Quick Facts
Biography
Emanuel Winternitz (1898–1983) was the first curator of the Department of Musical Instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In 1973 he was named curator emeritus but continued to teach and work at the museum until his death in 1983.
Career
Born in Austria, Winternitz served in WWI and practiced law in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s.
With other Viennese Jewish intellectuals, he emigrated to the United States in 1938, after the Anschluss. Winternitz came to the Met as a lecturer in 1941, became a full-time employee and "Keeper" of the instruments the following year, and was named Curator in 1949 when Musical Instruments was made a curatorial department. At the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Department of Musical Instruments, Winternitz was responsible for saving the musical instruments collection from a plan to turn them over to a Music Library proposed by Juilliard. He was also a musical instruments researcher, credited as the "father of the field of musical iconography", creating the field.