In Memoriam

John Ittmann, former Kathy and Ted Fernberger Curator of Prints at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, died on May 27, 2023, at the age of 81. To say that John was passionate about prints does not quite describe his commitment to the field and his obsession with works on paper. Despite the fact that John had been ill for some time, not to mention that he had officially retired from the museum during the height of the pandemic on June 30, 2020, he continued to come into the office until about two and a half months prior to his death. After he retired, he was keen to work on a Philadelphia Museum of Art project about prints and politics in the USA in the 1930s, helping to build the exhibition checklist and scouring stock lists of dealers from whom he would buy prints, which he immediately donated to the museum in order to fill gaps in the collection—a collection to which he happily devoted 30 years of his life.

By the time John graduated as an art history major at the University of Kansas in 1971, he had spent five summers as an intern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he worked with all manner of prints, organizing exhibitions on ornament prints and mezzotints while cataloguing and rummaging through the best sandbox a burgeoning print curator could hope for. Then, from Kansas and New York City, John made his way to the Midwest, where he served as Curator of Prints at the Minneapolis Institute of Art from 1972 until 1988. At the Minneapolis Institute of Art, he distinguished himself with an extraordinary roster of acquisitions and, in 1984, co-produced the groundbreaking Regency to Empire: French Printmaking, 1715–1814.

When John left the Minneapolis Institute of Art, he took a swing at becoming a print dealer, building stock to sell to Americans by visiting auctions and dealers in Europe. Much to everyone’s surprise (even today), John had a stand at the International Fine Print Dealers Association Print Fair in New York, where he was spotted by Innis Shoemaker, then head of the Philadelphia Museum of Art print department. Innis’s eventual mission was to reel John back into curatorial work. Because he was considered a whiz at using computers to catalogue collections, John was invited to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1990 as the Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Curator. He was tasked with cataloguing the 43,000 old master European prints purchased by the museum in 1985 from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Working with a succession of specialist cataloguers, it took John sixteen years to get through the collection, building a database that included every name that appears on each print, as well as an evaluation of condition and quality of impression. Well before John completed this project, he was appointed Curator of Prints in 1992. With his endless curiosity, he mined the entire collection, made countless discoveries, and conjured a series of groundbreaking exhibitions and catalogues that have been universally acclaimed as scholarly masterpieces and essential reference books. What was truly remarkable about John’s commitment to research and scholarship was the extraordinary range of topics he completely mastered during his tenure at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

John’s catalogue raisonné Dox Thrash: An African American Master Printmaker Rediscovered (2002) was a revelation about an artist who is now considered one of the important printmakers of the earlier twentieth century. As contributing editor of Mexico and Modern Printmaking: A Revolution in the Graphic Arts, 1920 to 1950 (2006), John masterminded a scholarly intervention that dispelled old assumptions about Mexican printmaking, radically reconfiguring the way we understand the prints of the period and the fluid exchange of ideas between artists in the USA and Mexico. No less innovative was his The Enchanted World of German Romantic Prints, 1770–1850 (2017). Work on the topic began shortly after he arrived at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, when he rifled through boxes containing hundreds of examples of German prints, most of which had been largely forgotten by the print world in the USA and Europe. With his exhibition in 1992, Art and Nature: German Printmaking, 1750–1850, he launched a wholesale reevaluation of the topic and with the catalogue of 2017 he, yet again, produced a reference book that revised our appreciation of a significant historical period. In recognition of his contributions to the print field, John has the enviable distinction of having received twice the International Fine Print Dealers Association Annual Book Award: the first time for his groundbreaking Mexico and Modern Printmaking, and the second for The Enchanted World.

There is no doubt, John’s commitment to the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection and his devotion to its care elevated the profile of the museum’s Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. So too did his ecumenical approach to developing diverse areas of the collection. Very few print curators have the capacity and easy confidence to get really excited about and successfully acquire both the sine qua non of print collecting Rembrandt’s The Three Crosses and the monumental intaglio Beer Garden by the radical punk artist Nicole Eisenman.

For the better part of three decades, John had devoted himself to the department’s long-established fellowship program that, because of him, has been referred to as a boot camp for curators. His generosity as mentor was matched by exacting standards, all of which accounted for the program’s success. His careful supervision of exhibitions planned by fellows led to several outstanding shows and launched the careers of curators who now populate print rooms throughout the country. And with John’s oversight, fellows were also tasked with cataloguing prints, an essential activity that brought to light the richness of the museum’s collection.

It remains to say that John was not only a gifted curator, but also a generous soul, mentor, and advisor who offered his assistance to colleagues and supporters at every turn. Those with the good fortune to have called him a friend know that his obsession for prints was matched by his passion for the people who love art. And those same people cherish him because of that obsession and passion. The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the field as a whole were fortunate to have had him for so long.

This remembrance first appeared in Print Quarterly 40, no. 4 (2023): 87–88 and is reproduced with permission.