Editors’ Note: This feature appears as it was published in the summer 2021 edition of UT Dallas Magazine. Titles or faculty members listed may have changed since that time.
Dr. Richard Brettell, 71, longtime professor of art and aesthetic studies and founding director of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at UT Dallas, passed away July 24, 2020.
“Rick was a remarkable scholar and educator and one of the leading voices in the world of art,” said UT Dallas President Richard C. Benson, who holds the Eugene McDermott Distinguished University Chair of Leadership. “His charismatic lectures have introduced thousands to great art as has his work to build the arts culture in Dallas. No one better epitomized a life well-lived than our brilliant, adventurous friend.”
Brettell was one of the world’s foremost authorities on impressionism and French painting from 1830 to 1930 and was revered in the Dallas arts community for his leadership, vision and knowledge. Elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and to the board of directors of the Hermitage Museum Foundation, he held the Margaret M. McDermott Distinguished Chair of Art and Aesthetic Studies and the Edith O’Donnell Distinguished University Chair. Before joining UT Dallas in 1998, he was the Eugene McDermott Director at the Dallas Museum of Art and the Searle Curator of European Painting at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Brettell was instrumental in developing the vision for an institute at UT Dallas that would be dedicated to the elevation of preserving and expanding the knowledge of art throughout the world. With a $17 million gift from arts patron Edith O’Donnell, the art institute was created in 2014.
Under Brettell’s leadership, the institute created a partnership with the Dallas Museum of Art, launched major international research partnerships with Nanjing University in China and the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy, and collaborated with partner institutions to present symposia, exhibitions and publications. In 2018 the O’Donnell Institute inaugurated a new master’s degree program in art history.
In 2017, with a generous gift from philanthropist Margaret McDermott, the University established the Richard Brettell Award in the Arts, a biennial honor recognizing established artists whose body of work demonstrates a lifetime of achievement in their field.
-Phil Roth
For more than 20 years, Dr. Richard Brettell animated UT Dallas with his vision for a community united and enriched through artistic creation, education and appreciation. Following his death, longtime friends and partners came together to spur the realization of Brettell’s dreams for the arts at the University.
Nearly 130 individual gifts have raised over $479,000 for the Rick Brettell Memorial Fund, which will name a reading room in Brettell’s honor in the soon-to-be constructed UT Dallas Athenaeum.
The Athenaeum project was Brettell’s magnum opus in his final years at UT Dallas. Envisioned as an on-campus museum and performing arts complex, the Athenaeum will house world-class collections of art, including several gifted to the University in recent years: the Barrett Collection, the Trammell and Margaret Crow Museum of Asian Art and the Carolyn Brown photography archives. Boasting classrooms and studios alongside traditional galleries, the Athenaeum will also be a meeting place where students, faculty and community members can collaborate across disciplines and cultures.
-Daniel Steele
