Jere Abbott

Jere Abbott (1897–1982), was the first associate director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Abbott earned his undergraduate degree at Bowdoin College before he studied physics at Harvard University, along with the museum's first director, Alfred Hamilton Barr, Jr..He then taught at Bowdoin from 1921 to 1922 before he studied art history classes at Princeton University.After helping to establish a department of fine arts at Wesleyan University in 1929, he helped establish the museum in New York.He became the associate director of the museum at the time of its founding in 1929 and retained that position until 1932 when he became the director of the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton, Massachusetts.He remained at Smith, both as the museum's director and as an art history teacher, until he retired in 1946.