Edward W. Forbes

Edward Waldo Forbes, of the Forbes family, was born on July 16, 1873, on Naushon Island off Cape Cod in Massachusetts. His father, William Hathaway Forbes, was a co-founder of the Bell Telephone Company with Alexander Graham Bell. Forbes was educated at the Milton Academy, a boarding school in Milton, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1895. While he was at Harvard, he attended art history lectures by Charles Eliot Norton. Forbes traveled to Europe many times, where he studied Italian paintings. He attended the University of Oxford, studying English Literature from 1900 to 1902. ==Career==

Forbes co-founded the Harvard River Associates in 1902 with Robert Bacon, James Abercrombie Burden, Jr., Augustus Hemenway and Thomas Nelson Perkins. The real estate venture consisted in acquiring land between the Harvard Yard and the Charles River for US$400,000 to preserve the beauty of the area near the Harvard campus remained "collegiate". He urged art conservator George L. Stout to work with chemist Rutherford John Gettens, both of whom pioneered scientific art preservation. He retired in 1944. As a permanent tribute, the plaza outside and the arcade inside Harvard's Holyoke Center were named in his honour. The occasion was marked by a ceremony on October 17, 1966. ==Philanthropy==

Forbes served in the American Red Cross during World War I. Forbes served on the board of trustees of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1903 to 1963. He also served on the board of trustees of the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, Connecticut. He served on the administrative committee of the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and Research Library of Byzantine Studies in Washington, D.C., from 1941 to 1963. Additionally, he served on the Board of Trustees of Public Reservations of Massachusetts for six decades. He became honorary fellow of the International Institute for Conservation in 1958, where the annual Edward W. Forbes Prize was named in his honor. Forbes was a recipient of an honorary A.M. from Harvard in 1921, an honorary LL.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1927, and an honorary Doctorate of Arts from Harvard in 1942. He was the recipient of the knighthood of the Legion of Honor from the Republic of France in 1937. The Forbes Symposia and Lectures on Scientific Research in the Field of Asian Art series at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art is supported by the Edward W. Forbes Fund. This bequest to the Freer Gallery was made by John Thacher in honor of his former colleague, Edward Waldo Forbes, a past director of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University and an early proponent of applying technical examination to the study of art. ==Personal life==

Forbes married Margaret Laighton in 1907. and Rosamond (Mrs. Carl Pickhardt). They resided at 30 Gerry's Landing Road in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His wife predeceased him in 1966. Forbes was an avid amateur painter and sailor. ==Death==

Forbes died on March 11, 1969, at the McLean Hospital in Belmont, a suburb of Boston in Massachusetts. He was ninety-five years old. ==References==