Weinberg, Gladys Davidson, 1909-2002

Gladys Davidson Weinberg was born in 1909 in New York City to Israel and Carrie Dreyfuss Davidson. Her father was a scholar of medieval Hebrew literature and served on the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

She completed her undergraduate studies at New York University in 1930 and joined the Johns Hopkins University expedition to Olynthus. In 1935 she earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, writing her dissertation on the minor finds from the Corinth excavation sponsored by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. She was appointed a Special Fellow of the School and continued to work in Greece until 1938.

During the early years of World War II, Gladys Davidson Weinberg worked at the Princeton University Art Museum. She later joined the Foreign Service Auxiliary of the U.S. State Department. In 1942, she married Saul Weinberg, also an archaeologist. Saul and Gladys Davidson Weinberg moved to Missouri in 1948, when Saul Weinberg was appointed to the faculty of the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Gladys Davidson Weinberg worked as an independent scholar for over a decade, publishing Corinth, Results of Excavations Conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Volume 12, The Minor Objects in 1952. She also served as the editor of Archaeology from 1952 to 1967.

The Weinbergs founded the University of Missouri's Museum of Art and Architecture in 1957, and Gladys Davidson Weinberg served as curator of ancient art from 1962 to 1973. She rose to assistant director in 1973 and to research fellow in 1977. She remained a research fellow until her death in 2002.

Gladys Davidson Weinberg was known as an authority on ancient and medieval glass in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. She served as an advisor to The Corning Museum of Glass and participated in Museum excavations, most notably the joint Corning Museum of Glass / University of Missouri - Columbia excavation of the Roman glass factory at Jalame, in modern-day Israel.

Gladys Davidson Weinberg received several of prestigious awards for her work, including the Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement from the Archaeological Institute of America (with her husband, Saul Weinberg) in 1985 and the Percia Schimmel Award for Archaeological Exploration in Biblical Lands from the Israel Museum in 1986.