Obituary: Philadelphia Museum of Art Director Dies Suddenly

Anne d’Harnoncourt, the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a tireless advocate for art as a crucial component to that city’s identity, died suddenly Sunday night at her Philadelphia home after undergoing surgery last week, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer. She was 64.

“It’s a shock and it’s very sad. It’s unimaginable — the museum world without her,” said Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a longtime friend and colleague of Ms. d’Harnoncourt’s.

Ms. d’Harnoncourt first came to the Philadelphia museum in 1967 but left in 1969 to become assistant curator of 20th-century art at the Art Institute of Chicago. She returned to Philadelphia and became curator of 20th-century art there in 1972 and director in 1982. She was in the middle of overseeing a $590-million expansion and renovation of the museum when she died.

Among her accomplishments, Ms. d’Harnoncourt was credited with establishing Philadelphia’s modern concept of cultural tourism with a 1996 Cezanne retrospective, which drew nearly 800,000 viewers, the newspaper notes.