Awards
2005 Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award
David G. Wilkins, University of Pittsburgh
In 2005 CAA honors David G. Wilkins with the Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award. Until his retirement in 2004, Wilkins taught for thirty-seven years in the Henry Clay Frick Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, where his career was distinguished. Wilkins is a specialist in Italian late-medieval and Renaissance art and architecture. He has offered a large number of diverse courses in his field at all levels, teaching freshman as well as graduate seminars. He served for many years as undergraduate and graduate advisor and for nine years as department chair. In 1987 he received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award. In almost four decades as a gifted, dedicated teacher, he directed twenty-one MA theses and seventeen doctoral dissertations.
Wilkins has influenced generations of students at both the University of Pittsburgh and well beyond. He was Distinguished Visiting Professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and has taught in the Sarah Lawrence College–University of Michigan Program in Florence, the London and Semester-at-Sea programs of the University of Pittsburgh, the Academy for Lifelong Learning, and the Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary. He has reached a wider public through the 109 exhibitions he organized for the University of Pittsburgh Art Gallery on topics ranging from Baroque prints to Chinese art to works by contemporary artists. His many publications include scholarly books, edited volumes, and numerous articles on the art of late medieval and Renaissance Italy, American art, the Dutch Baroque, and contemporary art. The author of a monograph on Maso di Banco and a catalogue of the art of the Duquesne Club in Pittsburgh, Wilkins also authored Donatello (1985) with Bonnie Bennett and coedited The Search for a Patron in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1996) with Rebecca Wilkins, The History of the Duquesne Club (1989) with Mark Brown and Lu Donnelly, The Illustrated Bartsch (Pre-Rembrandt Etchers) (1985) with Kahren Arbitman, and Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in the Italian Renaissance (2001) with Sheryl Reiss. He has produced several editions of the survey Art Past/Art Present with Bernie Schultz and Katheryn Linduff and was revising author of several editions of Frederick Hartt’s History of Italian Renaissance Art. He is now completing a study of New Hampshire public libraries with Ann Thomas Wilkins.
Wilkins’s former students are professors, department chairs, deans, and museum professionals. They write with eloquence of how his teaching has inspired them and transformed their lives. One says, “To each of us individually, David Wilkins has given not only knowledge but also an enduring passion for this most wonderful discipline which speaks to the divine nature of human creativity. He gave each of us a standard and a sense of self-honesty by which to measure ourselves…. Thousands of students, literally, around our world have been enlightened by his clear and penetrating insights into art history and the meaning and relevance of art to our lives.” Former students speak of his energy and creativity in teaching and his outstanding mentorship, which continued as they became colleagues. They describe his high standards, his passionate, enthusiastic lecture style, his openness, accessibility, and fairness. He was, they say, a compassionate, inspirational advisor who always had time for students past and present, “a creative whirlwind.” “Because he is naturally open and approachable,” his classes “are relaxed and encourage the free flow of ideas.” A former student describes him in the classroom: “The clarity of his message, the engaging style of his delivery, but most of all the sense that he deeply cared for each student came across at every lecture…. He will be forever in my mind a role model not only as a teacher but also as a person who relates to people in the most honest and caring way.” Wilkins is a beloved teacher whose dedication to generations of students has made a tremendous difference to our discipline and to the teaching profession.
Committee: Dorothy Johnson, University of Iowa, chair; Roger Crum, University of Dayton; Dale Kinney, Bryn Mawr College; David Rosand, Columbia University; and Martha Ward, University of Chicago.
