Louise Lincoln

Louise H. Lincoln (March 23, 1947 - October 11, 2026)

Louise H. Lincoln, 79, founder and former director of the DePaul Art Museum (DPAM), passed away on Sunday, October 11, 2026 in Hyde Park, Chicago.

From 1997 until 2014, Lincoln served as the director of the DePaul Art Museum, originally a small and seldom-frequented gallery space in a campus basement. During her tenure, she oversaw the acquisition of major parts of the permanent collection, including a trove of historic Polish posters donated by Martin and Patricia Rosenberg, a painting on tin by Diego Rivera, and numerous works by important Chicago artists. An enthusiastic mentor, she trained many students who went on to become gallery and museum professionals. Some of Lincoln’s most rewarding work at DePaul included primary contributions to the planning and design of a dedicated facility for DPAM, a beautiful purpose-built space at 935 W. Fullerton that has been closed since June 30, 2026, due to institutional budget decisions.

Lincoln saw artistic creation as a space for socially transformative debates, not merely the expression of individual sensibilities or pleasant aesthetics. At DePaul, she curated exhibitions that were timely, challenging, and global in their scope. Her envelope-pushing DPAM shows included “Apocalypse Now and Then: Art and the End of Time” (1998), “Iraqi Art Now: Looking Out, Looking In” (2003), “Re: Chicago” (2011), “For and Against Modern Art: The Armory Show +100” (2013), and “Fires Will Burn: Politically Engaged Art from the Permanent Collection” (2014).

Lincoln arrived at DePaul from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where she served as curator of the Department of African, Oceanic, and New World Cultures and organized major exhibitions of historic and contemporary materials from Africa, Papua New Guinea, and Native North America. Lincoln’s significant acquisitions for the museum included a spectacularly painted elkhide by 19th-century Plains Indian artist Cadzi Cody and a magnificent terracotta sculpture of a regal woman’s head, made in Nigeria in the 12th-14th century by an anonymous Yoruba artist. She was also proud to have acquired a 19th-century Malagan sculpture of a piper from New Ireland and a 15th-century figure from Mali, the oldest royal equestrian sculpture in wood from the African continent held in any museum collection.

Lincoln’s curatorial successes were supported by ethnographic fieldwork and the development of close working relationships with artists and artisans throughout the world. A 1992 show, “Visions of the People: A Pictorial History of Plains Indian Life” at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts was informed and enriched by the time Lincoln spent on Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, including as a guest at Sundance ceremonies. A lifelong student of languages, she learned Neo-Melanesian to support her relationship-building with wood carvers in the uplands of New Ireland, an experience that supported her 1987-88 Minneapolis exhibition “An Assemblage of Spirits: Idea and Image in New Ireland.”

An unusually acute and meticulous writer, Lincoln got her professional start at the University of Chicago Press. She worked her way into her first curatorial position with tenacity and focus, organizing an exhibition of Navajo silver jewelry for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts that was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities — the first award the institution had ever received from that funder.

Subsequently, her ambitious programs of art collection, conservation, curation, and exhibition received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Illinois Humanities Commission, and many other funders; remarkably, every one of her applications for external funding was successful. Lincoln was the author of numerous publications, including multiple book-length exhibition catalogs that featured her art-historical and critical essays, and taught courses in art history at DePaul University and at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Louise was born and raised in Towson, Maryland, the daughter of government scientist Charles Clifford Hassett (1905-1993) and homemaker Martha Julia Hassett (née Ludlum, 1908-1994). She was educated at The Bryn Mawr School and then attended Bryn Mawr College, where she majored in history, graduating in 1969. Lincoln went on to receive an M.A. in art history from the University of Delaware, where she wrote a thesis on the work of the French surrealist Marcel Duchamp.

In 1968, she first met Bruce K. Lincoln, whom she would ultimately marry, when they both campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy in Philadelphia. She then crossed paths with him again during a Haverford College production of Richard III, where she did the makeup for his part as Lord Hastings and they spent a long time looking into each other’s eyes.

As a young adult and working parent, Lincoln traveled widely and spent time overseas — in the Netherlands, France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Morocco, and beyond — where she made a consistent effort to learn local languages and visit museums. She was a gifted cook, baker, photographer, and gardener. She loved foreign cinema, chocolate, hedgehogs, and the novels of Elena Ferrante.

Lincoln was known for her modesty, tact, grace, and poise; for her excellent, understated taste; and for her subtle, contagious, and sometimes devilish sense of humor. Though struggles with Parkinson’s disease made her later years challenging, she remained caring, gracious, perceptive, and bright.

She is survived by her husband, Bruce K. Lincoln, an emeritus professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago, sister Mary Miles and brother-in-law William Miles, daughter Martha Lincoln and son-in-law Jaime Omar Yassin, daughter Rebecca Lincoln and son-in-law Jay Astle, and granddaughters Ida and Hanna Lincoln-Astle.

In lieu of flowers, donations to The Parkinson’s Foundation in Louise’s honor are gratefully accepted: https://www.parkinson.org/.

Services are being planned for March 2027. Please check back to this website for information.

Arrangements by Inclusive Funeral Care, 773-318-1305 or www.InclusiveFuneralCare.com.