Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Curator of Northern Baroque Painting at the National Gallery of Art has announced his retirement. Wheelock came to the National Gallery of Art in 1973 as the David E. Finley Fellow, and he was appointed curator of Dutch and Flemish painting at the Gallery in 1975. While he was a curator at the National Gallery, he also taught at the University of Maryland and oversaw the successful completion of many important dissertations contributing the field of Netherlandish and Flemish art.
As a curator, Wheelock installed many influential and transformative exhibitions, including: Gods, Saints & Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt (National Gallery of Art, 1980); Anthony van Dyck (National Gallery of Art, 1990); Johannes Vermeer (National Gallery of Art, and Mauritshuis, The Hague, 1995);Gerrit Dou (1613-1675): Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt (National Gallery of Art, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, and Mauritshuis, The Hague, 2000);Rembrandt’s Late Religious Portraits (National Gallery of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2005); Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age (Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, and the National Gallery of Art, 2008).
In 1982, Wheelock was named Knight Officer in the Order of the Orange-Nassau by the Dutch government. In 1993 he received the College Art Association/National Institute for Conservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation. In 2006 he was named Commander in The Order of Leopold I by the Belgian government. In 2008 the University of Maryland created a doctoral fellowship in his name: The Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. Fellowship in Northern Baroque Painting. His online catalog of the Dutch collection at the National Gallery of Art received the Art Library Society of North America’s George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award in 2014 for being the best art publication in the United States. In 2015 Wheelock received The Kellogg Award for lifetime career achievement from Williams College.
