Alfred Moir Papers

Alfred Moir, art historian and collector, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1924. The son of a medical doctor, Moir served in the U.S. Army from 1943-1946 before attending Harvard University for his baccalaureate and graduate degrees. While pursuing his graduate studies, Moir spent time as a Fulbright fellow at the University of Rome and teaching at Newcomb College of Tulane University in New Orleans, eventually earning his doctorate from Harvard in 1953 with a thesis on the influence of Caravaggio in Italy.

Moir taught as an assistant professor at Tulane University until 1962, when he moved west to join the Department of Art and Art History at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) as a specialist in Italian baroque art. Moir spent the rest of his academic career at UCSB, serving as chair of the department from 1963 until 1969 and becoming an important figure in the growth of the department and the University Art Museum.

Moir began collecting art early in life, purchasing prints and drawings during trips to Europe in the late 1940s, and continuing to collect a variety of works through the 1950s and 1960s. In the early 1970s, Moir focused his collecting on Old Master drawings because quality acquisitions were available within his budget (particularly when his professional expertise enabled him to determine attributions for unidentified or misidentified works). The majority of drawings were purchased from private dealers in Rome, London, and New York, and later from Sotheby's and Christie's London auction houses.

Moir retired emeritus from UCSB in 1991 but stayed on to serve as an Adjunct Curator at the University Art Museum. In the following years he continued to publish his research and expand his personal art collection, while also serving as Consulting Curator at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Moir died in 2010 at the age of 86.

Significant publications related to this collection include Caravaggio and His Followers (1967), Caravaggio and his Copyists (1997), and Caravaggio (1982 and 1989). Moir also contributed to or edited other books and catalogs, including Master Drawings from the Collection of Alfred Moir published by the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2000.

Sources consulted:

Sorensen, Lee. "Moir, Alfred [Kummer]." Dictionary of Art Historians. 7 Aug. 2014. https://arthistorians.info/moira

Keller, Ulrich. "Alfred Moir: 1924-2010: Art Professor and Collector." Santa Barbara Independent. 22 Feb. 2011. http://www.independent.com/news/2011/feb/22/alfred-moir-1924-2010

Campbell, Richard J., and Jane Immler Satkowski, eds. Preface and Introduction to Master Drawings from the Collection of Alfred Moir. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.