| Ture
Bengtz, Åland Islands (1907 - 1973)
At the age of 18, young Ture arrived from Åland and stayed
in Medford, Massachusetts with his uncle Ellis Carlson and family.
My father, Carl Carlson and Ellis Carlson were Ålander
friends. Our homes were in walking distance of one another and
I was told that young Ture had visited our home with his Uncle
Ellis.
Ture stayed with his uncle for 2 years and worked with him as
a painter. He also attended night school to learn English. An
art class was offered which Ture attended, but the teacher soon
recognized his talents and advised Ture to apply to an art school.
Bengtz entered the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in
1928. He continued to work with his uncle to earn his way and
graduated in 1933, with a scholarship that allowed him to study
summers in Europe for four years, at the Slade School in London
and at the Fontainebleau in Paris. In 1934 he was offered a position
as an instructor at the Boston Museum School, which began 38
years of teaching at that institution.
Ture Bengtz initiated the start of Graphics Department at the
Museum in 1939 and became the head of the Drawing and Graphic
Arts Department in 1941. With a good friend and students, he
initiated start of the Boston Printmakers Association in 1946.
This grew to be a respected and well known organization and is
still an active business today. Ture Bengtz enjoyed his teaching
and his students, and he loved being an American citizen while
he remained loyal to his early Åland home. He felt that
anyone with a Scandinavian name was always a good person.
In 1957, he started a series of TV programs, "Bengtz on
Drawing," which ran for 3 years on Boston's PBS station.
For several summers, Ture conducted an art class for boys at
Lennox, Massachusetts. It was here that he met the Weyerhaeuser
family, which spent summers in Duxbury, Massachusetts. A friendship
developed, ultimately leading to the establishment of and finally
the construction of the Art Complex Museum. Ture provided the
basic plan for this building and later became its first director.
The Weyerhaeusers' wish for this museum was to house an extensive
collection their families had acquired over many years. It opened
in 1971.
Ture was proficient in a variety of media: oil, drawing, lithography,
watercolor, and etching. A challenge in the 1960s was to design
and build a stained glass window for his family church, built
in the 12th century in the Åland Islands. The window was
installed and dedicated in 1968. An abstract, it depicted Christ
and St. Olaf, the patron saint of the Åland Islands.
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