Grace Morley

Grace Louise McCann Morley (November 3, 1900 – January 8, 1985) was a museologist of global influence. She was the first director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (formerly the San Francisco Museum of Art) and held the position for 23 years starting in 1935. In an interview with Thomas Tibbs, she is credited with being a major force in encouraging young American artists. The government of India awarded her the Padma Bhushan, its third highest civilian award, in 1982. Education Morley studied French literature at University of California, Berkeley, receiving a master's degree in 1923, and earned a doctorate in art and literature from the University of Paris in 1926. In 1929 she attended a Harvard University summer session in art history connected with the Fogg Art Museum. Career From 1927 to 1930 she taught advanced French at Goucher College. Her experience at Harvard led to her hiring as general curator at the Cincinnati Museum of Art in 1930. In late 1934 she was hired as the curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, slated to open in early 1935. Eventually her title changed to director. In her first years at the museum, she organized exhibitions dedicated to Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Henri Matisse. By the 1940s and '50s she was holding 100 shows per year, many from the New York MoMA and Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery in Manhattan. She also established the first gallery tours for any museum in the West as well as art history courses, a public art library, an art rental gallery, the first film program at an American museum—"Art in Cinema"—, and the television series Art in Your Life. Time magazine wrote about her in her twentieth year with the museum, and again on her resignation.