MICHAEL G. SUNDELL

SUNDELL--Michael Gordon, Professor Emeritus of Humanities at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences and former President of Yaddo, died in his sleep on September 7, 2010. In addition to his wife Nina, he is survived by his sister, Esther Lichti of Lubbock, TX; his children Marianne, of Wendell, Massachusetts, and David and Margaret, both of New York City; as well as his son-in-law Reinaldo Laddaga, and his grandchildren Julia and Lillian Sundell-Thomas and Tomas Laddaga. Sundell was born in New York City on April 1, 1934. The first member of his family to earn a university degree, he received a B.A. from Hamilton College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from Yale University. He met his wife, Nina Castelli Sundell, in Paris while a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Montpelier. A distinguished scholar and administrator in academia and the arts, Sundell taught English literature at Hamilton College, Queens College CUNY, Case Western Reserve, and George Mason University. He served as the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Science, and was President of the artist's retreat, Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, a position he held from 1992 until his retirement in 2000. Sundell oversaw the transfer of Yaddo's archives to the New York Public Library. At George Mason, he supervised the preservation and indexing of the archives of the Federal Theater Project of the WPA, which were on deposit from the Library of Congress. He wrote and lectured about nineteenth-century English literature, twentieth-century American art, the history of photography, and relations among public policy, patronage, and the arts. Mosaics in the Eternal City--his book about late antique and medieval mosaics in Rome and the fruit of research conducted as a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome --was published in 2007. In lieu of sending flowers, donations may be made in his name to the American Academy in Rome, the Yaddo Garden Association, the New York Public Library, or the New York University Cancer Institute.