Allen Staley, a professor emeritus of art history at Columbia University who was raised in Mexico, Missouri, died Oct. 2. He was 88.
Staley passed away in his longtime home on Central Park West in New York City after a multi-year battle with kidney cancer. He is survived by Etheleen, his wife of 55 years and co-owner of the Staley-Wise Gallery; his sons Oliver and Peter; his daughter-in-law Effie Phillips-Staley; and his grandchildren Fiontan, Owen, Marisol and Icy.
After stints as lecturer and curator at New York’s Frick Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Staley taught at Columbia for more than 30 years, and served as chairman of the art history department.
He is the author of five books on British art and served as a trustee of the American Fund for the Tate Gallery. As a professor at Columbia, he inspired generations of students, some of whom chose to major in art history after attending his lectures.
Allen Percival Green Staley was born in 1935 and named after his maternal grandfather and namesake, Allen Percival Green. In 1910, Green, an engineer and entrepreneur, acquired a struggling factory that produced firebrick, the heat-resistant building blocks used in the furnaces essential for the steel industry. By 1929, the A.P. Green Firebrick Company was the largest such facility in the world.
A.P. Green’s second daughter, Martha, met Allen’s father, Walter, at a dance in New York City, where she was attending art school. Walter Staley was a West Point cadet, born in Indian territory (soon to become Oklahoma), and the descendent of pioneers, gold miners and Civil War veterans. Walter and Martha settled in Mexico, where Walter worked for his father-in-law, and had three children: Marcy, Walter, Jr., and Allen, the youngest. Walter, Sr. spent much of World War II in North Africa and Italy, and retired from the military as a Lieutenant Colonel. Allen’s first cousin, Christopher “Kit” Bond, was a Missouri governor and senator.
The Staleys lived at 15 South Jefferson Road on the Green Estate, much of which is now the Green Estate Park. His father was an avid equestrian, who bred and trained internationally competitive horses at the family barn on Huntingfield Drive. Wally and Allen competed in horse jumping and particularly the three-day event, with Wally taking part in three Olympic games, and winning a bronze medal in 1952. Allen was offered a place on the team training for the 1956 Olympics but declined, choosing to focus on his studies.
Both Staley boys attended Governor Dummer Academy, a boarding school outside of Boston now called the Governor’s Academy, and Allen went on to Princeton University. There, at the suggestion of his advisor, he took his first art history course, a class in Italian renaissance painting which would change the course of his life.
Completing his Ph.D. coursework at Yale University in 1962, Staley quickly fled New Haven, Conn., for New York and a job lecturing at the Frick, which also included giving short talks about art during WNYC’s classical music broadcasts.
It was while living in New York he met Etheleen Lichtenstein, at a Christmas party. A young Jewish woman from Detroit, Etheleen was then living by her wits in New York, and they could not have been more different, but they fell in love and married in 1968. In 1981, Etheleen and Taki Wise opened the Staley-Wise Gallery, specializing in fine-art fashion photography, in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. The gallery remains a New York institution.
In 1969, Staley and Etheleen bought an apartment in the Dakota, the storied New York landmark, where neighbors included Lauren Bacall, Leonard Bernstein, and, sharing a landing on the seventh floor, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. In 1978, the Lennons bought the apartment, offering to pay whatever it cost to find a suitable replacement. So the Staley family moved three blocks north to 151 Central Park West, where they lived ever since. Lennon remained in the Dakota, and the rest is tragic history.
Staley’s sons were born in 1971 and 1973, and aside from a year spent in London during Staley’s sabbatical year, were raised on the Upper West Side.
In 1974, the family bought a second home in Amenia, New York, a stately Victorian on 7.5 acres where they spent most weekends for the five decades. Maintaining the home, and particularly mowing its lawn and tending a vegetable garden, became labors of love for Staley, who took great pleasure in serving salads of his home grown lettuce, and bridled at the idea of store-bought tomatoes.
Other enthusiasms included skiing with his sons, first on weekend outings to Vermont, then on extended trips to Colorado and Utah; scuba diving on annual winter holidays in St. Croix, where his parents had retired; and reading voraciously. Thrillers and detective novels were a particular pleasure, as were the novels of P.G. Wodehouse. He read more substantial works, and in the last years of his life read the complete novels of Philip Roth.
In his retirement he became a serious pedestrian, walking huge distances across New York, such as strolling from the Upper West Side to Coney Island.
Staley was a dedicated traveler, and along with many trips to Europe for work and pleasure, with Etheleen, toured Egypt, Morocco, India, China and Japan.
He is remembered by those who knew him as kind, thoughtful and gracious; a loving husband, father and grandfather; and a man who lived a rich, full and rewarding life.
