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Jonathan Fairbanks

2003 Award of Distinction Recipient

Scholar, Educa­tor, Curator

Mr. Fair­banks’ award was presented June 14, 2003 by his colleague Gerald W. R. Ward, Kather­ine Lane Weems Senior Curator of Deco­ra­tive Arts and Sculp­ture, MFA Boston.

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Jonathan Fair­banks, Editor at Large of The Cata­logue of Antiques and Fine Art, holds an M.A. from the Univer­sity of Delaware and the Winterthur Museum, and an M.F.A. from the Univer­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia. He has taught at Welles­ley College, Boston Univer­sity, and Harvard Univer­sity. Among his honors and awards is the Robert G. Lord Award for Excel­lence in Histor­i­cal Studies, the Deco­ra­tive Arts Soci­ety’s Charles F. Mont­gomery Award, and the Society of Arts and Crafts’ Life­time Achievement Award.

While curator at the MFA Boston from l970 to l999, he insti­tuted the now legendary program in the 1970s, and oversaw the seminal New Amer­i­can Furni­ture exhi­bi­tion that opened at the museum in l989. In addi­tion to his work as an antiques special­ist, Mr. Fair­banks is an accom­plished painter of murals, land­scapes, portraits, and miniatures.