WILLIAMSTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS.- Internationally known art historian and educator Whitney Snow Stoddard, the Amos Lawrence Professor of Art Emeritus at Williams College, died at his home (1611 Cold Spring Road) in Williamstown, Mass. He was 90.
Stoddard’s scholarly work on medieval sculpture and architecture continues to be taught at colleges and universities. In more than 40 years of teaching as part of an especially dynamic department, he spread an excitement for art among countless students. Many of them went on to careers in the art world, including Earl A. Powell, director of the National Gallery of Art, Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, James N. Wood, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, John R. Lane, director of the Dallas Museum of Art, Michael J. Govan, director of the Dia Center for the Arts, Earl R. Mandle, president of the Rhode Island School of Design, Paul H. Tucker, professor of art at UMass Boston, and J. Kirk T. Varnedoe, professor of the history of art at the Institute for Advanced Study. Most of these figures have said that they would never have considered a career in art without the influence of Stoddard and his colleagues S. Lane Faison and William H. Pierson.
"Whitney Stoddard personified the ideal of the liberal arts professor," Williams President Morton Owen Schapiro said. "His scholarship informed his rigorous yet popular teaching while he supported in many ways his faculty colleagues and seemed to attend almost every academic, cultural, and athletic event of his students." He also looked the part, with his tweed jackets, wide-brimmed hats, ever-present pipe, and retriever often at his side.
Krens said, "Whitney Stoddard was one of the most extraordinary individuals ever to graduate from and teach at Williams College. I was a political economy major in the late ’60s when I -- like so many of my classmates -- fell under Whitney’s spell in Art History 101. He was passionate, literate, enthusiastic, erudite and a regular guy. In short, a perfect teacher."
"Whit Stoddard … was incredibly wry and humorous and fast-paced," Varnedoe said. "He went to all the hockey games, and came to class on skis in the winter -- he’d prop his skis up against the lectern."
"Despite the number of us who became art professionals, Whitney and the department were just as proud, and rightly so, of the degree to which they engaged the political science student, the physicist, and so on. These are people who have gone into business and other professions but have had their lives enriched by a deeper understanding of art."
One of those was former Secretary of Education William Bennett. "There we came -- philistines, cynics, the bored, the restless -- and Whit Stoddard put out the lights and civilized us," Bennett said.
Stoddard’s approach to teaching introductory art history avoided a broad survey and instead had students closely scrutinize a small number of objects. "I tried to teach them how to see," he said. "They had never looked before. They didn’t know they had eyes."
Stoddard involved many of his students in the archeological excavations of the medieval monastery of Psalmodi in southern France, which he led for decades and which are now directed by his son, Brooks W. Stoddard, professor of art at the University of Maine.
For many years, freshman orientation at Williams included a talk by Stoddard called "A Sense of Where You Are," a wry look at the architecture of the college, not every minute of which was enjoyed by the college administration. The talk was so popular with students that recent classes asked him to give it again the week of their graduation, for which he changed the title to "A Sense of Where You Were." In 2001 he produced the book "Reflections on the Architecture of Williams" with editor Thomas W. Bleezarde and photographer Arthur D. Evans. This earned him the Williamstown Historical Commission’s first annual preservation award.
Stoddard helped found the College Art Association of America, which in 1989 gave him its award for distinguished teaching. The association cited him for awakening "students at all levels to the enticements of works of art, of teaching as a calling, of meticulous research and of archaeological excavation" and for having taught "an astonishingly high proportion of the directors and curators of major museums."
In 1983 The International Center of Medieval Art devoted a volume of its journal, Gesta, to essays in his honor. In one of them, Jerrilynn D. Dodds, now a professor at the City College of New York, said, "In his refusal to be stuffy, competitive, or protective of his work, he gave us a joyful and human model of an academic and art historian."
He graduated from Williams in 1935 and earned his Ph.D. in art history from Harvard in 1941. He began teaching at Williams in 1938 with time out to serve in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1945. He officially retired in 1982 but continued to teach part-time and to contribute to campus life for many years. He met with his final Williams class in January, conducting a two-hour session for a course on the historical development of the college.
His many scholarly writings include the influential "The West Portals of Saint-Denis and Chartres" (1952), which was included in his "The Sculptors of the West Portals of Chartres Cathedral" (1987, 1988). His "Art and Architecture in Medieval France" (1966, 1972) remains a widely used textbook.
Whitney Snow Stoddard was born March 25, 1913 in Greenfield, Mass., to Charles Nowell Stoddard and Elizabeth Snow Stoddard. He grew up in Greenfield and graduated from nearby Eaglebrook School and Deerfield Academy. He married Jean Wilson Read in 1936; she died in 1988. In 1991, he married Elizabeth Jensvold, who died in 2002.
He is survived by his son Brooks W. Stoddard of Brunswick, Maine; daughter Elizabeth Stoddard of Portland, Maine; son Lawrence J. Stoddard of Fort Collins, Colo.; ten grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday, May 10, at 1 p.m. in Thompson Memorial Chapel.