Edgar Munhall

Edgar Munhall
Edgar Munhall in the galleries of The Frick Collection, New York (photographed by Derek Thompson)
Born	Edgar Joseph Munhall (1933-03-14)March 14, 1933 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	October 17, 2016(2016-10-17) (aged 83) Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	Yale University; New York University
Known for	Art historian, curator
Awards	Officier, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

Edgar Joseph Munhall (March 14, 1933 – October 17, 2016) was an American art historian and Curator Emeritus of The Frick Collection.

Munhall was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He initially trained as an artist and at the age of seventeen won a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York City to study fashion drawing. After several months, however, he opted to pursue a career in art history and matriculated at Yale University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with High Honors from the "History, the Arts, and Letters" program in 1955. He transferred to New York University's Institute of Fine Arts for his master's degree, which he earned in 1957 with the thesis "The Statues in Watteau's Paintings." He returned to Yale for his PhD, writing his dissertation, which was completed in 1959, on Jean-Baptiste Greuze and his critical reception.

Munhall's first appointment was as Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Yale University Art Gallery. In 1964, he became an assistant professor in the Department of Art History at the university. A year later, he joined The Frick Collection as its first curator, a position he held until 1999. From 1972-1973, he also served as Acting Director of the Collection. In addition to his curatorial work, he continued to teach: he was the Clark Visiting Professor at Williams College in 1974 and served as an adjunct professor at Columbia University from 1979-1981. Munhall was also the corresponding editor of DU: Kulturelle Monatsschrift from 1980-1984.

During the thirty-five years that Munhall served as Curator at The Frick Collection, the institution produced the first multi-volume catalog of its holdings and began mounting special exhibitions on a regular basis. Munhall also contributed to a series of major acquisitions, including paintings by Gentile da Fabriano, Hans Memling, and François-Hubert Drouais. He also was instrumental in the acquisition of a significant collection of clocks and watches bequeathed to the museum in 1999 by Winthrop Kellogg Edey.