Charles Rufus Morey, 1877–1955

Abstract

CHARLES RUFUS MOREY, Professor Emeritus of Art and Archaeology at Princeton and one of the founders and strongest supporters for many years of the College Art Association of America, died in Princeton on August 28, 1955. He had a long and remarkable career. Internationally known and honored as the most eminent American historian of Early Christian and mediaeval art, he was also an administrator and organizer of far-reaching imagination, developing the Department at Princeton into one of the most distinguished in the country and playing the protagonist in scholarly and archaeological enterprises of international scope and fame. When he retired from Princeton, long experience and high reputation in Italy led to his appointment as Cultural Attaché at the American Embassy in Rome, a post which he held with distinction and in which he continued to render invaluable service to scholarship. Throughout his career, in whatever he undertook, he was inventive, bold, and magnanimous. And because of his example, his energy, and his creative vision, he did more to establish the history of art as a serious humanistic study in American colleges and universities than any scholar and teacher of his generation.