Gary Tinterow

Gary Tinterow OAL (born 1953) is an American art historian and curator. A specialist on 19th-century French art, Tinterow is currently Director and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Career Born in Louisville, but raised in Houston, Tinterow graduated from Bellaire High School in 1972. His mother once took Tinterow to visit Houston's most famous art patron, Dominique de Menil. "I remember the trailers before there was the [Menil] museum; remember seeing a Magritte surrealist exhibition that blew my mind; remember being fascinated by an exhibition of Cubist collages"

He received a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from Brandeis University in 1976. His senior honors thesis was on Jewish architecture and was titled "Post-World War II Synagogue Architecture in America." Tinterow received a Master of Arts in Art History from Harvard University in 1983.

At Harvard's Fogg Art Museum, Tinterow curated an important exhibition of Picasso's works on paper in 1981, the first exclusive showing of this material in the U.S. since Alfred Stieglitz's historic show of 1911 in New York City. This exhibition, which featured over 100 drawings and watercolors, drew from over 50 museums and private collections. One quarter of the works had never been publicly exhibited before. At the time of this exhibition, Tinterow stated: "for Picasso, line was supreme," and "there is no clear stylistic line separating Picasso's drawings and paintings."

At the Metropolitan, Tinterow mounted important exhibitions, including Degas (1988), Origins of Impressionism (1994), Francis Bacon (2009), Manet/Velazquez (2003), and Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2010). His acquisitions at the Metropolitan included major paintings by Géricault, Delacroix, Degas, van Gogh, and Seurat.

The major collections donated to the Metropolitan during Tinterow's tenure include two gifts valued at more than a billion dollars each. The Walter H. Annenberg collection of more than 50 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings was the largest such gift in many decades to the Metropolitan. The Cubist collection put together by Leonard E. Lauder focused on four key artists: Picasso, Braque, Gris, and Leger, and transformed the museum's collection.

In 2012, Tinterow, who had been a candidate for director of the Metropolitan as well as the Frick museums, returned to his native Texas. He was named Director and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, following the death of the preceding, long-serving director, Peter Marzio. Tinterow described Houston as a cultural hub “rivaling Boston and Philadelphia.” He added: “It’s very much a community.”

The first important exhibition Tinterow brought to the MFAH was Portrait of Spain: Masterpieces from the Prado, which had 100 paintings from Spain's leading museum. He said of this exhibition: "I can’t think of another occasion in the U.S., nor anywhere else for that matter, when the Prado lent this many grand paintings to a single show.” The Prado exhibition was followed by black-and-white paintings by Picasso, and Islamic art from Kuwait's al-Sabah Collection. In 1986, King Juan Carlos I of Spain named Tinterow an Oficial of the Orden del Merito Civill; and in 2015 King Felipe VI made Tinterow an Oficial of the Orden de Isabel la Catolica.

Personal life Tinterow is married to Christopher Gardner, an antiquarian. Tinterow is also a first cousin once removed of Ann Richards, former Governor of Texas, through his mother's side.