Hermann Goetz (art historian)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Hermann Goetz (July 17, 1898 – July 8, 1976) was a German art historian and museum director who specialized in Indian art history. He directed the Baroda Museum & Picture Gallery in Baroda from 1939 to 1953 and later led the history of art department at Heidelberg University’s South Asia Institute.

Goetz was born in Karlsruhe and studied in Munich, earning a doctorate on Mughal-era costume and fashion. He worked at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin before moving to the Netherlands in 1931, where he researched under Jean Philippe Vogel and planned to work in India.

In 1936 he moved to India with his wife Annemarie. He studied ancient and medieval Indian art, especially Mughal paintings. In 1939 he became Director of the Baroda Museum & Picture Gallery, and during World War II he was interned in India because of his German nationality. After the war he published many works, founded the Bulletin of the Baroda State Museum and Picture Gallery in 1942, and helped establish a Museology department at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.

Goetz later became Director of the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi and reorganized it. Health finally required him to return to Germany in 1955, but he continued to lecture and organize exhibitions, making several trips to India before settling back in Germany in 1961. He taught Oriental Art at Heidelberg’s Südasien-Institut and directed its history of art department. He received the Jawaharlal Nehru Award in 1971. By his 75th birthday he had written hundreds of works, including 32 books, and more than 100 book reviews. He died on July 8, 1976.