Robert Beverly Hale; Artist, Curator, Teacher

Robert Beverly Hale, a former curator at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, an abstract painter and a distant relative of Revolutionary War patriot Nathan Hale, has died at age 84.

Hale, who wrote about and taught the anatomy of art but said he really wanted to be a poet, died Thursday at home, said his son, Alexander.

His works were shown in many exhibitions and included in many private collections.

He was an adjunct professor of art at Columbia University from 1945 to 1967 and lectured on anatomy at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1968. Hale was educated at the Sorbonne and studied art in Paris.