Collecting Italian Renaissance and Later Ceramics at the DIA from William Valentiner to Today

Abstract

The first maiolica pieces were purchased for the museum by Ralph Harman Booth, president of both the City of Detroit Arts Commission and the museum's Board of Trustees, on a trip to Berlin in the summer of 192 1, probably in consultation with Wilhelm Bode, a noted German museum director, art expert, and critic, and his protégé Valentiner. Born in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1880, Valentiner received a graduate degree in the history of art from the University of Heidelberg, where he came to the attention of Bode, who hired him in 1906 as his personal assistant at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. Both men were knowledgeable about Italian ceramics.