Papers of Charles Louis Kuhn

Charles Louis Kuhn (1901-1985), art historian, was a professor of Fine Arts and Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University from 1930 to 1968. He attended military school as a youth, then received his BA from the University of Michigan. In 1924, Kuhn earned his Master’s degree from Harvard University, then his PhD in Fine Arts in 1929. He became Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum in 1930, a position he held until his retirement in 1968. He also served as chair of the Department of Fine Arts from 1949 to 1953. At the Busch-Reisinger, he acquired many modernist works that had been removed from display in Germany after Adolf Hitler had deemed them “degenerate,” including paintings by Max Beckmann and E.L. Kirchner. After Walter Gropius arrived at Harvard in 1938 as head of the Graduate School of Design, the two men worked together to collect works of Bauhaus artists, such as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Lyonel Feininger. As a result of Kuhn’s efforts, the Busch-Reisinger obtained one of the most impressive collections of modern art from central and northern Europe.

In 1942, Kuhn joined the United States Naval Reserve as a Navy Intelligence Officer. For two years, he interrogated German prisoners; then, due to his considerable expertise in German art, he was assigned as a Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) Officer. He was named Deputy Chief of the MFAA Section in 1945 and was stationed at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) headquarters in Versailles, France, then in Frankfurt, Germany. At the headquarters, Kuhn and British Monuments Man Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Webb coordinated field operations, reviewed reports, and planned future MFAA operations. In addition to these administrative duties, Kuhn also actively participated in rescue missions, traveling across the American Zone of Occupation in pursuit of looted works by the Nazis of art and cultural objects. Kuhn was responsible for recovering many important works, including paintings by Brueghel, Titian, and Velázquez, and tapestries belonging to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Kuhn returned to Harvard in October 1945. Over the course of his career, he published numerous important works, including A Catalogue of German Paintings of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in American Collections (1936). Kuhn also received several awards in honor of his contributions to the study of Germanic art, including the Order of Knighthood of the Northern Star by the Swedish Government in 1955 and the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany in 1959. He died in 1985.