professor Dale Kent (nee Butler)

MAC.ROB student, 1956-1959
PORTRAIT GALLERY INDUCTEE, 2026
B.A. HONS, DIP. ED., PhD.
author & lecturer in renaissance studies

Professor Dale Kent writes and teaches the history of the Italian Renaissance. Her publications include The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence 1426-1434; Neighbours and Neighbourhood in the District of the Red Lion in the Fifteenth Century (with her former husband F.W. Kent); Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron's Oeuvre, which won the American College Art Association's prize for best art book 2000; and Friendship, Love, and Trust in Renaissance Florence, based on the 2007 Berenson Lectures she delivered at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, where she was a Fellow from 1977-9 and subsequently Visiting Professor.

Born in 1942, Dale longed to do and be the most she possibly could, despite the prevailing assumption that as a woman, that would not be very much. At Mac.Rob she found encouragement and opportunities to aim for excellence in many areas. She produced and performed in plays that won annual competitions for her house, Naiads, led the school debating team, sang in the madrigal group, and in her final year was Head Prefect. The cultured and cosmopolitan Marta Rado taught her German, but more importantly, that mastering information is not necessarily acquiring knowledge. She later learned that success professionally is less about being the best at whatever you do, and more about being fulfilled by it, and that an acclaimed career may not lead to happiness, although for her, work redeemed a difficult personal life. Her 2021 memoir, The Most I Could Be, was written to share these insights with future generations of women.

Returning to Florence regularly to pursue her research, and living and lecturing around the United States and Europe, led to a rich and varied, if tumultuous life. Dale taught at La Trobe University before a Visiting Professorship at UC Berkeley took her to the United States. There, over 25 years of her ‘American Road Trip’, she enjoyed support from a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fellowships at Princeton, in the History Department and at the Institute for Advanced Studies, and at the Newberry Library in Chicago. She was a Guest Scholar at the Getty Centre for the History of Art and the Humanities in Los Angeles, The National Humanities Centre in North Carolina, and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts at The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., where she was also Senior Writer for a then groundbreaking computer installation teaching the public how to view works of art. She was often advisor and talking head for documentaries on patronage and the visual arts. Since retiring and returning to Australia to be with her daughter and grandchildren, she continues to mentor previous students and younger colleagues from afar.