Senior Curator at Large and Director of The Archives, The Walters Art Museum
William R. Johnston received his undergraduate training at the University of Toronto and, from there, went to the Institute of Fine Arts, New YorkUniversity, where he completed his M.A. in 1963. Before arriving at the Walters in 1966, Johnston was curator of the Robert Lehman collection and, subsequently, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. During his forty-three years at the Walters, Johnston has served as curator or co-curator for numerous exhibitions in the fields of 18th- and 19th-century paintings and decorative arts. He has also published on Japonisme, jewelry, carved ivories, the paintings of Alfred Jacob Miller, the landscapes of Alfred Sisley and the sculptures of Antoine-Louis Barye. In 1999, he was the author of William and Henry Walters: The Reticent Collectors, the first history of the museum’s founding family.
