By Michael More
Richard Benson taught at Yale for thirty years. He was named Dean of the Art School in 1995, and when he stepped down from that job in 2006, a tribute by photographer Tod Papageorge in the Yale Art Gallery Bulletin described his career as "crooked" and "careening."
The young Benson looked so much like his father that the family called him Chip, as in "off the old block." John Howard Benson was a legendary calligrapher and stonecutter whom his son recalls as an "odd" man with a long beard and homemade corduroy shirts – he died when Benson was 12.
After his freshman year at Brown, Benson told the college president he wanted "to work with his hands" and left. He became a large-format photographer, a master printer, received a MacArthur "genius grant” and two Guggenheims. He helped develop the tri-tone printing process and invented a way to make gorgeous prints in acrylic paint on coated aluminum. In a 1990 New Yorker profile he admitted, without seeming to exactly boast, "I can honestly say that I'm the best printer in the world."
