Myra Orth

Myra Orth (born Myra Dickman: 4 October 1934 - 30 November 2002) was an American art historian. After graduating from Cornell University she married and relocated with her husband to Europe where for much of the time she lived - apart from three years in Australia and Japan - between 1956 and 1982, while remaining fully networked with academic peers in the United States. Her post-graduate degrees were acquired in part "by correspondence"; while the renaissance manuscript illuminations, on which she became a leading international authority, were located for the most part in western Europe, and particularly in Paris where she worked frequently, and lived between 1976 and 1982. Her published contributions to scholarship appeared primarily in the United States, France and England.

Life and works Myra Whitney Dickman was born in the United States of America. Her father was a member of New York's Grolier Club with a passionate appreciation of "print culture" which he shared with his daughter. Her mother is described as a social worker and "strong feminist". Her MA (1964) and PhD (1976) were both supervised by Colin Eisler at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. The MA dissertation was titled "Progressive Tendencies in French Manuscript Illuminations (1515-1530)" and the doctoral work concerned "Godefroy le Batave and the 1520s Hours Workshop".

In 1956 the Orths moved to Europe where they lived briefly in France and then Germany before returning to Brooklyn where Myra enrolled at New York University and embarked on her postgraduate studies. After she received her MA in 1964, the couple lived successively in Belgium (1965-1969), Australia (1970–72) Japan (1972) and England (1972-75) before settling more permanently in Paris in 1976.

In 1976, as her children entered their teenage years, Myra Orth accepted a teaching position at the (subsequently renamed) "American College" in Paris. Although she was recruited to teach "Renaissance Art History", she quickly widened the scope of her courses to embrace art more generally and architecture in France and England up to and including the eighteenth century.