Douglas MacAgy

Douglas Guernsey MacAgy (June 8, 1913 – September 6, 1973) Canadian-born American curator, museum director, art historian, author, and academic administrator. He served as the director of the California School of Fine Arts (later known as San Francisco Art Institute) in San Francisco from 1945 to 1950.

Early life and education Douglas G. MacAgy was born in 1913, in Winnipeg. He attended the University of Toronto, the Barnes Foundation, the Courtauld Institute of Art of the University of London, the University of Pennsylvania, the Cleveland School of Art (now Cleveland Institute of Art) and Case Western Reserve University.

His first marriage was in 1941 to art historian Jermayne Noble for a number of years, and ended in divorce. MacAgy was remarried in 1955 to Elizabeth Tillett (1930–1980).

Career In 1941, he worked as an assistant curator to Grace Morley, who was the director of the San Francisco Museum of Art (now San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). He was later promoted to curator.

MacAgy was a special consultant to the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; and also worked as director of research for an art dealer in New York City, Wildenstein & Company.

MacAgy served as the director of the Dallas Museum of Contemporary Arts (now merged to form the Dallas Museum of Art) from 1959 to 1963. In 1972, he was selected as the curator of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

Death MacAgy died at age 60 on September 6, 1973, at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., after suffering from a heart attack a month earlier.

Publications