Paul Hayes Tucker


Paul Hayes Tucker is an American art historian, professor, curator, and author. His specialties include Claude Monet and Impressionism.
He spent over 40 years teaching at the University of California Santa Barbara, Williams College, the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, Yale University, and the Toledo Museum of Art, including 36 years teaching art history at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He has curated 16 art exhibitions and authored 11 books.

Early life

Grandson of Carlton J. H. Hayes, a history professor at Columbia University who was United States Ambassador to Spain during World War II, Tucker sought to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps as a history scholar. The shift to art history came while studying at Williams College under Whitney Stoddard, Lane Faison, and William Pierson, as well as a trip to Florence to study art in his junior year, and a subsequent fellowship at the Toledo Museum of Art. Tucker became enamored with Impressionism and Claude Monet during frequent visits to the Clark Art Institute while attending Williams College. It was there he first received the inspiration to one day reunite the artist’s Rouen Cathedral in a single exhibition — something he accomplished at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1990.
A member of the so-called "Williams Mafia", a group who graduated from Williams College in the 1960s and 1970s, Tucker also served as an All-American defensive end on the football team while earning his undergraduate degree.
As an art history graduate student at Yale, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1979, Tucker studied under Robert L. Herbert, a pioneer in developing the social history of art. Tucker’s dissertation became his first book: Monet at Argenteuil.

Exhibitions

Tucker set the attendance record of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1990 with his "Monet in the '90s" exhibition, only to break his own record with "Monet in the 20th Century". He has also curated exhibitions beyond Impressionism into post-war American art as a guest curator for other museums.
He is married to Maggie Moss-Tucker, and has two children, actor Jonathan Tucker and Jennie Taylor Tucker. Tucker retired from his position at UMass Boston to move to California in 2014, where he continues to work in the area of 19th and 20th century art. His most recent book is a college textbook on modern art titled Never Neutral. Modern Art: Courbet to Pollock.