Born in Washington, DC, and grew up in NYC. Her interest in arts began at a young age, learning the discipline from her father, who was the director of the Museum of Modern Art. After graduating high school, she studied History and Literature of Europe and England at Radcliffe College, from which she graduated Magna Cum Laude. At 22, while earning her MA in arts at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, she had her first museum experience, preparing catalog entries in the Tate Gallery.
When returning to the US, d’Harnoncourt started working as a curatorial assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In this position, she helped oversee the last major art installations of Marcel Duchamp. At 26, she moved to Chicago and worked as assistant curator of twentieth-century art at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she met her husband, Joseph J. Rishel. Three years later, she returned to Philadelphia as a curator of twentieth-century art at PMA.
As the director, she is known to revive the museum – enlarging its professional staff, promoting a sequence of exhibitions and publications by the curators and scholars of the institute, renovating its galleries, and expanding its modern art collection. She was considered “the person most responsible for transforming the institution into a great museum.” In June 2008, she died in her home when she is only 64 years old.
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