PhD in Art History at the
Graduate Center, CUNY.
I've written articles for American Artist, Art and
Auction, Print Quarterly, Journal of the Print World,
Print Collectors' Newsletter, The Tamarind Papers, Works on
Paper. I've served on the Print Committees of The Boston Museum of Fine
Arts, The Metropolitan Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Whitney
Museum. I served on the Editorial Board of Print Quarterly, and was
an Honorary Keeper of American Prints at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
University. I've served as President of the New York City Art Commission,
and Vice Chairman of the New York State Council on the Arts.
I've worked as a library assistant, researcher at a management
consulting firm, a Wall Street securities analyst, and writer for
Institutional Investor magazine and other financial publications. I've
had a host of part-time jobs, from answering telephones to stuffing flyers
in envelopes.
But my desire to write fiction never disappeared, and I've always
taken writing classes. I've completed two mystery novels, Restrike
and Fatal Impressions, set in the world of American prints, an area
in which my husband, Dave Williams, and I collected for more than 30 years.
In December 2008, most of our collection-about 5000 prints-were donated to
the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., but we are still recognized
as experts in the field. (For more about Dave and me as print collectors and
scholars, see
www.printresearchfoundation.org.) For
details, see my resume,
which follows.
Dave H. Williams
I was born in Beaumont, Texas, but my parents and I moved to Austin when I
was five. With my grandparents in Beaumont, I had two Texas "home" towns. I
attended Austin public schools through high school, except for one semester
at Beaumont High School. I was accepted into the Naval Officer Reserve Corps
as a "Regular," which entitled me to a generous college scholarship and
employment with the Navy for three summers, but an obligation to serve three
years' active duty. My college options were University of Texas and Rice,
and I chose to stay in Austin and become a Longhorn. I majored in Chemical
Engineering; the two most influential men in my life, my father and uncle,
were both engineers, and all I knew was to follow the pattern. The
Midshipmen summer cruises to Europe were eye-opening. I discovered art in
Paris and Amsterdam, and developed an interest in international travel.
After graduation from Texas and becoming an Ensign, USN, I accepted
an offer from Esso (now ExxonMobil) to work in their Baton Rouge refinery.
Part of the attraction of the job was a potential scholarship to graduate
business school. If I worked for Esso three years, I was eligible for a
Teagle scholarship. Teagle, one of the founders of Standard Oil, established
this private, no-strings-attached scholarship for any employee with three
years' employment to attend either Harvard or MIT business schools-with no
obligation to return to a Standard Oil affiliate after earning an MBA. All I
had to do was put in a few days work en route to my first Navy duty station,
then return to Esso for any period after my three years of military service,
and I would qualify. I did, and I did.
I served three years in the Navy, mostly at sea, aboard a ship that
was mapping the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in places to locate hydrophones
to track Soviet submarines. Long stretches away from civilization, but a
technically interesting occupation. The high school summers I'd worked with
my Dad's land surveying crews proved more valuable than my engineering
degree. Back to the Esso Baton Rouge refinery after discharge to earn the
scholarship, then to Boston for Harvard Business School and an MBA two years
later.
My finance professor steered me to Wall Street, and I joined a
small investment management firm as a securities analyst specializing in the
chemical and energy industries. For the next forty years I worked in some
aspect of securities and investment, the last twenty-one as CEO and Chairman
of Alliance Capital Management, a large pension fund and mutual fund
company.
My principal avocation has been collecting fine art prints, an
activity my wife (Ph. D. Art History) and I shared from the time of our
marriage in 1975. We established The Print Research Foundation, and the
story of our collecting and research and writing about prints can be found
on:
http://www.printresearchfoundation.org
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