author
Clarence Ward
1884–1973
A longtime Oberlin professor and museum leader, this art historian helped shape one of the country's notable college art museums while also designing part of its home. His career joined scholarship, architecture, and public art in a way that still shows at Oberlin today.
2 Audiobooks
The Mentor: Beautiful Buildings of the World, Serial no. 33
by Clarence Ward
Mediaeval Church Vaulting
by Clarence Ward
About the author
Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1884, Clarence Ward became an art historian, architect, and museum director whose career was closely tied to Oberlin College. He taught the history and appreciation of art there and went on to play a central role in building the college's visual arts presence.
Ward was the founding director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, serving from 1917 into the mid-20th century, and he was also known as a professor of art history at Oberlin. Sources from Oberlin and the Dictionary of Art Historians describe him as both a scholar and an architect, with special interests in areas such as medieval European art and architecture.
His legacy at Oberlin is unusually concrete: he designed the 1937 Ward wing of the Allen Memorial Art Building, and the college later named the Clarence Ward Art Building and the Clarence Ward Art Library in his honor. He died in 1973, remembered not only for teaching and writing, but for helping create the spaces where students could encounter art firsthand.