Jack Green, Ph.D, presents this program about Walter Farmer (1911-1997), Alumnus of Miami University (1935), who was an interior designer and art collector and also served as a US Army Captain and a member of the Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives program during World War II. As a “Monuments Man,” Farmer directed the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point in occupied Germany, safeguarding artworks from German museums and private collections. Farmer later provided inspiration for the creation of the Miami University Art Museum (1978) now the Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum (RCCAM). Among other artworks, Farmer gave several hundred ancient objects to the museum and is acknowledged as a founder-donor. This talk combines biographical and object based research and also explores several items from this collection, including the “Miami Hydria,” an Attic black-figure vessel likely to have come from an Etruscan necropolis in Italy, ancient Egyptian column fragments from the reign of Akhenaten, as well as a wide range of artifacts from the ancient Middle East and North Africa, the East Mediterranean, and Central America.

Jack Green, Ph.D, is the Jeffrey Horrell ‘75 and Rodney Rose Director and Chief Curator of the Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum at Miami University since 2021, and is also co-chair of Museums Miami Center. Green received his Ph.D from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (2006) and has held curatorial and administrative positions at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford (UK), the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago, and the Corning Museum of Glass, NY. Green has also undertaken cultural heritage preservation and community initiatives through the American Center of Research (ACOR), Amman, Jordan, and has published widely on subjects related to archaeology, cultural heritage, and museums.

Optional: Join Jack Green for a tour of RCCAM and to see some of the Farmer collection on view after the talk (25 minute drive).

Questions? Email John Vaughn @vaughnjh@MiamiOH.edu