Eleanor Sayre

Eleanor Axson Sayre (March 26, 1916 – May 12, 2001) was an American curator, art historian, and a specialist on the works of Goya. She was the first woman to serve as departmental curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Working as curator of prints and drawings, she collected Goya's etchings from museums around the world to catalogue and create international exhibits. She was awarded a knighthood with the Lazo de Dama in the Order of Isabella the Catholic by Spain in 1975 and the Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts in 1991. Early life Eleanor Axson Sayre was born on March 26, 1916, at Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Jessie Woodrow (née Wilson) and Francis Bowes Sayre, Sr. She was the granddaughter of President Woodrow Wilson, who served as her godfather at her christening on 11 November 1916 at St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Her mother was active with the YWCA and women's rights organizations, while her father was a law professor at Harvard Law School and later the Assistant Secretary of State, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a diplomat. When she was three years old, the family relocated from Williamstown to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then in 1923, moved to Siam, where Sayre's father worked as an advisor to the Siamese government, until 1929, when they returned to Cambridge. She studied art at Bryn Mawr College, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1938. While looking for a summer job, after graduation, Sayre interviewed with Paul J. Sachs at Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum and was hired to work in the print department. Finding that she enjoyed working with prints, Sayer enrolled in graduate courses at Harvard, where she studied for two years under Sachs. She also developed an interest in Goya when Philip Hofer, founder of Harvard's department of printing and graphic arts suggested she might find the artist interesting. Career Sayre began her career at the Yale University Art Gallery and in 1942 continued her career with a brief post at the Lyman Allyn Museum in New London, Connecticut. That same year, she was hired as an assistant curator in the education department and worked at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in Providence. In 1945, she joined the staff of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, working under Henry Rossiter.