Rickert, Margaret Josephine, 1888-

Epithet: art historian

British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue : Person : Description : ark:/81055/vdc_100000000496.0x000167

Margaret Rickert was the younger sister of medieval literature scholar and University of Chicago professor of English Martha Edith Rickert. Margaret Rickert was born in 1888 and graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa in 1910 and joined the photography department of the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922. She earned a master’s degree in art history from the University of Chicago in 1933. In 1938 she was awarded a Ph.D. from the University and joined the art history department. She worked as a code breaker for the U.S. Army Signal Corps in Washington, D.C. during World War II, returning to Chicago in 1944. In 1948 she published a memorial volume of her sister’s work, and in 1954 published Painting in Britain: The Middle Ages, a volume in Penguin’s Pelican History of Art series. Rickert was the only woman and only American author included in the original Pelican set. Rickert retired from the University in 1953 but returned to teaching from 1958 to 1960, publishing La miniature anglaise during that period. In 1965 the second edition of Painting in Britain was published. Rickert traveled to Italy to assist in the restoration of artworks after the Florence Flood of 1966, but suffered a stroke and was forced to return to the United States. She died in Grinnell, Iowa in 1973.

From the guide to the Rickert, Margaret. Papers, 1918-1967, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)