Rubinstein, Ruth, d. 2003. (age 78)
born Ruth Olitsky


http://www.sas.ac.uk/warburg/newsletter/currentnl.htm



Dr Ruth Rubinstein, who died at the age of 78 on 29 August, had been Honorary Fellow since 1997. After receiving her AB from Vassar College in 1945, Ruth Olitsky enrolled at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University, where she began a Master’s thesis on ‘San Giovanni dei Fiorentini: the Building History and Plans’ and in 1949 came to London, where she was supervised from the Institute by Rudolf Wittkower. Awarded the Junior Research Fellowship and embarking on the PhD in 1950, she was obliged to resign the Fellowship on returning to the USA in mid-1951; in London again from 1952, she was awarded the doctorate in 1957, from the Courtauld Institute, for a thesis on ‘Pius II as Patron of Art, with Special Reference to the History of the Vatican’. In 1954 she had married Nicolai Rubinstein, with whom for almost fifty years she offered warm hospitality to visitors, friends and colleagues at home in London and on many research journeys, to Florence in particular. From 1957 onwards she was a welcome, welcoming and helpful presence as part-time assistant in the Photographic Collection. Her special responsibility was the Census, for which her travels in Italy, her familiarity with collections there and her alert eye allowed her to make important acquisitions. She also played a large part in arranging and recording its contents, as well as in the writing of her and Professor Bober’s indispensable Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture and in revising it for its second edition. From 1983, when computerization of the Census was undertaken with the aid of the Getty Art Information Program, she became its part-time Consultant; characteristically, she did not allow retirement to impair her participation, either in the Census, or in the day-to-day work of the Photographic Collection.
 

Publications:

Renaissance artists & antique sculpture : a handbook of sources / by Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth Rubinstein ; with contributions by Susan Woodford.
London, England : H. Miller ; Oxford : Oxford University Press, c1986.
522 p. : ill. ; 28 cm


Antiquarian drawings from Dosio's Roman workshop : Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, N.A. 1159 : catalogue / edited by Emanuele Casamassima and Ruth Rubinstein ; presentazione di Claudio Leonardi.
1. ed.
[Florence] : Giunta regionale toscana ; Milano : Editrice bibliografica, 1993.
xxiv, 254 p. : ill. ; 30 cm