Emanuel Winternitz

Emanuel Winternitz (1898–1983) was the first curator of the Department of Musical Instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In 1973 he was named curator emeritus but continued to teach and work at the museum until his death in 1983.

Career

Born in Austria, Winternitz served in WWI and practiced law in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s.

With other Viennese Jewish intellectuals, he emigrated to the United States in 1938, after the Anschluss. Winternitz came to the Met as a lecturer in 1941, became a full-time employee and "Keeper" of the instruments the following year, and was named Curator in 1949 when Musical Instruments was made a curatorial department. At the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Department of Musical Instruments, Winternitz was responsible for saving the musical instruments collection from a plan to turn them over to a Music Library proposed by Juilliard.[1][2] He was also a musical instruments researcher, credited as the "father of the field of musical iconography", creating the field.[3]

References

  1. ↑ Kopp, Leslie Hansen (2004). "MUSIC FORGOTTEN AND REMEMBERED: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EMANUEL WINTERNITZ". Music in Art: International Journal for Music Iconography. 29 (1/2): 6. Retrieved 29 November 2016. Emanuel Winternitz (1898-1983), the distinguished curator of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for more than forty years, was the father of the field of musical iconography...
  2. ↑ Lindsey, Rebecca M. "A Harmonious Ensemble Musical Instruments at the Metropolitan Museum, 1884–2014, Emanuel Winternitz and the Renaissance of the Collection". metmuseum.atavist.com. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 29 November 2016. ...Winternitz's hard work to save the musical instruments for the Museum seemed on the point of fruition when the war was over. Director Taylor announced a grand plan for the modernization of the Museum in the winter of 1945–6...Soon afterwards, in 1949, Winternitz was named full curator, and the Department of Musical Instruments, for the first time ever, was officially a department of the same standing as all other Museum curatorial departments.
  3. ↑ Hughes, Allen (24 August 1983). "EMANUEL WINTERNITZ, MET MUSEUM CURATOR". New York Times. New York. Retrieved 29 November 2016.
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