Charles Tracy Atkinson

Charles Tracy Atkinson, director emeritus of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, died April 8, 2016 in Mequon Wisconsin. He was 87.

Mr. Atkinson began his career in 1955 as a curatorial assistant at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo New York, during the heyday of the New York School. He recalled that as the most junior member of the curatorial staff and having a car, he was deputized to take visiting artists, including Franz Kline, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still, to see Buffalo's best known sight: Niagara Falls. He subsequently became assistant and then acting director at the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts (now the Columbus Museum of Art), and, in 1962 became director of the Milwaukee Art Center (now the Milwaukee Art Museum). While in Milwaukee, he was responsible for a major expansion of the galleries and many notable acquisitions, including Courbet's portrait of his friend, Clément Laurier, and Fragonard's La Bergère, as well as exhibitions bringing the latest in contemporary art to Milwaukee. It was during Mr. Atkinson's tenure that the Bradley wing was built to house Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley's important collection of modern and contemporary art. He organized the first museum exhibition in the United States of the work of the Colombian artist Fernando Botero and was a pioneer in the collection of Caribbean art.

In 1977 Mr. Atkinson was named director of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford Connecticut. He was successful in restoring the finances of the museum, refurbishing the galleries, reinstating a program of major travelling and Atheneum-organized exhibitions, and widening the appeal of the museum to a broader audience in Hartford. He firmly believed that art museums could and should serve all of the communities of a city. One of his proudest achievements was securing the remarkable collection of African-American art and artifacts that became the nucleus of the Amistad Foundation (now the Amistad Center for Art and Culture), which he helped establish at the Atheneum He retired from the Atheneum in 1988.

Mr. Atkinson was born on August 10, 1928 in Middletown, Ohio. He graduated from the Ohio State University and received his master's degree in art history from the University of Pennsylvania. He is survived by his wife, Marguerite, her children, Peter McCarthy, Karen Mihopulos and Kevin McCarthy, their children, Elizabeth, Marguerite, Casey, Brian, Kevin, Caitlin, Liam, Kathleen and Brennan and their grandchildren, and by his daughter Adrienne Atkinson and her children Miranda Dobbs and Geoffrey Dobbs. He was preceded in death by his daughter Aimee Atkinson and son Ethan Atkinson.