Julia Moore Converse, founding director of Penn’s Architectural Archives and former assistant dean at what was then the Graduate School of Fine Arts, died at her Chestnut Hill home on May 22 of Alzheimer’s disease. She was 74.

Born in New York City, she moved with her family to Lima, Peru, and returned to the US in 1952. She attended Smith College and spent her junior year at the École du Louvre and I’Institut d’Art et d’Architecture in Paris and completed advanced studies in Renaissance art in Florence, Italy. She graduated in 1967 with a degree in art history.

Ms. Converse worked for a year in the Penn Museum as a secretary in 1970, then went on to  hold curatorial positions at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1982, she returned to Penn as a coordinator at Meyerson Hall. In 1984, she became an archivist in Penn’s Architectural Archives. In 1989, she was appointed director of the Archives and from 1997 until her retirement in early 2008 she also served as a development officer for the School. Under her leadership, the Archives grew to become one of the most important collections of architectural drawings, models and records in the United States. She received the Dean’s Medal of Achievement in 2008.

As director of the Architectural Archives, she curated over 28 exhibits of the work of architects represented in the collections and helped support research by PhD students and visiting scholars from all over the world. As curator of the Louis I. Kahn Collection, she was a member of the organizing team that created a major exhibit of the architect’s work, sponsored by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in 1991 (Almanac February 13, 2001). She contributed to the exhibit catalogue Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture, co-authored by Professors David B. Brownlee and David G. DeLong and accompanied the exhibit to installations in Gunma in Japan, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Ms. Converse was active in the national Society of Architectural Historians, the International Confederation of Architectural Museums, the Cosmopolitan Club of Philadelphia and the Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania. She served on the Boards of the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, the Abraham Lincoln Foundation of the Union League, the Chestnut Hill Historical Society, the Woodmere Art Museum, the Smith College Club of Philadelphia, and the Wyck Association, where she chaired the Wyck-Strickland Award Committee for many years. She received their Wistar Haines Award for her contributions to the Wyck Association in 2013. She was also among the Graduate School of Fine Arts (GSFA) staff and faculty at Penn whose hands are memorialized in the Kelly Family Gates at Addams Hall (Almanac May 13, 2003).

“Julia was an important voice in the ecosystem of the arts in Philadelphia, and her accomplishments resonated nationally and internationally,” said William Valerio, the director and CEO of Woodmere Art Museum. “As founding director of the Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania, she carved a niche for herself in American art, serving as an advocate on a national basis for the study of architecture as cultural history. Julia taught us all to think about architects as the artists who shape our built environment.”

She is survived by her husband, Richard W. Bartholomew; sons, Alexander (Amy), Denis and Andrew (Anna Pitoniak); two grandchildren; and three sisters.

A celebration of her life is planned for a future date when conditions allow. Donations in her honor may be made to Woodmere Art Museum, the Penn Memory Center, and the Julia Moore Converse and Richard W. Bartholomew Endowment Fund for the G. Holmes Perkins Architectural Library at the University of Pennsylvania.