CAA News Today
Hans A. Lüthy: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — April 09, 2009
Petra ten-Doesschate Chu works in the Department of Art, Music, and Design at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, and June Hargrove teaches nineteenth-century European painting and sculpture at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Hans A. Lüthy
With the death of Hans A. Lüthy, on March 8, 2009, art history has lost a scholar and a leader, a catalyst whose vision and philanthropy contributed to the growth of the discipline in Europe and America.
Born in 1932, Lüthy studied art history in Zurich, where he wrote a dissertation on the nineteenth-century Swiss landscape painter Johann Jakob Ulrich II (1965). In 1963, he was appointed director of the Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft (SIK), or Swiss Institute for Art Research in Zürich, a position that he would hold for more than thirty years. Founded in 1951, the SIK became a major research institute under his directorship, the influence of which was felt both at home and abroad. Lüthy, indeed, pursued a two-pronged agenda: one, to research Switzerland’s artistic patrimony and to disseminate that research through exhibitions and publications; and, two, to promote Swiss art abroad, particularly in the United States. He was responsible for the organization of several exhibitions of Swiss art in the US, including From Liotard to Le Corbusier: 200 Years of Swiss Painting, 1730–1930 in the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and monographic exhibitions of the works of Ferdinand Hodler. His energy and commitment brought a new dimension to the awareness of Swiss art here.
Lüthy’s scholarly pursuits were focused on nineteenth-century French art, and he maintained an active publishing career, which included numerous articles for the press, notably the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
Since his retirement in 1994, Lüthy remained actively involved in art history. Through a private foundation, he and his wife, Marianne (Mascha), funded several research and writing projects. One of these was Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, which would not have come into being if not for his generous start-up grant. For this, the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art owes him a debt of gratitude. The couple also contributed a scholarship to the Centre allemande d’histoire de l’art (Deutsche Forum für Kunstgeschichte) in Paris.
At the same time, he began to collect art. As a collector his taste tended to French neoclassical and Romantic drawings, a predilection that was no doubt related to his life-long interest in the work of Théodore Géricault. He also assembled a small but significant collection of sculpture of the same period. A selection of drawings and sculpture from his collection was exhibited in 2002 in the Kunstmuseum in Bern, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday.
During the past few years, Lüthy’s ill health prevented him from staying in touch with many former friends and acquaintances. Those who knew him, and I am sure there are many of us in the US, remember him fondly for his genuine kindness, his enthusiasm, and his generosity of spirit. He was a raconteur and bon vivant whose presence enlivened many an occasion, scholarly and otherwise. He will be much missed.
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — March 09, 2009
Below is a list of recent deaths in the arts, with a link to each person’s published obituary:
- Lucille Virginia Burton, a curator of Egyptian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died on February 22, 2009, at the age of 90
- Schuyler Chapin, a cultural affairs commissioner for New York City and a dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia University, died on March 7, 2009. He was 86
- William de Looper, an artist associated with the Washington Color School and a curator for the Phillips Collection, died on January 30, 2009, at age 76
- Louisa Edwards, an art dealer at McIntosh Gallery in Atlanta who promoted black artists, died on February 23, 2009. She was 83
- Sverre Fehn, a Norwegian architect who won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, died on February 23, 2009, at age 84
- Virgil Grotfeldt, a painter and sculptor based in Houston, Texas, died on February 23, 2009. He was 60
- Mary Hambleton, an artist and a professor of art at Parsons the New School Design, died January 9, 2009, at the age of 56
- Judith Hoffberg, an art librarian, curator, and editor of the journal Umbrella who championed artist’s books, died on January 16, 2009. She was 74
- Howard Kanovitz, a Photo Realist painter who emerged in the 1960s, died on February 2, 2009, at the age of 79
- Max Neuhaus, a percussionist and a pioneer of sound art, died on February 3, 2009, at the age of 69
- Olga Raggio, a scholar who taught at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and a curator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died on January 24, 2009. She was 82
- George Schneeman, a poet and painter based in New York, died January 22, 2009, at age 74
- Franz-Joachim Verspohl, an art historian who taught at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena in Germany, died in February 2009
- Dina Vierny, an artist’s model who inspired the sculptor Aristide Maillol, died on January 20, 2009. She was 89
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
Winter Obituaries in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — January 26, 2009
CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, designers, architects, philanthropists, and collectors.
- Joan Abelló, a Spanish painter who lived in Barcelona, died on December 25, 2008, one day before he would have turned 86
- Leonard E. B. Andrews, a collector of Andrew Wyeth’s “Helga Pictures” and an arts philanthropist, died on January 2, 2009, in Malvern, Pennsylvania. He was 83
- Manjit Bawa, an Indian figurative painter of mythological and Sufi spiritual themes, died on December 29, 2008, in New Delhi. He was 67
- Aldo Crommelynck, an artist and master printer who worked with artists ranging from Matisse, Picasso, and Miró to Jim Dine, Chuck Close, and Terry Winters, died on December 22, 2008, in Paris, France. He was 77
- Hannah Frank, a Scottish artist and sculptor, died on December 18, 2008. She was 100
- Betty Freeman, an art collector and supporter of twentieth-century music, died on January 3, 2009, at the age of 97
- Shigeo Fukuda, a graphic designer and poster artist, died on January 11, 2009, in Tokyo, Japan. He was 76
- Betty Goodwin, a highly acclaimed Canadian artist, died on December 1, 2008, at the age of 85
- Robert Graham, a Los Angeles–based artist who focused on monumental public bronze sculpture, including those depicting Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Joe Louis, and Charlie Parker, died on December 27, 2008. He was 70
- Robert Gumbiner, a physician, healthcare innovator, and founder of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California, died on January 20, 2009. He was 85
- Jan Kaplický, a Czech architect whose radical, organic building forms can be seen across Europe and the UK, died on January 14, 2009, at the age of 71
- Michael Levy, an art historian and director of the National Gallery in London from 1973 to 1987, died on December 28, 2008, at the age of 81
- Pierre Mendell, a graphic designer and poster artist who worked on the visual identity of the International Design Museum in Munich, Germany, died on December 19, 2008. He was 79
- Govinder Nazran, an illustrator and designer turned fine artist, died on December 30, 2008, at the age of 44
- Ann Sperry, a New York–based sculptor and feminist whose work was collected by art institutions nationwide, died on November 27, 2008
- Coosje van Bruggen, an art historian, critic, and artist who collaborated with her husband Claes Oldenburg, died on January 10, 2009, in Los Angeles. She was 66
- Andrew Wyeth, a respected and reviled American realist painter, died on January 16, 2009, at his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. He was 91
- Ray Yoshida, a painter and collage artist who taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for many years, died on January 10, 2009, in Kauai, Hawai‘i. He was 78
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
Mildred Constantine: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — January 13, 2009
Linda Downs is CAA executive director.
Until her death on December 10, 2008, at age 95, Mildred “Connie” Cohen Constantine Bettelheim was the oldest College Art Association member and the oldest CAA employee. At the age of sixteen, she was hired by Audrey McMahon, corresponding secretary at CAA, in 1929 as a stenographer when the CAA offices were located at 220 West Fifty-eighth Street. She kept up the list of New York exhibitions for Parnassus (the precursor of Art Journal), eventually editing articles, assisting at Annual Conferences, and attending to correspondence.
I interviewed Connie last May in her art-filled home in Nyack, New York. She talked about the seminal experience that CAA’s employment and subsequent membership meant to her in her professional life. It opened up the creative and intellectual world to her at a time when CAA was in its formative years, and she was able to contribute to its development. Through her position at CAA she came in contact with artists like David Smith (when he applied for Works Progress Administration status through CAA; they immediately became life-long friends) and with art historians and future museum directors such as Francis Henry Taylor.
CAA also taught her the realities of the art world, from organizing demonstrations in support of artists’ rights to being requested to change her name. A prominent CAA member lobbied the Board of Directors to protest the appearance of a Jewish name on CAA correspondence. So Connie, as she was known by her friends, found a new name that she liked and permanently changed her last name from Cohen to Constantine.
She worked at CAA until 1937, when she returned to college to earn her BA and MA at New York University and attend graduate school at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In 1940 Constantine worked at the Office of Inter-American Affairs at the Library of Congress, and in 1948 was hired by the Museum of Modern Art’s Architecture and Design Department. She became an associate curator and curatorial consultant at MoMA through 1970, where she pioneered an interest in art outside the mainstream, from posters to graphic design. Constantine wrote over a dozen books and exhibition catalogues, including Tina Modotti: A Fragile Life (1975), Revolutionary Soviet Film Posters (1974) with Alan Fern, and Whole Cloth (1997) with Laurel Reuter. She also became an expert on fiber arts, coauthoring Beyond Craft: The Art Fabric (1973) with the fiber artist Jack Lenor Larson. At her death, she was researching for a major international study of thread.
Constantine was both a great supporter and a great critic of CAA. She was a lifetime member and enjoyed the articles in The Art Bulletin, but believed that Art Journal was too limited in scope and did not fully address contemporary international art, as it once did. She also wanted to see a greater focus on international artists at Annual Conferences.
I first met Connie in 1980 when we were organizing a Diego Rivera retrospective at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Because of her familiarity with Mexican collections and because of her research and book on Tina Modotti, she was recommended to me by Alan Fern, who was then director of the National Portrait Gallery, for the photography section of the larger exhibition. Over several years we worked together as she curated one of the most important collections of photographs that captured the life of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo by artists such as Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Edward Weston, and Tina Modotti. She was an intrepid curator with a wonderful eye for quality and for the quirky.
Connie’s pioneering work and gregarious personality touched the lives of so many artists, art historians, curators, and collectors. She helped to shape the College Art Association in its first few decades and forged a path that has been followed by many subsequent students of art and art history.
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — December 18, 2008
CAA recognizes the lifetime professional and personal achievements of the following artists, art historians, curators, educators, and critics, who recently passed away.
- George Brecht, an artist who was a principle member of Fluxus, died on December 5, 2008, at age 82 in Cologne, Germany, where he had been living
- Mildred Constantine Bettelheim, a former curator of design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and a CAA member since 1938, died on December 10, 2008. at her home in Nyack, NY. She was 95. A special obituary from Linda Downs, CAA executive director, has been published
- Derek Davis, a self-taught British ceramicist and painter, died on September 3, 2008, at age 82
- Lawrence Fane, an expressionist sculptor who worked with steel, bronze, wood, and concrete, died on November 28, 2008, in New York at age 75
- François-Xavier Lalanne, a French artists who created surrealistic animal sculptures in bronze that doubled as functional objects, and who was also well known in the fashion world, died on December 7, 2008, at his home in the village of Ury, south of Paris. He was 81
- William H. Pierson Jr., a member of the “art mafia” at Williams College who, with Whitney S. Stoddard and S. Lane Faison, Jr., helped to shape a generation of museum curators and directors, died on December 3, 2008, in North Adams, Massachusetts. He was 97 and resided in Williamstown
- Warren M. Robbins, founder of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, died on December 4, 2008, in Washington, DC. He was 85
- Kathleen Michelle Robinson, an art historian of nineteenth-century art and a curator at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, died on November 16, 2008, in Leavenworth, Kansas. She was 57
- Willoughby Sharp, an artist, curator, teacher, and publisher of Avalanche magazine, died on December 17, 2008, in New York. He was 72
- Terry Toedtemeier, a photographer, professor, geologist, and curator of photography at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, died on December 10, 2008, at the age of 61
- Jorn Utzon, an architect who designed the Sydney Opera House in Australia, died in Copenhagen, Denmark, on November 29, 2008, at the age of 90
- Cornelius C. Vermeule III, a curator of classical antiquities at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for over four decades, died on November 27, 2008, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 83
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — November 24, 2008
CAA recognizes the lifetime professional and personal achievements of the following artists, art historians, curators, educators, and critics, who recently passed away.
- Tracey Baran, a contemporary art photographer, died on November 18, 2008, at the age of 33
- Don Baum, a Chicago artist, teacher, and curator who exhibited early work by the Hairy Who, died on October 28, 2008. He was 86
- Cundo Bermudez, a second-generation modern artist from Cuba, died on October 30, 2008. He was 94
- Terry Fox, an American conceptual artist, died on October 14, 2008, in Cologne, Germany, at the age of 65
- Walter Gabrielson, a California-based artist and teacher, died on November 12, 2008, at age 73
- Ludger Gerdes, a German painter and sculptor, died in October 2008 at the age of 54
- Grace Hartigan, an Abstract Expressionist painter, died on November 16, 2008. She was 86
- James Johnson, an art historian, curator, and former dean of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut, died on October 8, 2008, at the age of 92
- Jan Krugier, a Swiss art dealer who displayed and sold old-master drawings, African art, and modern and contemporary art, died on November 15, 2008. He was 80
- Bill Martin, a landscape painter based in Mendocino, California, died on October 28, 2008, at age 65
- Muriel Oxenberg Murphy, who cofounded the American painting and sculpture department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died in October 2008. She was 82
- Ben Schaafsma, program director for the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York, died on October 25, 2008, in New York. He was 26
- Joel Weinstein, an art critic and publisher of the magazine Mississippi Mud, died on October 31, 2008, at age 62.
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
October Obituaries
posted by Christopher Howard — October 27, 2008
CAA recognizes the lives and careers of the following individuals in the arts, all of whom recently passed away.
- Albert Boime, an art historian and longtime professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who researched the social history of art, died on October 18, 2008. He was 75
- Robert H. Chaney, a Houston business man who collected contemporary Asian and British art, died October 22, 2008
- Patricia Faure, a Los Angeles–based art dealer, died October 21, 2008, at the age of 80
- Jason Gleeson, an Australian artist and art critic who helped shape the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, died on October 20, 2008, a month shy of his 93rd birthday
- Ardeshir Mohasses, an Iranian-born political cartoonist and satirist whose work was the subject of a recent exhibition at the Asia Society in New York, died on October 9, 2008. He was 70
- Iba Ndiaye, a highly influential modern painter from Senegal who also lived and worked in Paris, died October 5, 2008, at the age of 80
- Paritosh Sen, a pioneering and well-known Indian artist, died October 22, 2008. He was 80.
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — October 01, 2008
CAA pays respect to the following artists, scholars, critics, and academics who recently passed away:
- Tina Allen, a sculptor of influential African Americans, died on September 9, 2008, at age 58
- Michael Baxandall, an art historian best known for transforming the methodologies of the discipline through his books, Giotto and the Orators (1971) and Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (1972), died on August 12, 2008, at the age of 74
- Dale Chisman, an abstract painter based in Denver, died on August 28, 2008. He was 65
- George Deem, a painter who cleverly reworked old-master paintings, died on August 11, 2008, at the age of 75
- Elizabeth Eames, a scholar of medieval tiles at the British Museum, died on September 20, 2008. She was 90
- Manny Farber, a painter and film critic whose writing had appeared since the early 1960s in the Nation, the New Republic, Film Comment, Film Culture, and Artforum, died on August 18, 2008. He was 91
- Marian Griffiths, a longtime director at Sculpture Center in New York, died September 8, 2008, at age 86
- Simon Hantaï, a reclusive French painter, died on September 11, 2008. He was 85
- France Alain Jacquet, a French painter associated with nouveau réalisme, died on September 4, 2008, at the age of 69
- Stephen A. Kliment, a former editor of the Architectural Record, died on September 10, 2008, at the age of 78
- Paul Overy, a British art critic, died on August 7, 2008, at age 68
- John Russell, a contributor of art criticism to the Sunday Times of London and chief art critic of the New York Times from 1982 to 1990, died on August 23, 2008. He was 89 years old
- Petrus Schaesberg, a scholar of modern and contemporary art and an adjunct professor at Columbia University, died on September 23, 2008. He was 40
- Stuart Cary Welch Jr., curator emeritus of Islamic and later Indian art at the Harvard Art Museum and and former special consultant in charge in the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died on August 13, 2008. He was 80
- George Zarnecki, an expert on Romanesque art and a former director of the Courtauld Institute in London, died on September 8, 2008, a few days before his 93rd birthday
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
Stuart Cary Welch Jr.: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — September 08, 2008
Stuart Cary Welch Jr., curator emeritus of Islamic and later Indian art at the Harvard Art Museum and former special consultant in charge in the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died on August 13, 2008, while traveling in Hokkaido, Japan. He was 80 and a resident of New Hampshire.
Welch, a legendary scholar, collector, and connoisseur, studied and taught at Harvard University, where he was instrumental in transforming the Department of Islamic Art, establishing a curriculum of study of the arts of the Middle East and South Asia, and developing one of the finest collections of Islamic and later Indian art in this country. His lifelong association with Harvard culminated in his role over the past two decades as one of the most generous donors to the Harvard Art Museum.
Welch developed an appreciation of art early in his childhood. Aside from being a collector of drawings at a very young age, Welch himself was an accomplished draftsman, a skill that carried through to his enrollment at Harvard and beyond. He was a graduate of the St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1946. That same year he began his undergraduate studies in fine arts at Harvard, where he continued his graduate work in Classical art from 1952 to 1954. During that time, Welch intensified his study and collecting of Islamic and Indian art. He also published some of his more entertaining and lighthearted drawings in Harvard’s literary and humor magazines, including his series of Popular Professions Illustrated that appeared in the Harvard Lampoon and the Harvard Advocate.
While Welch concentrated in the study of fine arts at Harvard, at the time there were no classes or formal instruction available in the subject of Islamic or Indian art. Ever resourceful, Welch took the initiative to devise his own “course of study” by traveling extensively throughout the Middle East and South Asia to absorb regional traditions and culture and to witness firsthand the lands that captivated him, his interest driven by the drawings that he had already begun to acquire. At the same time, Eric Schroeder, then honorary keeper of Islamic Art at the Fogg Museum, became his mentor at Harvard.
In 1956, Schroeder invited Welch to become honorary assistant keeper of Islamic Art at the Fogg, and thus began an era that saw Welch use his infinite enthusiasm to transform the fledgling Department of Islamic Art. At the same time, as part of the vanguard of Islamic art scholars at Harvard, he spearheaded the effort to establish one of the first American university curriculums in the study of the arts of the Islamic world. In 1960, he taught the first class at Harvard in Near Eastern Art. An instructor for twenty-five years at Harvard, Welch arranged for works of art to be made available for study by students and scholars. Welch was a teacher and mentor to many distinguished museum leaders and scholars, including Lentz; Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art; and Michael Brand, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Over four decades at Harvard, Welch served as honorary keeper, curator (retiring in 1995), and finally curator emeritus. He worked brilliantly with such esteemed donors as John Goelet, Edwin Binney III, and John Kenneth Galbraith, and during his tenure he vastly enriched Harvard’s holdings of Islamic and Indian art.
Concurrent with his work at Harvard, Welch served as special consultant in charge in the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1979 to 1987. He was instrumental in making many important acquisitions that greatly enhanced the Metropolitan Museum’s collection and, in 1985, organized the groundbreaking exhibition India: Art and Culture, 1300–1900, a comprehensive presentation of over three hundred works including masterpieces of the sacred and court traditions that ranks among his greatest achievements as a curator.
Welch’s scholarship, particularly in the fields of Persian and Indian painting and drawing, served as the foundation for many important exhibitions and accompanying publications, including The Art of Mughal India, Paintings and Precious Objects (1964), the first important American exhibition devoted to Mughal art; Gods, Thrones, and Peacocks: Northern Indian Painting from Two Traditions, Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries (1965); Room for Wonder: Indian Painting during the British Period, 1760–1880 (1978); Wonders of the Age: Masterpieces of Early Safavid Painting, 1501–1576 (1979); Gods, Kings, and Tigers: The Art of Kotah (1997); and From Mind, Heart, and Hand: Persian, Turkish, and Indian Drawings from the Stuart Cary Welch Collection (2004), an exhibition of drawings from Welch’s landmark gift to Harvard in 1999 of over three hundred works.
Welch produced countless exhibitions over the forty years that he spent at Harvard, many of which may have been small in size, but which always tended toward the visual and poetic. His last exhibition is the first in a series entitled Perspectives that is part of the long-term exhibition Re-View at the Harvard Art Museum/Arthur M. Sackler Museum. The small installation, titled Tree of Life: Five Indian Variations on a Theme, includes just five works of art but is characteristic of Welch’s vision and approach. It opened in April 2008, just a few days after Welch’s eightieth birthday.
Considered his greatest scholarly achievement was the immense, two-volume study of The Houghton Shahnameh, coauthored with Martin B. Dickson of Princeton University, which focused on the great early Safavid dynasty copy of the Persian national epic executed for the Safavid ruler and patron of the arts Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524–1576). Welch’s insights fundamentally changed the way scholars thought about the development of early Safavid painting, demonstrating that it was, in fact, a brilliant synthesis of the earlier Timurid and Turkman styles of painting.
Welch’s numerous exhibitions, publications, public lectures, and years of teaching propelled the study and appreciation of Islamic and Indian art to new heights, educating and enlightening generations of students, scholars, and museum visitors.