Distinguished Alumnus, James F. Pilgrim, Class of 1958

Selected as the first Distinguished Alumnus from Richmond High School, James Pilgrim became a curator for the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s.  He served as an administrator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City from 1978 to 1988 and he was a fine arts consultant who organized international shows for the Met, becoming a deputy director in 1980.

That same year he created The Great Bronze Age of China show.  He also was responsible for the creation of The Vatican Collections, Papacy and Art, in 1983, and Treasure of the Holy Land in 1985.

He married his wife, Dianne Pilgrim, an art curator in New York, in 1968 and was divorced in 1978.  He lived in Brooklandville, Maryland, where he died of lung cancer July 29, 2002, at age sixty-one. He was selected as Distinguished Alumnus in 1958.