Walter Liedtke Dies In Metro-North Crash

Thu
12
Feb
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Walter Liedtke Dies In Metro-North Crash

Former Livingston resident Walter Liedtke, 69, of Bedford Hills, New York, died on Tuesday, February 3. He was one of six victims of the crash of a Metro-North commuter train inValhalla, New York. His wife, Nancy. is his only immediate survivor. A member of Livingston High School's class of 1963, Mr. Liedtke served as curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for the past 35 years. He was a renowned scholar on the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer and the Delft School, a category of mid-17th century Dutch art. Mr. Liedtke earned a bachelor of arts degree from Rutgers University in New Brunswick in 1967. In 1969, he received his master of arts degree from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and in 1974 he earned a doctorate from the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London in England. Prior to his position at the museum, he taught for four years, from 1975to 1979, at Ohio State University. He  then received a Mellon Fellowship to study at the Met and continued on staff at the museum for more than three decades. His exhibitions included “Rembrandt/ Not Rembrandt” (1995-1996); “Vermeer and the Delft School” (2001); and “The Age of Rembrandt” (2007), an exhibition of all the museum's Dutch paintings that drew more than 500,000 visitors. In addition to his work as a curator, Mr. Liedtke wrote dozens of scholarly essays and six books, including the first comprehensive two-volume catalog of Dutch paintings from the Met’s collection. More than 300,000 visitors came to see his most recent exhibition, “Vermeer’s Masterpiece The Milkmaid” (2009), which featured a special loan of one of the artist’s most famous paintings. In 2007, Mr. Liedtke was named Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. He was named Knight in the Order of Leopold by King Albert II of Belgium in 1993. ...

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