One Man, 8,000 Tours and a Legacy Built on Awe

An unexpected passion led to a remarkable career—and a lasting gift to future art historians

by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson

When Eric Denker ’75 boarded the SS Raffaello in 1973 en route to Bologna, Italy, he was a political science major, planning for a career in diplomacy. He couldn’t know that he’d return to the U.S. on a much different trajectory—one that would guide him toward a fulfilling career at one of the world's preeminent museums.

Viva L'Italia!

Denker grew up in the suburbs outside Philadelphia, the first in his family to attend college. He played baseball his freshman year at Dickinson, worked as a resident advisor and signed up for a junior year abroad in Bologna—then the college’s only study-abroad program. While abroad, Denker visited museums and galleries, often with William Wallace ’74, a future Michelangelo scholar.

Traveling to Italian cities to see masterpieces up close, he discovered a new calling. “I definitely caught the art fever—and also an appreciation for travel and old-world cities,” Denker recalls.

Artful career

Within two years, Denker graduated with an art history degree from Dickinson. He earned a master’s at the University of Maryland-College Park and settled in the D.C. suburbs, an easy commute to the National Gallery of Art (NGA), his employer for more than 40 years. Early career highlights include a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, a Smith Fellowship to research impressionist prints in Paris and a speaking engagement in Australia on behalf of the U.S. Information Agency.

While at the NGA, Denker regularly led tours in Italy for the Smithsonian Institution and its counterpart in Venice. For eight of those years, from 1998-2006, he was jointly at the NGA and the Corcoran Gallery of Art as the head of the print department, organizing 24 exhibitions for the Corcoran. After returning full time to the NGA in 2006, Denker continued to curate exhibitions in the D.C. area, including shows at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Arts Club of Washington, the Embassies of Australia and Italy in D.C., the Kreeger Collection, Georgetown University, Stanford University in Washington and at several museums in Italy.

He estimates he’s delivered more than 8,000 tours and 500 lectures, introducing art to approximately 300,000 museum visitors. Those include not only the general public but also private VIP tours for celebrities, diplomats, presidents, monarchs and other world leaders. He’s also taught art history through Cornell University’s Semester in Washington and at George Mason, Georgetown and Stanford universities.

Through it all, Denker has stayed closely connected with Dickinson. He’s hosted alumni events at the NGA for decades. He’s also served as a Board of Trustees member (2006-22), emeritus trustee and class correspondent. He’s a member of the Mermaid, JDS and Old West societies and longtime president of the Friends of the Trout Gallery. Denker was named a Metzger Conway Fellow in 1987 and received the 1999 Distinguished Service Award (an honor now known, at his suggestion, as the Walter E. Beach Award).

Creating opportunities

Across the decades, Denker has made exceptional opportunities available to Dickinson art history students, advising them on career opportunities in the arts, providing tours and lectures and donating nearly 900 prints, drawings and photographs to the . His gifts have significantly expanded the number of women artists represented in the Trout’s permanent collection, which now includes works by Lida Moser, Vivian Maier, Ellen Day Hale, Gabrielle Clements, Hung Liu, Renée Stout, Grace Albee and Claire Leighton. Students also benefit from in-depth exposure to artists such as John Taylor Arms, Fabio Mauroner, Auguste Lepere and Ernest David Roth.

These gifts, and others like them, allow Dickinson students to work directly with, and publish research on, works by artists who are less well represented in scholarly literature, Denker notes. “The essays they publish for their senior art history exhibitions contribute to national scholarship on important yet lesser-known artists who were often colleagues of better-known artists, like Whistler,” says Denker, an expert in that expatriate American giant.

Additions to the Trout's permanent collection are also valuable to faculty, who incorporate works from the permanent collection into courses, and to the campus and local community members who take in Trout Gallery exhibitions. That includes an upcoming Trout exhibition of 75 portraits, landscapes and prints donated by Denker. It will run from June 13 to Sept. 13.

It's a fitting tribute to a life devoted to helping others to find joy, meaning and, potentially, transformation through art, just as Denker himself did, some 50 years ago.

“My study-abroad year in Bologna informed my entire life, and I’ll always be grateful to Dickinson for making that possible,” Denker says.

TAKE THE NEXT STEPS

Published February 28, 2025

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