Art World Friendships

Moses met the painter, printmaker, and art educator Matt Phillips (1927-2017) on a visit to Paris in 1964. The two had much in common, as Phillips had previously studied at the Barnes Foundation as well as the University of Chicago. Just a few years before their fortuitous meeting, Phillips began making monotypes (a printmaking method that results in a single, unique image). His efforts to organize exhibitions of monotypes, as well as his own focus on the medium, helped reintroduce contemporary artists to the technique. This must have been a point of particular interest to Moses, given his extensive study of the monotypes of Impressionist artist Edgar Degas. Moses wrote the introduction to an exhibition of Phillips’ work at the Peter Deitsch Gallery in New York City the following year.

Moses’ and Philips’ abiding friendship is emblematic of the relationships Moses developed with peers at every stage of his education and career. While at Haverford he befriended fellow student William Wixom (1929-2020). They shared a love of art and took classes together at the Barnes Foundation. Wixom went on to study Medieval and Renaissance art and held curatorial positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Met Cloisters in New York. When Moses began his studies at Harvard, he reconnected with William Innes Homer (1929-2012), a former classmate from Lower Merion High School. Homer specialized in nineteenth-century American painting and later became a professor at the University of Delaware. Both men became Moses’ close confidants, to whom he regularly turned for advice and offered his own in return.