by Jon Lackman | 16 November 2006 | Uncategorized
From The North Adams Transcript: “S. Lane Faison Jr., one of the nation’s most influential teachers of art history and a Williams College professor for 40 years, died Saturday … [his former students include] Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery; Thomas Krens, director of the Guggenheim Foundation; Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art; the late J. Kirk T. Varnedoe, MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture; Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; James Wood, former director of the Art Institute of Chicago … Faison’s essays appeared in The New York Times and Saturday Review, and in the early 1950s he regularly wrote art and book reviews for The Nation. His books include “Manet” (1953) … Williams published recently an anthology of his Nation essays, titled “Expressing Abstraction: Writing on Art for The Nation” … Faison’s sharp eye and knowledge of art was also put to practical use. In 1945, he was transferred as a Navy reservist to the U.S. Office of Strategic Services as a member of the Art Looting Investigation Unit. He interrogated Nazi art personnel in Austria and Munich and wrote the official report on the formation of Adolph Hitler’s art collection. For this work, he received the French Legion d’Honneur (Chevalier) in 1947. In 1950-51, the U.S. State Department sent him to Munich to serve as director of the Central Collecting Point to supervise the return of art that had been plundered by Nazis.”
