Turner, Evan H.

Evan H. Turner (born 1927), an art historian and scholar, was the Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) from 1964 to 1978, leading the Museum through a period of significant growth and transformation. He created new art departments for American and 20th Century Art, and the innovative Department of Urban Outreach (DUO) to promote art across the City of Philadelphia. These progressive activities were matched by a groundbreaking exhibition in 1973, the Marcel Duchamp retrospective, which drew upon significant scholarship and assembled virtually the entire oeuvre of one of the most important artists represented in the Museum. In 1975, Turner led the Museum in a major construction project to install a new climate control system in the building, and in 1976, he helped plan the United States’ Bicentennial and the PMA’s Centennial celebrations.

Turner was born in 1927 in Orono, Maine. He attended Harvard University, where he received his BA (1949), MA (1950) and PhD (1954) in art history. From 1950 to 1951, he managed the Fogg Museum’s docent program, and from 1951 to 1952, completed a Harvard teaching fellowship. From 1953 to 1956, Turner worked as a lecturer and research assistant at the Frick Collection in New York City. He was appointed general curator at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in 1955, where he remained until 1959, when he was hired as the Director of the Montreal Museum of Art. He stayed there until 1964, when he was brought on as director of PMA.

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