A Life in Looking: The Creighton Gilbert Collection

A Life in Looking: The Creighton Gilbert Collection is a temporary exhibition at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art on display from June 24 through December 31, 2021.
www.ou.edu/fjjma
The renowned art historian Dr. Creighton Eddy Gilbert (1924-2011), a scholar of Italian Renaissance art and one of the foremost authorities on Michelangelo, spent nearly seven decades dedicated to scholarship, collecting, and teaching. An academic prodigy, Gilbert entered college at age 14, became a professor at 21, and eventually completed a doctorate from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts in 1955. Following positions at the Ringling Museum, Brandeis University, Queens College, Harvard University, and Cornell University, he joined the faculty of Yale University in 1981. In addition to his work mentoring students-many of whom went on to achieve acclaim as art historians and curators in their own right-Gilbert served as editor-in-chief of the leading art history journal Art Bulletin between 1980 and 1985 and published extensively. He penned numerous books and articles on Caravaggio, realism in Renaissance art, and the Northern Baroque, as well as two seminal works: Michelangelo: On and Off the Sistine Ceiling (1994) and Caravaggio and His Two Cardinals (1995). Gilbert also collected, taking particular delight in discovering works by major artists hidden away in Italian print shops and especially in his acquisition of a jewel-like Madonna and Child by the Renaissance master Romanino. In 2005, Dr. Eric Lee, a former student of Gilbert’s and then-director of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, encouraged his mentor to leave his private collection to the museum. The bequest, 272 objects, spans the fourteenth to twentieth centuries with an emphasis on Old Master prints and drawings from the Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo periods. Gilbert’s wide-ranging interests are evident in this exhibition, guest curated by University of Oklahoma art history faculty members Dr. Allison Palmer and Dr. Erin Duncan-O’Neill. Through themes of religion, architecture, allegory, portraiture, and humor, A Life in Looking: The Creighton Gilbert Collection explores a collection built on seven decades of expertise by this influential scholar, educator, and connoisseur.