Frank Phidias Albright was born on March 2, 1903, in Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, to a family of German descent. His early life was one of Christian simplicity spent on his family’s small farm. He attended school in a one-room schoolhouse and was self-taught in blacksmithing, electrical engineering, and auto mechanics from books he ordered from Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalogs. He left the family farm as a teenager and traveled to Omaha, Nebraska, where he worked as a handyman and painter before completing high school. He attended Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio, and began studying classical archaeology at Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a master’s degree in 1936 and a PhD in 1940. Of humble beginnings, he was empowered at every stage of his education by his own desire to learn and a willingness to work a series of odd jobs to pay for his tuition.

During his studies, he worked repairing antiquities at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. In addition, he taught courses in ancient history, art history, and comparative literature at Baltimore City College Center, conducted research at the Westinghouse Company, and supervised a project for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) creating scale models of historic buildings in Baltimore. In 1938, to pay for his passage on a Greek steamer transporting the Johns Hopkins archaeological expedition to Olynthus, Greece, Albright worked stoking coal on the steamship.

In September 1942, Albright enlisted as a private in the US Army Air Corps and was assigned as an instructor of meteorology and navigation in California. He later worked with photo intelligence, conducted interrogations of German prisoners, and researched German architecture at the Pentagon. In early October 1945, First Lieutenant Albright reported for duty with the MFAA Branch of the Reparations, Deliveries, and Restitutions (RD&R) Division. The following month, he was assigned to the Office of Military Government for Bavaria as a MFAA specialist officer for the administrative district of Upper and Middle Franconia (Regierungsbezirk Ober und Mittelfranken). Stationed in Nuremberg, Germany, he traveled around the area investigating claims of looted art. In December, he traveled to Guttenberg Castle (Burg Guttenberg), where he inspected a collection of objects belonging to the Germanic National Museum (Germanisches Nationalmuseum) in Nuremberg. In February 1946, he returned a collection of manuscripts belonging to the University of Heidelberg and delivered to the Munich Central Collecting Point a collection of seven thousand books and a large collection of Russian icons. He delivered a collection of almost ten thousand books found in the Stürmer Verlag to the City Library of Nuremberg.

In April 1946, Albright was placed in command of one of the most significant restitutions made by the MFAA. On April 30, 1946, a twenty-seven-car train containing the Veit Stoss Altarpiece and other looted Polish treasures, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine, arrived in Crakow to the acclaim of delighted Polish citizens and much ceremonial fanfare. In addition to Albright, the train was accompanied by Polish Restitution Officer Major Karol Estreicher Jr., American Monuments officers Captain Everett P. Lesley and First Lieutenant Julianna Bumbar, and a contingent of thirteen US Army guards.

After his return to the United States in June 1946, Albright continued his career in academia. He taught Latin at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, taught art at Union College in Schenectady, New York, and lectured on ancient and medieval engineering. He also participated in numerous significant archaeological expeditions. In 1951, he was named chief archaeologist with the American Foundation for the Study of Man in South Arabia and travelled to ancient Mâreb, Yemen. There, he and his team excavated the Mahram Bilqîs, an eighth-century Himyaritic temple dedicated to the moon god, Almaqah. While the expedition resulted in the discovery of rare Sabaean bronzes and alabaster sculptures, political unrest in the area caused local soldiers to become hostile. Albright and his fellow archaeologists were forced to abandon their work in Yemen and flee to safety across the desert. The expedition relocated to Oman, where Albright’s team worked until 1953. His research in the area resulted in multiple published works detailing his discoveries.

In 1954, Albright moved to North Carolina and began work as director of museums and later director of research at Old Salem, Inc. (today, the Old Salem Museums & Gardens), a living history museum in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. After his retirement in 1973, he founded the Winston-Salem Museum and served as president of the Wachovia Historical Society and the Washington Park Neighborhood Association. In his work to revitalize the historic town of Salem, he called upon his early experiences as a handyman. He restored the town’s eighteenth-century fire engine, reconstructed an antique organ, repaired an old church clock, and restored multiple historic houses.

Frank Albright died on March 20, 1999, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.