Professor Catherine Scallen presented a paper, “Wilhelm Valentiner and Joseph Duveen: Expertise and Art Market Connections” at the two-day symposium, “Art Dealers, America, and the International Art Market, 1880–1930” held at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, January 18-19, 2018.  Her paper focused on the deep connections in the 1920s of the German scholar Wilhelm Valentiner with the international art dealing firm of Duveen Brothers, especially with Sir Joseph Duveen, the wily leader of the firm. Valentiner became director of the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1924 with Duveen’s advocacy for this appointment, while Duveen gained new customers in Detroit during this decade.  Her former colleague in CWRU’s Department of Art History and Art, Professor Anne Helmreich, now Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Texas Christian University, also presented a paper, “Knoedler in the Art Market.”

Joseph Duveen

Wilhelm Valentiner