George Fisk Comfort
American art historian
George Fisk Comfort (September 20, 1833 – May 5, 1910) was a 19th-century American scholar and art exponent, and founder of both the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, and Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY.
Biography
Comfort was born in Berkshire, New York. He graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT with an A.B. degree (in classics) in 1857 and an A.M. degree in 1860. After completing his studies at Wesleyan, he traveled to Europe to study art history and archaeology where he stayed until 1865. In Berlin, Comfort was influenced by meetings and studies with the philosopher Friedrich Kaulbach, Carl Richard Lepsius (curator of Egyptology at the Berlin Museum), Gemäldegalerie director Gustav Waagen, Leopold von Ranke, among others. From 1865 to 1868, he served as professor of languages at Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania.
Comfort helped found the American Philological Association, whose first meeting he organized in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1869. In the same year, he was also a prime mover in New York City for the foundation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The following year Comfort published his Art Museums in America, a book outlining his vision for museums and museum education in the United States. His other publishing credits include a series of textbooks for the German language. His papers are held at Syracuse University and the Archives of American Art.
The public source identifies “George Fisk Comfort” as american art historian. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around George, Fisk and Comfort.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 27, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q5539296. VIAF identifies the subject as 96921962. The Library of Congress control number is no2009136985. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1833, 1910, 1857 and 1860.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Fisk Comfort” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.