Konrad J. Oberhuber

Konrad J. Oberhuber

Curator of Drawings, Fogg Art Museum; Professor of Fine Arts, 1975-1987
oberhuber

Konrad Oberhuber served as Curator of Drawings and Professor of Fine Arts at the Fogg Museum between 1975 to 1987. Born in Linz, Austria, he studied at the University of Vienna, and worked for a decade at the Albertina, the renowned Viennese museum. Before coming to Harvard he served as curator at the National Gallery of Art. When he left Cambridge in 1987, it was to return to the Albertina as its director, a post he held until his retirement in 2000.

As an art historian, Oberhuber was best known as the world’s pre-eminent authority on the drawings of Raphael, but his expertise extended beyond the Italian Renaissance in many directions and across five centuries. In every European and American museum collection he visited, he correctly attributed unidentified and misidentified drawings by French, Netherlandish, Italian, and German draftsmen.

Oberhuber had an enduring impact on Harvard Art Museums. His contacts in the art trade and with collectors contributed to his success in strengthening the Drawing Department’s holdings. Important works by Titian, Federigo Barocci, Nicolas Poussin, and Thomas Eakins entered the collection because he freely shared his expertise with the dealers who found them or the collectors who bought them. Trained as a curator in one of Europe’s greatest public collections, Oberhuber brought to the department’s acquisition goals a new ambition and breadth informed by his prior experience. He took their holdings in new directions with the addition of German 19th century drawings, the foundation of a strong representation of the French 17th century school, and the purchase of works by contemporary European artists, such as Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, and Enzo Cucchi.