Ellen H. Johnson

Ellen Hulda Johnson
Johnson after her retirement from Oberlin College.
Born	1910 Warren, Pennsylvania
Died	1992

Ellen Hulda Johnson (1910–92) was a distinguished historian and professor of modern art at Oberlin College from 1945 to 1977, an organizer of important exhibitions, and an influential critic of contemporary American art.

Ellen Hulda Johnson was born in 1910 in Warren, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Swedish immigrants Jacob Augustus Johnson, a hotel owner, and Hulda Headlund Johnson. Johnson entered Oberlin College as an undergraduate, receiving her bachelor's degree in 1933 and her master's degree in art history in 1935. She also studied at Columbia University, Uppsala University in Sweden, and the Sorbonne, Paris.

Johnson joined the Toledo Museum of Art in 1936 as the librarian and a member in the department of education. In 1939, she returned to Oberlin as an art librarian and part-time art history instructor. The following year she raised funds for a rental collection of original works of art for students at Oberlin, including prints from older painters such as Rembrandt to more modern ones such as Picasso. This type of collection remains an important program administered by Oberlin’s Allen Memorial Art Museum.

Johnson was promoted to full-time instructor in 1945, full professor in 1964, and honorary curator of modern art at the Allen Art Museum in 1973.

Although Johnson was never officially a curator, she became a member of the Allen’s acquisition committee in 1947 and advised Oberlin’s curators in organizing a biennial exhibition known as the Three Young Americans. Over the years, it showed first the black-striped paintings that established Frank Stella’s reputation, and subsequently featured the work of Robert Rauschenberg, Joan Mitchell, Claes Oldenburg, Bruce Nauman, Chuck Close, Jackie Winsor and many other young artists.