Schenck, Edgar Craig, 1909-1959

Edgar Craig Schenck became director of the Albright Art Gallery on September 1, 1949. He left office July 1, 1955. His five-year term as art director was a transitional period between the directorships of his predecessors, who struggled to achieve and maintain regional and national standards of excellence, and that of his successor, Gordon M. Smith, under whose leadership the Gallery achieved international recognition. Schenck was born in Hot Springs, North Carolina in 1909. He earned his MFA from Princeton University in 1934. From 1935 to 1947 he directed the Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts, moving from there to Smith College Museum of Art until 1949. He resigned from the Albright to direct the Brooklyn Museum. His expertise was in "...Oriental and Polynesian arts and western painting and [he] contributed articles to the American Journal of Archeology, the Art Bulletin and the College Art Journal as well as to the publications of the various museums with which he was connected" (Adelyn D. Breeskin, "Edgar C. Schenck 1910-1959," College Art Journal, vol. 19, no. 3 [Spring, 1960], pp. 256). Schenck died of a heart attack in Istanbul, Turkey, November 16, 1959 while returning from a lecture in Pakistan for the United States Information Agency.