Hunter, E.R.

• Edmund Robert Hunter

Edmund Robert Hunter was born June 4, 1909 in Toronto, Ontario to Carl Hamilton Hunter and Ethelwyn Walker, the daughter of Byron Edmund Walker. He was the eldest of four sons, John, Harry and Alan. Edmund took after his grandfather and studied art at the Ontario College of Art between 1929-1931, after which he served an apprenticeship with C.T. Currelly at the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology. He then went and studied art history at the Courtauld Institute at the University of London between 1933-1935.

He met his wife Frances Valentine Meriwether while touring Germany. They married in Indiana in 1938 and would have two sons together.

Hunter worked in many art insitutitions across Ontario and Quebec during the late 1930s and early 1940s, including the Art Association of Montreal, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario.)

Hunter moved to the United States in 1941, and would become a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1943 after serving time in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Hunter would serve as the director of the Norton Museum of Art twice, once between 1943-1949 and again in 1962-1974. Hunter also served as Director of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, the Vizcaya Museum & Gardens in Miami, Florida and the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Florida.

Edmund Robert Hunter died in 2011 in Palm Beach Florida at the age of 102.

02/27/2024. E. Thomas. Biographical sketch added.