The Italian Renaissance in Santa Barbara
Alfred Moir Estate
Alfred Moir was one of the first history of art and architecture professors at UC Santa Barbara. Born in Minneapolis, he served in the military and retired as a Master Sergeant before obtaining his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in art history at Harvard University. He left Tulane University to join the fledgling UC Santa Barbara art history department in 1962. He became the chair of the department one year later and grew the department significantly through the next few years. Alfred had begun collecting drawings in the 1940s, and by the 1970s, he’d focused solely on his passion: the Old Masters.
During his tenure, Alfred brought two collections to the UC Santa Barbara art museum and published several books about the artist Caravaggio. After his teaching retirement in 1991, he served as adjunct curator for the campus art museum and as a consulting curator for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
When Alfred passed away in 2010, his estate provided several significant gifts to UC Santa Barbara. The Alfred Moir Fellowship in Art History established awards to graduate students studying Southern Italian Renaissance art and Old Master drawings of the 15th through 18th centuries.
Alfred donated over 2,000 paintings, drawing and prints from his personal collection to the UC Santa Barbara Art, Design & Architecture Museum. His 6,000 art and art history books enrich the UC Santa Barbara Library’s Special Research Collections.
The Moir Fellows and all scholars inspired by Alfred’s collections are the beneficiaries of his unending artistic legacy.
Published November 2018