Joseph Breck

Joseph Breck was known throughout this country, and perhaps especially in Europe, as an authority on European art from the Byzantine period onward. Although he never had opportunity to write complete books embodying his learning in artistic history, his occasional articles achieved very high repute. For a time he had hesitated between painting as a life career, or study of the history of art. Choosing the second of these alternatives, he studied in Italy on a fellowship of Harvard University; then, returning to America for graduate work, he was speedily invited by that watchful observer of new talent, our own late colleague Edward Robinson, to join the staff of the Metropolitan Museum. During twenty-one years, with three years’ intermission as successful inaugurator of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Breck applied himself to the Department of Decorative Arts in our own institution. The Museum’s tribute to his services describes him as broadly learned, vitally interested in all of the Museum’s activities, endowed with an amazing memory and great quickness of thought, a skilled draftsman knowing much of architecture, and with activities as collector for the Museum covering a wider field than those of any of his associates. It was through Breck that the extraordinary collection of Gothic sculptures, at the Cloisters on Fort Washington Avenue, were installed.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1934 Century Association Yearbook