Alan Shestack

1938 - 2020

Shestack, Alan
Alan Shestack, a highly regarded scholar and connoisseur of Northern European prints and drawings of the Renaissance period, who led several US museums before serving as deputy director and chief curator at the National Gallery of Art, died at his home in Washington on April 14, 2020, at age 81.
Alan had multiple medical issues in recent years, according to his friend and executor, Mervin Richard, and there is no indication that his death was related to Covid-19.
Alan developed an early interest in prints as a student of Heinrich Schwarz, a professor at Wesleyan University and curator of the Davison Art Center, and deepened his studies as a graduate student at Harvard University. His distinguished museum career began in 1963 when he was awarded the David E. Finley Fellowship by the National Gallery of Art, which enabled him to travel in Europe for two years and to study at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. He became a museum curator of graphic art in 1965, responsible for the Gallery's Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection in Jenkintown, PA.
In 1967 and 1968 he was named associate curator and then curator of prints and drawings at Yale University Art Gallery, and from 1971 through 1985 he maintained a joint appointment there as director of the gallery and adjunct professor in the history of art department at the university. According to his longtime friend, Charles Talbot, "Alan preferred his life as curator of prints and drawings, but a career as museum director was thrust upon him as a consequence of his many exceptional talents." During his tenure at Yale, one of his many scholarly publications—"Hans Baldung Grien: Prints and Drawings," coauthored with James Marrow—received the prestigious George Wittenborn Award from the Art Libraries Society of North America. He became director of the Minneapolis Museum of Art in 1985 and served for two years before being appointed director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which he likened to "boarding a fast-moving express train."
In 1993 Alan returned, as many do, to the National Gallery of Art, assuming the role of deputy director and chief curator from that point until his retirement fifteen years later. His connections to the Gallery were long and deep, and he made lasting contributions to the growth and safekeeping of the collections while respectfully fostering the work of curators and program officers alike.
Throughout his career Alan mentored many aspiring curators who went on to important careers of their own. His mentoring role was especially critical in the early decades of his career when scholarship was often seen as incompatible with museum stewardship, when many who thought themselves "true scholars" were hesitant to trade academia for a museum career. The idea that scholarship would be nurtured, even furthered, in a museum setting was not the given it is today. Alan was held up as a fine yet rare example of a museum administrator who was also a productive scholar.
For all his achievements as a consummate scholar and museum leader, Alan had an entertainer's talent for uncanny vocal impersonations, which made him a favorite raconteur among friends and colleagues. His natural voice, a rich baritone, also served him well whether as a lecturer in a large museum auditorium or as a DJ in the cozily intimate space of an upstate New York radio station, where long ago he met one of his enduring loves, country music. What endures for us: his generosity, his kindness, that twinkle in his eye.
Alan was born in New York City on June 23, 1938, son of David Shestack and Sylvia P. (Saffran) Shestack, and grew up in Rochester, NY. (For his revealing paean to Brighton High School in Rochester, see https://vimeo.com/42019175). He received a BA from Wesleyan University (1961), an MA from Harvard University (1963), and an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Wesleyan University (1978).
He is predeceased by his adored wife of forty-nine years, Nancy Jane Shestack (2016), and by his brother Melvin (2005). He is survived by his brother's wife, Jessie Shestack, of New York, NY; by his foster daughter Lisa Yi Lu Feng, her husband Ningguo Feng, and children Alexandra and Christopher of Cupertino, CA; and by two nieces, Victoria Shestack Aronoff and children Brad and Solomon of Maplewood, NJ, and Lisa Shestack and children Zachary and Hannah of Franklin, MA.
A memorial service will be held at a later date.