BA (College of William and Mary, Virginia), MA (New York University), MA (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Peter Trippi is an Honorary Visiting Fellow in the Department of the History of Art. Based in New York City, Peter Trippi is an arts professional with extensive experience inmuseums, independent curating, fundraising, art journalism, and editing (both scholarly andgeneral).
As Director of the Dahesh Museum of Art (New York), he served as chief artistic and administrative officer of a 40-person staff and 30,000-square foot facility in midtown Manhattan with an annual operating budget of $4.5m. There he was responsible for daily operations and planning at America’s only institution devoted to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting nineteenth-century European academic art. In this role he served as senior spokesperson, lead fundraiser, and primary liaison to the Board of Trustees.
Previously he headed the fundraising department at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, working closely with Director Arnold L. Lehman while supervising 14 fundraising and support staff active in foundation and government grants, corporate sponsorships and municipal operating grants, trustee and planned giving, annual fund, membership, and special events.
Since 2006 Trippi has conducted a successful career as an art journalist and independent curator. He is Editor-in-Chief of Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine, the bi-monthly periodical serving North American collectors of representational painting, sculpture, drawings, and prints; it is sold primarily through subscription and at every Barnes and Noble store, and is distributed at many art fairs. In this role, Trippi plans, commissions, edits, writes, and approves all editorial content.
Trippi is a longstanding collaborator with Professor Liz Prettejohn on exhibition projects. They co-organized John William Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite, the first touring retrospective devoted to the British painter J W Waterhouse RA (1849–1917). Collaborating with Groninger Museum deputy director Patty Wageman and Robert Upstone (Tate Britain), they opened the exhibition opened at Groningen in Dec 2008 (143,000 visitors), then the Royal Academy of Arts, London (126,850 visitors) in Jun 2009, and finally the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Sep 2009 (87,664). Peter Trippi helped select all artworks, co-edited the 240-page catalogue and wrote its opening chapter, drafted wall text, presented lectures, and gave media interviews at all venues. He planned and appeared in a 52-minute documentary broadcast by AVRO in Netherlands, as well as 10 three-minute films about specific masterworks.
More recently, Trippi and Prettejohn co-organized Lawrence Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity, a touring retrospective of the Anglo-Dutch painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema RA (1836–1912) with unprecedented emphasis on his artistic/architectural collaborations with wife Laura and daughter Anna. Collaborating with Ivo Blom (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) and staff at the Fries Museum, they opened the exhibition in Oct 2016 at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden (the artist’s hometown, 158,000 visitors), then the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere (Vienna, 100,000 visitors), and finally Leighton House Museum (London, 32,000 visitors). Trippi and Prettejohn co-authored the exhibition concept proposal that won the Fries Museum a 500,000 euro grant from the Turing Foundation. Their co-edited 240-page catalogue (Prestel, Munich) contains Trippi’s essay on Tadema’s theatre designs. Trippi lectured at the Fries Museum and led a public gallery tour at the Belvedere. Trippi participated prominently in press events at all three venues and planned/appeared in the 30-minute documentary broadcast by Omrop Fryslan in the Netherlands. This project was a finalist in the 2017 Global Fine Art Awards program (Best Impressionist and Modern [1838–WWII] Solo Artist Exhibition).
From 2016 through 2018, Trippi acted as Curatorial Adviser to the Drents Museum (Netherlands) and Kunsthalle Emden (Germany) for their joint exhibition The American Dream: American Realism 1945–2017. Presented in two halves simultaneously, it drew 140,000 visitors to the Drents Museum and 50,000 to the Kunsthalle Emden. Trippi wrote an essay on figurative art for the accompanying catalogue (W Books), lectured at the Drents Museum, and participated in a 30-minute documentary broadcast by Drenthe TV in the Netherlands.
In Boston, Trippi is now acting as Guest Co-Curator of an exhibition highlighting approximately 50 American and European paintings from the collections of the nonprofit organization Historic New England. In 2020, he and staff curator Nancy Carlisle will mount this show at the Eustis Mansion in Milton, Massachusetts, and will write all essays and entries for the accompanying online catalogue.
Trippi is an associate brother of the Art Workers’ Guild (London) and a member of the Century Association (New York).
Peter Trippi’s primary area of research is British art (paintings, sculpture, watercolours, anddrawings) from c.1850 to c.1925. He is particularly interested in members of the Royal Academy of Arts who worked in the academic tradition in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. He is also interested in the history of collecting and museums, the evolution of artists’ studio-houses,and links between British artists and the Paris art world during this period. As Editor-in-Chief of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine, Trippi has developed deep expertise in contemporary realist art, especially in the US.
Author / Co-Editor
Essayist / Contributor