Fiske and Marie Kimball: Shaping Public Engagement with Architecture and the Arts

The fascinating journey of one of the art world’s great midcentury power couples

The essays in this interdisciplinary volume explore how Fiske and Marie Kimball, together and in their own respective ways, shaped the experience and understanding of art and architecture in the twentieth century. From his pioneering publication Thomas Jefferson, Architect in 1916 through his long connection with Monticello and position as director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fiske Kimball emerged as a powerful and influential voice. He was dubbed “the dean of American architectural history,” and his scholarship established the rich legacy of the past while his engagement with public monuments guided design in the present. Marie Kimball was an accomplished historian and prolific writer whose multivolume biography of Jefferson was widely celebrated. She was also the first curator of Monticello and played a key role in the display and interpretation of its historic objects. Although both Fiske and Marie distinguished themselves independently, they also regularly worked together, and their joint efforts evidence a rare partnership of the mind. This collection celebrates and contextualizes this remarkable pair.

© 2025 University of Virginia Press (Ebook): 9780813954011

Release date

Ebook: 4 December 2025