A Scholar's Passion: The William H. Forsyth Papers at The Cloisters

Michael Carter
February 25, 2015

William H Forsyth

William Forsyth in the newly completed tower offices of The Cloisters, 1938. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

«The Cloisters Library and Archives is pleased to announce that it has completed processing the papers of one of the Museum's founding figures, curator William H. Forsyth (1907–2003). The finding aid can be found on the Digital Collections site

Forsyth's lifelong affiliation with the Met began in 1930 as a research volunteer working with the Museum's medieval collections, and his rise to a full curatorial position coincided with the development of plans for The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park and its opening in 1938. Over the years, Forsyth would work closely with James J. Rorimer, director of the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, on the installation of the collections as well as the acquisition of new objects, and notably conducted some important groundwork on the procurement of our treasured Unicorn Tapestries.

Pieta
Entombment figures, Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Chaource, Aube, France. Forsyth Papers Series II, Box 7. The Cloisters Archive

The contents of The Cloisters' Forsyth papers, however, focus primarily on the scholarly work he conducted for over sixty years on French Gothic sculpture. During this time, he produced important monographs on depictions of the entombment of Christ, the Pietà, and numerous studies of the Virgin and Child, one of which was published in a 1986 issue of the the Metropolitan Museum Journal. Of central interest in the collection are research notes for an unfinished book on this last topic, which was to have been the third part of a monographic series. For each of the three portions of this intended French sculpture trilogy, Forsyth created binders containing photographs and meticulous notes on each object, and he kept travel journals while scouring small, obscure chapels and monasteries throughout Europe, focusing especially on the regional variations he observed in the artworks he studied.

Loire Pieta

Pietàs, Indre et Loire, research journal. Forsyth Papers Series III, Box 6. The Cloisters Archives

Forsyth Papers

Bessy, Saint Michel, research card. Forsyth Papers Series III, Box 8. The Cloisters Archives

Correspondence, research notes and drafts of numerous articles and small publications, annotated items from his personal library, and a set of antique stone-cutting tools owned by Forsyth round out the collection. The availability of these papers will be of use to current and future scholars of medieval sculpture, who will be able to glean from Forsyth's efforts and build on his copious knowledge of a body of art to which he devoted his life.

The Forsyth papers, as well as other collections in The Cloisters Archives, are open for research by appointment.

Michael Carter

Michael Carter is the associate Museum librarian at The Met Cloisters.