Randall, Richard H.

Director of Walters Art Gallery (1965-1980).

Art historian. Born in 1926, died, 1997.

Richard Harding Randall, Jr. received his M.A. in Fine Arts from Harvard University in 1951. He served as a curator at the Cloisters, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Walters Art Gallery before, in 1965, being appointed director of the Walters. As a scholar, he is best known for his work with medieval carvings, arms and armor, and European and American Decorative Arts.

Born in 1926 in Baltimore, Randall completed his secondary education at Pomfret (Conn.) School and was sent almost immediately thereafter to serve in Europe during World War II. While there, he was exposed for the first time to the great works of Western art, and his career path was established. Randall graduated from Princeton University with a B.A. in architecture in 1950. He earned his M.A. in Fine Arts from Harvard University one year later. In 1953, he was named the Assistant Curator of Medieval Art at the Cloisters and became the Associate Curator three years later. From 1959 to 1964, he was the Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The majority of his professional career, however, was spent at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, known as the Walters Art Gallery until 2000. After nine months in the position of Assistant Director, he became Director in January of 1965 and remained in that position until September of 1981. He remained at the Walters Museum for three more years as the Curator of Medieval Art, Arms and Armor, the department in which he had worked as a special cataloger in the summers of 1950 and 1951. He retired in 1984 but continued to produce scholarly work up until his death in 1997. Randall is best known for his work with medieval ivory carvings, arms and armor, and European and American Decorative Arts. He wrote extensively, publishing over 100 articles and books on topics ranging from the furniture of H.H. Richardson to medieval ivory crosses to Chinese porcelains.