Administrative/Biographical History
Charles Percy Parkhurst (1913-2008) was born in Columbus, Ohio on January 23, 1913, and was raised in Oberlin, Ohio. He attended Williams College in Massachusetts (BA, 1935), Oberlin College (MA, 1938), and Princeton University (MFA, 1941). In addition to holding several professional posts, Parkhurst continued to study and conduct research in the field of art history for the entirety of his career, focusing primarily on color theory. He held several prestigious honors, including: the Graves Prize (1935); a Jacobus Fellowship (1940-1941); the Chevalier de le Legion d’Honneur de France (1947); a Ford Faculty Fellowship (1952-1953); and a Fulbright Grant (1956-1957).
After graduating from Princeton University, Parkhurst held the position of assistant curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. He served in the United States Navy during World War II and, owing to his curatorial experience, was assigned to the Roberts Commission. Otherwise known as the “Monuments Men,” the Roberts Commission, created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943, was charged with the preservation of cultural properties in war areas, the reclamation of stolen artwork, and returning cultural heritage to its prewar owners. In 1945, Parkhurst and other military officers from the Commission created controversy by signing the Wiesbaden Manifesto, which objected to the congressional proposal to bring reclaimed artwork to the United States.
After the war, Parkhurst accepted the position of assistant to the director at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, a post he held from 1946 to 1949. In 1949, he returned to Oberlin as Professor of the History and Appreciation of Art and the Director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM), the latter title also encompassing the position of the head of the Department of Fine Arts. Under Parkhurst’s tenure as director, the AMAM made some of its most important acquisitions and cemented its place as an important and well-respected art museum in the United States. Throughout his career, Parkhurst was an outspoken proponent of making museum collections accessible to students, and worked to broaden the scope of the AMAM’s holdings. Under his tenure, the AMAM promoted interdisciplinary study by curating exhibitions of interest to various programs of study, such as English, theology, sociology, geology, physics, chemistry, and psychology. The holdings of the AMAM increased substantially under Parkhurst’s directorship, from 3,971 items to 9,061.
In 1958, Parkhurst was elected president of the College Art Association of America (CAA), further raising the profile of the art programs and collections at Oberlin College. He also helped to found the Intermuseum Conservation Association (ICA) in 1952, which was housed at Oberlin College and was the first consortial art conservation organization of its kind in the United States. In 1955, Parkhurst was named chairman of the College and University Museums Committee of the CAA. His task was to curate an exhibition of artwork owned by colleges and universities in the United States, which then toured Europe in 1956. After traveling with the exhibition, Parkhurst proceeded to the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, where he studied color theory and composition in paintings under a Fulbright Grant.
Parkhurst held his posts at Oberlin College until 1962, when he was appointed director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Between 1966 and 1968, he worked on a project to develop a system by which to accredit museums. The American Alliance of Museums, formerly the American Association of Museums, began offering opportunities for accreditation in 1971. Parkhurst moved from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. in 1970 in order to become the assistant director and chief curator at the National Gallery of Art. He retired in 1983, whereupon he taught at Williams College and Smith College.
Parkhurst married Elizabeth Huntington Rusling in1938, and the couple had three children: Andrew, Christopher, and Brucie. Parkhurst remarried in 1962 to Rima Zevin Julyan, and together they had one child, Brooke Woodbridge, as well as three children from Julyan’s previous marriage. Parkhurst married again in 1986 to Carol Clark. He died on June 25, 2008.
Sources Consulted
“About,” ICA Art Conservation, accessed March 6, 2018.
http://www.ica-artconservation.org/about/.
“Accreditation,” American Alliance of Museums, accessed March 7, 2018.
http://www.aam-us.org/resources/assessment-programs/accreditation.
“Charles P. Parkhurst Art Conservation Fund,” Allen Memorial Art Museum,
accessed March 6, 2018.
http://www2.oberlin.edu/amam/CharlesP.Parkhurst_ArtConservationFund.htm
“Charles Parkhurst Chosen to Head Art Department.” Oberlin Times (Oberlin,
OH), May 5, 1949.
Grimes, William. “Charles Parkhurst, Who Tracked Down Looted Art, Dies at 95,”
New York Times, June 28, 2008. See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/28/arts/design/28parkhurst.html.
Author: Rebecca Sparagowski Forms of Material (links to similar genres) Administrative InformationFor additional files relating to Charles Parkhurst’s work at Oberlin College, see RG 9/3, the Allen Memorial Art Museum Records, particularly those records pertaining to the years 1949 to 1962. See also RG 28/3 for Parkhurst’s faculty file.
Documents relating to Parkhurst’s work with the Roberts Commission are held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (finding guide: https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/gallery-archives/pdf/nga-ga-rg28mfaa-f-charlesparkhurstpapers.pdf) and the National Archives of the United States (finding guide: https://www.archives.gov/iwg/declassified-records/rg-239-monuments-salvage-commission).
The Baltimore Museum of Art holds records pertaining to Parkhurst’s directorship there (finding guide: https://artbma.org/documents/findingAids/BMA_DirectorsOfficeFindingAid.pdf?pdf=DirOfficeRecs), and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. hold records from his directorship there (Record Group 3, Office of the Deputy or Assistant Director).
