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In Memoriam

Kristine Edmonson Haney

Professor Emerita Kristine Haney, who taught medieval art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for three-and-a-half decades, died of pulmonary hypertension on July 28, 2020.  Kris was a specialist in early medieval manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon tradition; her two major monographs on the Winchester Psalter and the St. Albans Psalter, two landmark monuments of early English illumination, have become standard reading for the field.  In retirement, Kris was asked to write an introductory text and entries for a partial facsimile of the Winchester Psalter, a lavish publication, a copy of which has joined the facsimile collection in Du Bois Library. 

During her long tenure in the program in the history of art and architecture, Kris served terms as graduate director, undergraduate director, and chaired the program itself.  Generations of students remember her classroom lectures as models of clarity, sensitive visual perception, enthusiasm for beauty, and occasional injections of wry humor.  Her experiences of art and architecture were related to students with a first-person intimacy, stemming from her decades of research travel. 

In retirement, Kris and her husband Walt Haney, a scholar of American higher education (retired from Boston College), left their beautiful historic home in Westminster, and divided their time between Boston and Cape Cod.  Kris took up horseback riding with tremendous enthusiasm and incorporated equestrian experiences in her numerous travels around the United States and Europe.  She leaves her husband, and her daughter Elizabeth, both of the Boston area. 

W.D.