Anne d'Harnoncourt, Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Dies Unexpectedly at 64

PHILADELPHIA—Anne d'Harnoncourt, the director and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, died unexpectedly last night of natural causes at her home in Philadephia. She was 64.

D'Harnoncourt served as the museum's curator of 20th-century art from 1972 until 1982, when she became the director. In 1997, she was also appointed CEO. During her tenure, she oversaw the transformation of the museum, with the reinstallation of the European collection in more than 90 galleries between 1992 and 1995 and the renovation of 20 modern and contemporary art galleries in 2000. Also in 2000, the museum acquired the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, a neighboring Philadelphia landmark, which now serves as an expanded facility for the museum's collections of prints, drawings, photographs, costumes and textiles, design pieces, and the library and archives.

D'Harnoncourt organized of a number of major exhibitions accompanied by state-of-the-art catalogues during her time. These include retrospectives of the work of Brancusi (1995) and Salvador Dalí (2005) as well as surveys such as "Japanese Design" (1994) and "The Splendor of Eighteenth-Century Rome" (2000). Most recently, she helped the museum win the coveted distinction of representing the U.S. at the 2009 Venice Biennale with artist Bruce Nauman, and she orchestrated the sale of a number of works by Thomas Eakins in order to keep his masterpiece The Gross Clinic in the city.

"It's a shock and it's very sad," said Philippe de Montebello, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "It's unimaginable — the museum world without her."