Toledo Museum of Art. Tucker became enamored with Impressionism and Claude Monet during frequent visits to the Clark Art Institute while attending Williams College. It was there where he first received the inspiration to one day reunite the artist’s Rouen Cathedral (Monet series) in a single exhibition — something he accomplished while curating Monet in the 90s at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1990.

A member of the so-called “Williams Mafia,”^[2] a group of men who graduated from Williams College in the 1960s and 70s, Tucker also served as an All-American Defensive End on the football team while earning his undergraduate degree.

As an art history graduate student at Yale, where he earned his PhD in 1979, Tucker studied under Professor Robert L. Herbert, a pioneer in developing the social history of art. Tucker’s dissertation would become his first book: Monet at Argenteuil. .

Exhibitions

Paul Hayes Tucker has the unique distinction of setting the highest attendance record in the history of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1990 with his “Monet in the ‘90s” exhibition,^[3] only to break his own record with “Monet in the 20th Century” Performing as guest curator for museums across the United States and around the globe, his work beyond Impressionism and into post-war American art.

• Monet’s Garden. Impressions of Giverny. The New York Botanical Garden, May 19 – October 22, 2012
• Claude Monet. Late Work. Gagosian Gallery, New York, May-June 2010
• DoubleTake. From Monet to Lichtenstein. Selections from the Paul G. Allen Collection. Experience Music Project, Seattle, April 2006-January 2007.
• The Sculpture of William Tucker. State Street, Santa Barbara, CA, January–June 2002.
• Renoir. From Outsider to Old Master, 1870-1992. Bridgestone Museum, Tokyo, and the Nagoya City Art Museum, Nagoya, February–June 2001.
• The Impressionists at Argenteuil. National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, May–December 2000.
• Monet in the 20th Century. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, September 1998-April 1999.
• Claude Monet. A Retrospective. Bridgestone Museum, Tokyo, the Nagoya City Art Museum, and the Hiroshima Museum of Art, February–July 1994.
• Tuscany Rediscovered: Richard Upton at Cortona. Everson Museum, Syracuse, N.Y., the Krannert Art Gallery, Champagne-Urbana, IL, The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT, and the James A. Mitchner Museum, Doylestown, PA, May 1991-June 1993.
• Monet in the 90s. The Series Paintings. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, February–December 1990.
• Masterworks from the Collection of Mr. & Mrs. David Lloyd Kreeger. Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, D.C., February–May 1989.
• Architectural Drawings for Modern Publish Buildings in New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, 1974.
• The Cubist Image in the Graphic Arts. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, 1973.
• Death: Realism, Allegory, Ritual. Toledo Museum of Art, OH, 1973.
• The Museum as Concept-Creation. Toledo Museum of Art, OH, 1972.
• Rembrandt and the Italian Renaissance. Toledo Museum of Art, OH, 1972.

Publications

Author of 11 books, Paul Hayes Tucker has written numerous articles, catalogues entries, book reviews, and book chapters as well including

• Tucker, Paul Hayes (2011). Kenneth Noland 1958-1967. New York: Mitchell-Innes and Nash. 
• Tucker, Paul Hayes (2010). Claude Monet, Late Work. New York: Gagosian Gallery. ISBN 978-1-935263-11-1. 
• Tucker, Paul Hayes; Brettell, Richard; Lee, Natalie (2010). The Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume III: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Paintings. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781588393494. 
• Tucker, Paul Hayes (2005). DoubleTake. From Monet to Lichtenstein. Selections from the Paul G. Allen Collection. Seattle: Experience Music Project. ISBN 978-0977909407. 
• Tucker, Paul Hayes (2000). The Impressionists at Argenteuil. Washington, D.C.: The National Gallery of Art with Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0894682490. 
• Tucker, Paul Hayes (1998). Monet in the 20th Century. London: Yale University Press with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Royal Academy of Arts - French edition, Flammarion, 1999. German edition, 1999. ISBN 978-0300079449. 
• Tucker, Paul Hayes, ed. (1998). Manet’s "Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe" (editor). London: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521479844. 
• Tucker, Paul Hayes (1995). Claude Monet. Life and Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300062984. 
• Tucker, Paul Hayes (1990). Richard Upton and the Rhetoric of Landscape. Utica, NY: Brodock Press. ISBN 978-0962950315. 
• Tucker, Paul Hayes (1998). Monet in the 90s: The Series Paintings. London: Yale University Press with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Royal Academy of Arts - French edition, Flammarion, 1999. German edition, 1999, Italian Edition, Yale University Press 1990. ISBN 978-0300046595. 
• Tucker, Paul Hayes (1982). Monet at Argenteuil. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, French edition, Editions du Valhermeil, 1990 and 2010. ISBN 978-0300025774. 

Honors and awards

• International Art Critics’ Award for curating the best exhibition (Claude Monet. Late Work) at a commercial gallery in New York City, 2010
• Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Scholarship, UMass Boston, 1999, 1991
• Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Service, UMass Boston, 1991
• Governors’ Award, Yale University Press, 1990 (given by the Board of
• Governors of Yale University Press for the best book the Press published by an author under 40 years old)
• The Florence Gould Arts Foundation Grant, 1988, 1984
• UMass Boston Faculty Development Grant, 1988, 1981, 1980
• UMass Boston Healy Grant, 1988
• UMass Boston Public Service Grant, 1988
• American Council of Learned Societies Grant, 1985
• Danforth Foundation Associate for Excellence in College Teaching, 1981
• UMass Boston Faculty/Staff Union Grant, 1981
• Samuel H. Kress Foundation Fellowship, 1976-1977
• Samuel H. Kress Foundation Travel Grant, 1975, 1976
• Toledo Museum of Art Fellowship for Advanced Study, 1973-1974
• Toledo Museum of Art, Educational Fellowship, 1972-1973

Family and Personal Life

He is married to Maggie Moss-Tucker, and has two children, actor Jonathan Tucker and Jennie. Tucker retired from his position at UMass Boston to move to California in 2014 where he continues to advance scholarship on 19th and 20th Century art while working on his most recent book, a college level textbook on modern art titled Never Neutral. Modern Art: Courbet to Pollock. .

References

External links

• Art Historian Paul Hayes Tucker UMass Boston
• The Legend of the Williams Art Mafia - Williams College Reunion 2010 lecture by Lisa Corrin
• Arts on the Point: An Interview with Paul Tucker UMass Boston