JAMES MCCREDIE

McCREDIE--James Robert.

The trustees, faculty, staff, students, and alumni of the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University mourn the loss of our former director, mentor, and friend James Robert McCredie who died in Princeton, New Jersey on July 15. Born in 1935, McCredie graduated, summa cum laude, with a BA in History and Literature from Harvard University in 1958. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1963 and began his tenure at the Institute that year. After serving as the Institute's deputy director for two years from 1967 to 1969, he left to become director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. McCredie returned to the Institute in 1978, becoming director in 1983, a position he held until his retirement in 2002. In 1988, he was named Sherman Fairchild Professor of Fine Arts. In 1962, McCredie began an association with the island of Samothrace in the northern Aegean that would last the rest of his life. Over the subsequent 50 years of excavation and research, he transformed scholars' understanding of Hellenistic architecture and eventually became an honorary citizen of Samothrace. As a field archaeologist, he taught hundreds of students who thrived under his inspiring direction and mentoring. The Institute extends its deepest sympathy to his wife, Marian, and his son, Miles William McCredie, and daughter, Meredeth McCredie Winter, and son-in-law, Mark Jay Winter, and two grandchildren. A memorial will be organized at the Institute later in the fall.