Paul B. Moses

Paul Bell Moses (December 9, 1929 – March 24, 1966) was an American art historian, critic, and educator, specializing in 19th-century French art. One of the first African Americans to graduate from Haverford College in 1951, Moses taught at the University of Chicago from 1962 until his death.

Early life and education Moses was born on December 9, 1929, in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, to Paul S. Moses, a house painter, and Annie Moses, a laundry worker. He graduated from Lower Merion High School in 1947. He enrolled at Haverford College as one of its first African American students in 1948. He endured racism at Haverford, living at home as a freshman because white students refused to room with him. He developed a passion for art and art history and became a protégé of art collector and philanthropist Albert C. Barnes, founder of the Barnes Foundation, which awarded Moses a scholarship that enabled him to study abroad at the Sorbonne and the École du Louvre during his junior year. Barnes wrote letters of introduction to French curators and collectors on his protégé's behalf. Moses graduated magna cum laude from Haverford in 1951.

Career Moses served as a private in the United States Army from 1952 to 1954, serving as an army interpreter in France. After completing his military service, he taught briefly at the Barnes Foundation, Lincoln University and Oakwood Friends School before teaching at the American Overseas School of Rome from 1957 to 1959. While in Italy, Moses appeared as an extra in the 1959 film Ben-Hur, playing a Roman soldier opposite actor Charlton Heston. His time in France and Italy gained him fluency in French and Italian. Returning stateside in 1959, Moses completed a master's degree in fine arts at Harvard University and worked as a teaching fellow while pursuing his PhD. His dissertation focused on the etchings and monotypes of French Impressionist Edgar Degas.

Moses moved to Hyde Park, Chicago, and became an instructor in the Department of Art at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1962. He taught courses on 19th-century French prints and French Impressionism along with other classes in the humanities. He caused a stir when he refused to teach The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because of the novel's treatment of race, which he saw as diminishing to Black people. Liked and respected by his fellow faculty, Moses was promoted to the rank of assistant professor of Art and the Humanities in November 1964, becoming one of only a handful of Black faculty at the University of Chicago.

Legacy Moses's research influenced Jean Adhémar's and Françoise Cachin’s Degas: The Complete Etchings, Lithographs and Monotypes, published in French in 1973 and in English a year later. In 1983, Haverford College established the Paul B. Moses Scholarship Fund, which is awarded annually to students who embody "the character, talent and qualities of Paul Moses." In 2022, the University of Chicago Library hosted an exhibit on Moses as a "trailblazing art historian." His son, Michael Moses, along with University of Chicago graduate student Stephanie Strother, curated the exhibit at the Regenstein Library.