Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Curator of Northern Baroque Painting at the National Gallery of Art and longtime member of CODART, has announced his retirement. Wheelock came to the National Gallery of Art in 1973 as the David E. Finley Fellow. In 1974 he began his teaching career at the University of Maryland. He was appointed curator of Dutch and Flemish painting at the Gallery in 1975.

Wheelock has helped mount over 40 exhibitions of Dutch and Flemish paintings at the National Gallery, including Anthony van Dyck (1990); Johannes Vermeer (1995); Jan Steen (1996); Aelbert Cuyp (2001); Gerard ter Borch (2004); Rembrandt’s Late Religious Portraits (2005); Jan Lievens (2008); Dutch Cityscapes (2009); and Joachim Wtewael (2015).

Wheelock has received a number of honors throughout his career. In 1982 he 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.

See our Curator in the Spotlight of November 2017 for more information on Wheelock’s career in Dutch and Flemish art.

We would like to thank Arthur Wheelock for his engagement in CODART and we hope that he will continue his involvement in the field of Dutch and Flemish art.