On his college application Porter wrote that he wanted to go to Harvard because his father had gone there. (Spike p. 22) He could just as well have stated that it was a family tradition.
William Eliot Furness – Ruth’s father Harvard Class of 1860, then Harvard Law School
Fairfield’s father: James Porter Harvard Class of 1895 Master’s Degree 1996 (Spike p. 17)
Brother Eliot Porter : B.S. 1924; MD Harvard Medical School 1929
Various distant relatives sprinkled throughout the faculty and administration.
His choice might have been inevitable. But he also had the good fortune to arrive at just the right moment. In the 1920s, Harvard’s Fine Arts department was educating a generation of students who would go on to have an enormous impact on the fine arts in America.
Paul Sachs Museum course/New Fogg museum opened in 1927
Society for contemporary art
Education in art history: huge influence on Porter’s aesthetic point of view that influenced/enabled his work as an artist and critic.
He may not have learned to paint at Harvard, but what he learned was essential to his later career.
Enrolling in the fall of 1924, he identified architecture as his “intended profession” and was given an advisor in the art department.