american-art-2013 - Initiatives in Art and Culture

Reclaiming American Art
18 th Annual American Art Conference
Friday – Saturday, May 17 – 18, 2013
In this conference focusing on
the period from 1700 to the
1930s and beyond, we explore
American artists once well-known
but now obscure. We consider too
the work of well-known artists
that have, since their creation,
been eclipsed by cycles of taste, or
aspects of an artist’s oeuvre that
have fallen out of favor.
Why do artistic stars dim?
What causes tastes to change
and works to be consigned to
museum basements?
In confronting these questions,
we will look at the vagaries
of the marketplace, the effects of
Alfred H. Maurer, Le Bal au Moulin Rouge, 1902 – 1904, oil on canvas, 36½ x 32½ in. Curtis
choices made by museums in
Galleries, Minneapolis, MN.
exhibiting and acquiring, and the
roles of individual collectors,
dealers, and the critical establishment in defining and redefining the cannon over time. We
look as well at how the specifics of artists’ careers—the company they kept, the diversity of
their output, and how much they left behind—affect their fates and that of their works.
In the end, this process of rediscovery is made possible by new generations of dealers,
scholars, and collectors, whose professional and personal efforts make once-forgotten works
resonate in new ways, bringing them in tune with our time and place.
Leadership funding has been provided by The Louis and Lena Minkoff Foundation.
Funding at the Partner Level has been provided by Jonathan Boos, Debra Force Fine Art, and by
Julius Lowy Frame & Restoring Company.
We gratefully acknowledge funding received from The American Art Fair, Philip and Lorraine Brewer,
Collisart, LLC, Conner • Rosenkranz, LLC, James Dicke, II, Driscoll Babcock Galleries, Jerald A.
Fessenden, George Jeffords, Menconi & Schoelkopf Fine Art, LLC, Susan and Burn Oberwager,
James Reinish & Associates and anonymous donors, as well as support received from Christie’s,
Sotheby’s, Shannon’s, and Meredith Ward Fine Art (as of March 20, 2013).
This conference honors William H. Gerdts and his life-long commitment to
exploring and revealing byways and highways of American art.
This conference is dedicated to Harry L. Koenigsberg (1921 - 2002).
Friday, May 17, 2013
Formal sessions take place at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue
(between 34th and 35th Streets).
8:45 – 9:15 a.m.Registration and continental breakfast
9:15 – 9:30 a.m.Introduction.
Lisa Koenigsberg.
9:30 – 10:30 a.m. From Buffalo to Beecher to Blavatsky:
An Artist's (or Artistic) Journey to
Fame (Then) and Fortune.
William H. Gerdts.
10:35 – 11:15 a.m. Back on Radar: Copley, West, and the
American Revolution in London.
John Singleton Copley, Henry Laurens, 1782, oil
on canvas, 54.13 in x 40.55 in. National Portrait
Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.
Paul Staiti.
11:15 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. In the Cause of Unification: The Art Gallery of
the Metropolitan Fair, New York City, 1864
Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser.
12:00 – 12:45 p.m. Reclaiming American Art: The Lost, Overlooked, and the Workings of
Change in Taste, a Panel Discussion.
Lily Downing Burke, Linda S. Ferber, Liza Kirwin, Andrew Schoelkopf, and
James W. Tottis, moderator.
12:45 – 2:00 p.m. Lunch (on your own)
2:00 – 2:40 p.m. Preserved in Bronze: Vanishing Wildlife in
American Sculpture, 1850 – 1925.
Thayer Tolles.
2:45 – 3:25 p.m Currier & Ives Artists: Who?
Steven Miller.
3:25 – 3:45 p.m. Break
3:45 – 4:25 p.m. In a Perfect World: Severin Roesen and
the Art of American Still Life During the
Mid-Nineteenth Century.
Mark D. Mitchell.
4:30 – 5:15 p.m. California Stories, Genre Paintings from
the Golden State.
Alfred C. Harrison, Jr.
Severin Roesen, Flower Still Life With Bird's Nest, 1853, oil on canvas,
40 x 32 in. Philadelphia Museum of Art, purchased with support from
The Henry P. McIlhenny Fund in memory of Frances P. McIlhenny; Mr.
and Mrs. Robert L. McNeil, Jr.; The Edith H. Bell Fund; Mrs. J. Maxwell
Moran; Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest; The Center for American Art
Acquisition Fund; Donna C. and Morris W. Stroud II; Dr. and Mrs.
Robert E. Booth, Jr.; Frederick LaValley and John Whitenight; Mr. and
Mrs. John A. Nyheim; Charlene Sussel; Penelope P. Wilson; and the
American Art Committee, 2010.
6:00 – 8:00 p.m. Reception and tour of atelier and showroom
Julius Lowy Frame & Restoring Company
223 East 80th Street (between Second and Third Avenues)
Tour one of the most distinguished collections of antique and custom
frames, over 5,000 in inventory, ranging in style from 15th-century
Renaissance to 20th-century modern. See how frames are carved, gilded,
and restored and view state-of-the-art painting conservation techniques.
Founded in 1907, Lowy has worked with collectors, galleries, fine art dealers,
museums, and artists alike.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Formal sessions take place at The Graduate Center, City
University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue (between 34th and
35th Streets).
9:00 – 9:30 a.m.
Coffee
9:30 – 10:15 a.m.
Who’s In, Who’s Out: Stamos,
Simonds, Stella. David Anfam.
10:20 – 11:05 a.m.
Minor Characters in Major Roles:
Telling the Stories of Technical Art
History From 1860 – 1945
Lance Mayer and Gay Myers.
11:05 – 11:20 a.m. Break
11:20 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Blum’s Japan: Cultural Tourism and
Responsible Romanticism in the
Gilded Age. David Park Curry.
Theodoros Stamos, Dark Field, 1961, oil on canvas, 57 x 35 in.
Private collection, New York; photo courtesy of Jonathan Boos.
12:05 – 12:45 p.m.Alfred Maurer's Early Figurative Imagery: Portal to the Modern.
Stacey Epstein. 12:45 – 2:00 p.m.
Lunch (on your own)
2:00 – 2:40 p.m. George Bellows and
Company: Painting
Outdoors. Charles Brock.
2:45 – 3:25 p.m. Precisionism
and Beyond:
Rediscovering the Art
and Career of
Edmund Lewandowski
(1914 – 1998).
Valerie Ann Leeds.
Robert Frederick Blum, The Ameya, by 1893, oil on canvas, 25 1/16 x 311/16 in. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Gift of Estate of Alfred Corning Clark, 1904; 04.31.
3:30 – 4:15 p.m. Reclaiming a Legacy: Forgotten
Chapters in American Modernism,
1914 – 1930s and Beyond.
William Agee.
4:30 – 6:00 p.m. Closing reception and viewing
Meredith Ward Fine Art
44 East 74th Street
(between Madison and
Park Avenues)
James Daugherty, Simultaneous Color Planes, 1969. Private
collection; photo courtesy of William Agee.
Presenters
Lisa Koenigsberg, conference director, president, Initiatives
in Art and Culture; she launched the series of annual
conferences on American art in 1996. Formerly director,
Programs in the Arts and adjunct professor of arts, NYU/
SCPS; assistant director for project funding, Museum of the
City of New York; executive assistant, Office of the President,
American Museum of Natural History; architectural historian,
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission; and
guest curator, Worcester Art Museum and Yale University Art
Gallery. Her writings have appeared in books and journals,
among them The Gilded Edge: The Art of the Frame (2000),
Architecture: A Place for Women (1990), The Architectural
Historian in America (1991), the Archives of American Art
Journal, the Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians, and the Proceedings of the
American Antiquarian Society. She
collaborated with Suzanne Smeaton
on an essay for the catalog for
Auspicious Vision: Edwin Wales Root
and American Modernism, an
exhibition celebrating the 50th
anniversary of the Edwin Root
Bequest to the Munson–Williams
Proctor Art Institute.
(1995), “The Victorians: British Painting, 1837 – 1901” (1997),
and “Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New
York Galleries (2001).” His publications include Charles
Sheeler: Across Media (2006) and American Modernism: The
Shein Collection (2010). Brock most recently served as the
volume editor of the catalogue for the critically acclaimed
retrospective exhibition “George Bellows” currently on view
in London at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Lily Downing Burke, Director and Vice President, Gerald
Peters Gallery-New York; she has served in that
capacity for over 20 years. During that time she has
focused on artists such as Max Weber, Georgia O'Keeffe,
and Robert Henri. In addition to developing collections,
she has also directed exhibitions
including “Robert Henri, The Painted
Spirit”; “Max Weber, Paintings from
the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's”;“Max
Weber, Music Art and Dance and
Leon Kroll: Revisited.” She has
mounted other important
exhibitions on Albert Bierstadt,
Alfred Jacob Miller, as well as group
exhibitions, among them “The
Modern Figure” and “American
Modernism: The Francoise and
William Agee, Evelyn Kranes Kossak
Harvey Rambach Collection.”
Professor of Art History, Hunter
Educated as a fine arts major,
College, City University of New York;
Downing Burke’s first exposure to
he is founding editor, contributing
the art world was as an intern at the
editor, and co-author of the essays in
Whitney Museum of American Art
Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné (3
and from there she went to Andre
volumes, 2007); formerly director, The
Emmerich Gallery. Downing Burke
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and
learned the art business from a less
Pasadena Art Museum. Among his
academic and more hands-on
publications are works on
perspective. Prior to beginning her
Synchromism, Duchamp–Villon,
tenure at Gerald Peters, she was
painting and sculpture of the 1930s,
employed at the Cooley Gallery in
Bruce, Daugherty, Schamberg,
Old Lyme, CT where she augmented
Crawford, Diller, Davis, Dove, Francis,
her knowledge of the better known
Judd, Marin, Noland, Porter, and
Augustus Tack, Night, Amargosa Desert, 1935. The Phillips
Hudson River School with an
Arnold Friedman. He is at present
Collection, Washington DC, acquired 1937.
immersion into the 19th-century
working on a book, Modern Art in
painters of the Connecticut River.
America, 1908 – 1968: A Critical and
Downing Burke believes that it is better to acquire an
Thematic History. In the Spring of 2011, he was a fellow at
excellent painting by a lesser known artist than a lesser
the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center in Santa Fe,
painting by a well known artist. In her view,the essence
New Mexico.
of art collecting is the acquisition of objects we wish to
David Anfam, Commissioning Editor for Fine Art, Phaidon
have enmeshed in our daily lives.
Press, London; he was the 2003 Henry Luce Visiting Professor
David Park Curry, Senior Curator, Decorative Art,
in American Art at Brandeis University. Educated at the
American Painting and Sculpture, Baltimore Museum
Courtauld Institute of Art (BA, PhD), Anfam is a regular
of Art (BMA); at the BMA, he is directing a
contributor to The Burlington Magazine and has curated
reinstallation of the American collections from the
several exhibitions, including “Mark Rothko: A Retrospective”
late 18th to the mid 20th centuries; formerly Curator
(Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 1996) and the
of American Arts, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Gates
inaugural show of Haunch of Venison New York, “Abstract
Foundation Curator of American Art, Curator of
Expressionism: A World Elsewhere” (2008). Among his
Painting and Sculpture, Denver Art Museum; and
numerous writings, Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas – A
Curator of American Art, Freer Gallery of Art,
Catalogue Raisonné (1998) received the 1998 George
Smithsonian Institution. His research explores aspects
Wittenborn Memorial Award, the 2000 Mitchell Prize, and
of late 19th- and early 20th-century American art
was named among the art books of the year by The New
including Impressionism and Realism, folk art,
York Times, The Boston Globe, and the San Francisco
patronage patterns, framing history, and public
Chronicle. Anfam is adjunct curator, Clyfford Still Museum,
presentation. Among his publications are works on
Denver and, in 2009, received the Umhoeffer Prize for
Bunker, Hassam, Homer, Sargent, and Whistler. His
Achievement in Humanities. His most recent project is an
recent publications include the monograph James
international touring exhibition focused around Pollock’s
McNeill Whistler: Uneasy Pieces (2004); an essay on
epochal Mural (1943), planned to be shown at the Peggy
world fairs for Americans in Paris (2006); articles on
Guggeneheim Collection, Venice in 2015.
painted furniture and reverse glass painting for The
Charles Brock, Associate Curator of American and British
Sienese Shredder (2009, 2010), and a 2011 essay on
Paintings, National Gallery of Art where he has worked since
Whistler’s exhibition designs, “Much in Little Space,”
1990. Among the major exhibitions Brock has contributed to
published in the V & A’s catalogue for the exhibition
are: “Winslow Homer” (1995), “James McNeill Whistler”
“The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860 –
1900.” His recent essay on “George Bellows’ Images
of Polo, Parks, and Tennis” was published by the
National Gallery of Art in their current retrospective
catalogue. He is working on the fish paintings by
William Merritt Chase and on the State china service
designed for President Rutherford B. Hayes.
March. In 2011, her exhibition “Nature and the
American Vision: The Hudson River School” began a
national tour at the Amon Carter Museum of American
Art. She collaborated (with B.D. Gallatti, 2011) on the
traveling exhibition and publication “Making American
Taste: Narrative Art for a New Democracy.”
Stacey Epstein, Director of Modernism and Director of
Research, Hollis Taggart Galleries in New York, and an
independent curator and scholar. Co-curator of the
forthcoming Alfred H. Maurer museum retrospective
organized by the Addison Gallery of American Art and
author of the accompanying catalogue, Alfred H. Maurer
at the Vanguard, Epstein holds master’s and doctoral
degrees from the Graduate School of the City University
of New York, where she wrote her doctoral thesis on
Alfred Maurer. She has since written extensively on
Maurer, including Alfred H. Maurer: Aestheticism to
Modernism 1897 – 1932 (1999), Alfred H. Maurer:
Modernist Expressions (2004), “Alfred H. Maurer:
Reconsidered” in American Art Review (2004), and Alfred
H. Maurer: Fauve in Focus (2006). Epstein has also curated
and written for a range of other American modernist
exhibitions and publications, including Concerning
Expressionism: American Modernism and the German
Avant-Garde (1998), Inheriting Cubism: The Impact of
Cubism on American Art 1909 –1936 (2001),
and Pathways and Parallels: Roads to Abstract
Expressionism (2007). She recently contributed
essays to Cézanne and American Modernism
(Baltimore Museum of Art, 2010) and
Celebrating the American Spirit: Masterworks
from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American
Art (2011). Epstein was featured in “Shattering
Boundaries: Grace Hartigan,” the documentary
film on the American Abstract Expressionist
painter Grace Hartigan.
William H. Gerdts, Professor Emeritus of Art History,
Graduate School of the City University of New York; he was
senior advisor in American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts (2008). Among his most recent publications are:
Once Upon an Island: Stephen Scott Young in the Bahamas
(2012), The Pastels of Leon Dabo (2012), and “A New Look at
Andrew Wyeth,” in Andrew Wyeth in China (2012). Among
his other numerous books and articles are: The Golden Age
of American Impressionism (with C. Lowrey, 2003); Joseph
Raphael (1869 – 1950): An Artistic Journey (2003);
California Impressionism (with W. South, 1998);
Impressionist New York (1994); William Glackens (with J. H.
Santis, 1996); Monet’s Giverny: An Impressionist Colony
(1993); Art Across America (1990); American Impressionism,
(1984; new, expanded edition, 2001); Painters of the Humble
Truth: Masterpieces of American Still-Life, 1801 – 1939
(1981); Grand Illusions: History Painting in America (with M.
Thistlewaite, 1988); and Down Garden Paths: The Floral
Environment in American Art (1983).
Linda S. Ferber, Vice President and Senior
Art Historian, The New-York Historical
Society (N-YHS); previously she served as
Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art
and chair of the Department of American
Art, Brooklyn Museum, where she is curator
emerita. Ferber has organized numerous
exhibitions and written accompanying
publications about William Trost Richards
beginning with “Tokens of a Friendship:
Miniature Watercolors by William T. Richards” Isabel Bishop, Artist’s Table, 1931, oil on canvas, 14 / x 17 / in. Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington, DC, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation, 1986.6.6.
(1982), followed by “Never at Fault: The
Drawings of William T. Richards” (1986) for
Alfred C. Harrison, Jr., owner of North Point Gallery;
the Hudson River Museum and in 2001 and 2002,
he started as a private collector of 19th-century
“Pastoral Interlude: William T. Richards in Chester
American paintings whose hobby turned into his
County” and “In Search of a National Landscape:
profession when he assumed. ownership of the gallery
William Trost Richards and the Artists’ Adirondacks” for
in 1985. In addition to holding exhibitions of early
the Brandywine River Museum and the Adirondack
California art, Harrison has assembled a research
Museum, respectively.” She organized “The New Path:
archive relevant to early California painters from
Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites” at The
contemporary newspaper sources. He is a frequent
Brooklyn Museum (with W. H. Gerdts, 1985). For the
lecturer and writer on the subject. Recent projects
Brooklyn Museum and the National Gallery of Art, she
include essays in the exhibition catalogue California
co-authored and co-curated (with N. K. Anderson,
Impressions published by the Fine Arts Museums of San
1991) Albert Bierstadt: Art & Enterprise. In 1998,
Francisco in 2006, “The Art of William Keith” in The
co-curated and co-authored the accompanying
Comprehensive Keith (St. Mary’s College of California,
publication, “Masters of Color and Light: Homer,
2011) and “Radical Revival: California Plein Air
Sargent and the American Watercolor Movement” (with
Landscapes, Past and Present” in the May / June 2012
B.D. Gallati). In 2007, she organized: “Kindred Spirits:
issue of The Magazine Antiques.
Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape,” for the
Brooklyn Museum while overseeing at the N-YHS, “The
Liza Kirwin, Interim Director, Smithsonian Institution’s
World of Asher B. Durand; The Artist in Antebellum
Archives of American Art; she holds a PhD in American
New York,” followed in 2010 by “The American
Studies from the University of Maryland at College Park.
Landscapes of Asher B. Durand,” also drawn from
Her publications include More Than Words: Illustrated
N-YHS collections, organized for the Fundacion Juan
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To Register
Registration confirmations are sent via email.
To register on-line:
Go to: www.acteva.com/go/americanart
By e-mail: Fill in the registration form and send to:
info@artinitiatives.com.
By mail: Return form at least 10 days before the
conference start date with a check or money order
payable to Initiatives in Art and Culture or complete
the credit card information on the form, and mail to
Initiatives in Art and Culture, 333 East 57th Street, Suite
13B, New York, NY 10022
By phone: Using American Express®, Visa® Card,
Discover®, or MasterCard®, call (646) 485-1952.
Fee: The conference fee is $350.
A discounted rate of $160 is available for museum
and university professionals with ID; a discounted
rate of $100 is available for full-time students with
ID. To receive the discounted rates you must provide
appropriate ID.
Withdrawal and refunds: Notice of withdrawal must
be made in writing to: Initiatives in Art and Culture,
333 East 57th Street, 13B, New York, NY 10022 or to
the Program Office via email at lisa.koenigsberg@
artinitiatives.com. No refunds will be made after May
10, 2013.
Conference location: Formal sessions take place at The
Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth
Avenue (between 34th and 35th Streets).
Program subject to change.
Single-day registration options available; please send inquiries to:
info@artinitiatives.com or call (646) 485-1952.
Currier & Ives, The Life of a Hunter: “A Tight Fix,” 1861, hand-colored lithograph, 183/4 x 271/16 in. Based on a
painting by Arthur FitzWilliam Tait.
Please register me for Reclaiming American Art.
The conference fee is $350. Educators and Museum professionals $160 (with ID).
Student rate $100 (with ID).
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Presenters
Letters from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art
(Princeton Architectural Press, 2005); Artists in Their
Studios, Images from the Smithsonian's Archives of
American Art (Collins Design, 2007); and most recently
Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts,
and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's
Archives of American Art (Princeton Architectural Press,
2010). Kirwin has organized numerous exhibitions of
archival material and manages the Archives’ acquisitions
and oral history programs.
Art Gallery of the Metropolitan Fair, Union Square, New York, April 1864, engraving,
Harper’s Weekly, April 16, 1864.
Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Curator of American
Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art since 2010, she
recently completed work on the new American Paintings
and Sculpture galleries that opened in January 2012. She
served as the chief curator and Krieble Curator of American
Painting and Sculpture at the Wadsworth Atheneum
Museum of Art from 1997 to 2010, having begun her tenure
at the Museum in 1983. Her special exhibitions and
accompanying catalogues for the Wadsworth Atheneum
include “American Moderns on Paper: Masterworks from the
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art” (2010); “Neue Welt:
Die Erfindung der amerikanischen Malerie” (“New World:
Discovering an American Art,” 2007), an international project
with the Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, Germany;
“Samuel Colt: Arms, Art, and Invention” (2006); “Marsden
Hartley” (2003); “Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe &
American Modernism” (1999); “New Worlds from Old:
19th-Century Australian & American Landscapes” (1998);
“Joseph Cornell: Box Constructions and Collages” (1997);
“Thomas Cole: Landscape Into History” (1994); and “Ralph
Earl: The Face of the Young Repubic” (1991). The catalogue
for the Earl exhibition won the 1992 Fraunces Tavern
Museum Book Award. Kornhauser has a PhD in American
Studies from Boston University and an MA in American Folk
Culture from Cooperstown Graduation Programs, SUNY,
Cooperstown, NY. A graduate of the Getty Leadership
Institute, Los Angeles, Kornhauser serves as a member of the
Advisory Board of the Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg,
Germany, and the Thomas Cole National Historic Site.
Valerie Ann Leeds, independent curator and scholar
specializing in the work of Robert Henri and the Ashcan
painters; her current projects include: “Spanish Sojourns:
Robert Henri and the Spirit of Spain,” a travelling exhibition
and accompanying publication organized with the Telfair
Museum of Art, Savannah. Recent projects include “Road to
Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland,” a travelling exhibition
and catalogue produced with the Mint Museum, Charlotte,
North Carolina; a traveling retrospective and publication
devoted to the work of Midwestern Precisionist, Edmund
Lewandowski, for the Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan; and a
project exploring Georgia O'Keeffe and camping, “Georgia
O’Keeffe and the Faraway: Nature and Image” (2010). Past
publications include My People: The Portraits of Robert Henri
(1994); Robert Henri in Santa Fe: His Work and Influence
(1998); Robert Henri: The Painted Spirit (2005); and studies
on The Eight and their circle, including an essay in the
catalogue for the Detroit Institute of Arts traveling
exhibition, “Life’s Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists Brush with
Leisure” (2007). Other publications include studies on the
work of John Sloan (2009), William Glackens (2003), Ernest
Lawson (2000), Leon Kroll (1998), Charles Davis (2007), and
Marguerite Zorach (2007). She received a PhD from the
Graduate Center of CUNY, and has held curatorial positions
at the Flint Institute of Arts, Orlando Museum of Art, Tampa
Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Lance Mayer and Gay Myers, conservators of paintings;
they work part time at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New
London, Connecticut, and spend the majority of their time
working as independent conservators for large and small
museums and private collectors. They have treated such
important American paintings as Rembrandt Peale’s The
Court of Death at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Samuel F. B.
Morse’s The Gallery of the Louvre, owned by the Terra
Foundation, and Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the
Delaware at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. For many
years they have been studying documentary sources that
shed light on the history of painting materials, and have
published on such topics as the varnishing practices of
American Impressionist painters, the experimental
techniques of the British painter George Stubbs, and the
tempera techniques used by 20th-century painters of the
American scene. They were recipients of a Winterthur
Advanced Fellowship in 1999, were Museum Scholars at the
Getty Research Institute in 2003, and received an FAIC/ Kress
Publication Grant in 2005. Their most recent publications
are: American Painters on Technique: The Colonial Period to
1860 (Getty Publications, 2011), and American Painters on
Technique: 1860 – 1945 (Getty Publications, July 2013). In
2013, they were awarded the College Art Association/
Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship
and Conservation.
Steven Miller, museum consultant, writer, educator; recently
served as collection consultant, Museum of the City of New
York, and, in various curatorial capacities from 1971 to 1987.
Miller is Executive Director Emeritus, Morris Museum,
Morristown, NJ, where he served as Executive Director of
both the museum and its Bickford Theatre (2001 – 2010).
Prior to that he was Executive Director, Bennington Museum,
Bennington, Vermont (1995-2001); Director of Museums,
Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio (1991–
1995); and Assistant Director, Maine State Museum, Augusta,
Maine (1987–1995). A member of the boards of trustees of
ArtPride New Jersey and Historic Deerfield Inc., he also serves
on American Alliance of Museums’ Accreditation Visiting
Committee, and is an ongoing, writer for Museum magazine.
George Bellows, My House, Woodstock, 1924, oil on panel. Michael A. Mennello, Winter Park.
Miller holds a BA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson,
New York and an International Graduate Certificate,
Principles of Conservation Science, International Centre for
the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural
Property, Rome, Italy. He teaches Museum Studies at Seton
Hall University and has taught at other institutions among
them NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies,
NYU’s Graduate Program in Archival Management and
Historical Editing, Case Western Reserve University, The New
School for Social Research, and Columbia University’s
Graduate School of Architecture and Planning.
Mark D. Mitchell, Associate Curator of American Painting
and Sculpture and manager of the Center for American
Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art. He worked at the
Princeton University Art Museum, Hood Museum of Art
at Dartmouth College, and National Academy Museum in
New York. Among other subjects, Mitchell has written
and lectured on American drawings and watercolors. He
curated the first exhibition of landscape painter Francis A.
Silva (1835 – 1886) in 2002 and co-organized the first
retrospective of artist and collector James A. Suydam
(1819 – 1865) in 2006. He contributed an essay on
Charles Demuth (1883 – 1935) to the catalogue
accompanying the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s
blockbuster “Cézanne and Beyond,” and curated the
Museum’s recent exhibition “George Inness in Italy.” His
current project is a survey of American still-life painting
that opens in summer 2014. He received his doctorate in
American art history from Princeton in 2002.
Charles Simonds, Wilted Towers, 1984, unfired clay. Private collection, New York;
photo courtesy of Charles Simonds.
Andrew Schoelkopf, co-founder and partner,
Menconi & Schoelkopf Fine Art, LLC; Schoelkopf
literally grew up in an American painting gallery; his
father, Robert Schoelkopf, opened an art gallery on
Madison Avenue in 1958 and ran the business—which
Andrew joined in 1989—until his passing in 1991.
After the closing of the Robert Schoelkopf Gallery,
Schoelkopf joined Christie’s auction house as a
specialist in American paintings and became director
of the American Paintings Department in 1995,
leading several of the firm’s most successful auctions
in the field, most notably that of American paintings,
drawings and sculpture from the estate of Thomas
Mellon Evans. He subsequently held a number of
senior positions with Christie’s including director of
business development for North and South America;
in his final position with the firm, he served as
president of Christie’s Internet auction business. He
was also a member of Christie’s Business
Development and Operating Committees. In April
2001, Andrew and his partner Susan Menconi opened
their doors and are private dealers specializing in
American paintings, drawings, and sculpture of the
18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries; they have sold
works of art to the leading private collectors and
museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston;
The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and The Art
Institute of Chicago. The recipient of a BA from
Denison University and an MBA from Fordham
University Graduate School of Business, Schoelkopf is
a past member of the board of directors of the
Private Art Dealers Association of America and sits on
the Art Show Committee of the Art Dealers
Association of America. The gallery is a member of
both the Private Art Dealers Association of America
and the Art Dealers Association of America.
Paul Staiti, Alumnae Foundation Professor of Fine
Arts, Mount Holyoke College; Staiti is the author of
books and essays on John Singleton Copley, Gilbert
Stuart, Samuel F. B. Morse, William Michael Harnett,
and Winslow Homer. He has lectured at the Louvre and
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has been
awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for
the Humanities three times. He is currently writing a
book on Copley, Stuart, Benjamin West, and John
Trumbull, to be titled Visions of the Republic: The
Revolutionary Lives of American Artists in King
George’s London.
Thayer Tolles, Curator, The American Wing, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art; at the Museum, she
oversees the American sculpture collection. She
participated in extensive ongoing renovations to the
American Wing, reinstalling the sculpture in the
Charles Engelhard Court (opened May 2009) and the
second-floor paintings and sculpture galleries
(opened January 2012). She edited and co-authored
the two-volume catalogue American Sculpture in The
Metropolitan Museum of Art (1999 and 2001) and
Perspectives on American Sculpture Before 1925: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia (2003). Tolles
curated the exhibition “Augustus Saint-Gaudens in
The Metropolitan Museum of Art” (2009) with an
accompanying publication of the same title. She is
co-curating the exhibition “The American West in
Bronze, 1850 – 1925,” which opens at the
Metropolitan in December 2013 and travels to the
Denver Art Museum and the Nanjing Museum, China.
James W. Tottis, Director of Collections, Museum of
the City of New York; previously, he was a member of
the curatorial staff in the Department of American
Art, Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) for over 24 years;
he has also served as adjunct professor in the
Humanities Department at Wayne State University
since 1991. His exhibition, “Life’s Pleasures: The
Ashcan Artists Brush with Leisure” (2008), was
accompanied by a multi-author catalogue. He was the
organizing curator for “American Beauty: Paintings
and Sculpture from the Detroit Institute of Arts 1770
– 1920,” a multi-venue exhibition in Europe and
America; and organizing curator for “Building Detroit:
150 Years of Architecture and Innovation,” which
explored 50 of the city’s most celebrated and
influential structures and their architects, and that
was part of the DIA’s celebration of Detroit’s
tercentenary. His most recent publications are The
Guardian Building: Cathedral of Finance (2008) and
Life’s Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists Brush with Leisure.
He has contributed to Collecting American Decorative
Arts 1985 – 2005; American Paintings in the Detroit
Institute of Arts, vol. III; and From the Hudson River
School to Impressionism: American Paintings from the
Manoogian Collection.
Friday – Saturday, May 17 – 18, 2013
18 th Annual American Art Conference
Reclaiming American Art
Henry Alexander, The Lost Genius, 1884, oil on canvas, 213/4 by 29 7/8 in. Berkeley Art
Museum, University of California Berkeley, Bequest of Hannah N. Haviland; photo
courtesy of Genevieve Cottraux.
Initiatives in Art and Culture
333 East 57th Street, Suite 13B
New York, New York 10022
Reclaiming American Art
18 th Annual American Art Conference
Friday – Saturday, May 17 – 18, 2013
Alexander Phimister Proctor, Buffalo, 1912, bronze, 13½ x 19 x 9¾ in. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York. Bequest of George D. Pratt, 1935 48.149.29.
Leon Kroll, In the Country, 1916, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders
Society Purchase, Special Membership and Donations Fund with a contribution from
J. J. Crowley, 19.35.
Thomas Le Clear, The Itinerants, 1862, oil on canvas, 25¼ x 40 in. Private collection; photo courtesy of
Debra Force Fine Art.
Edmund Lewandowski, Wisconsin Ore Freighter, 1948, oil
on canvas, 42 x 30¾ in. Collection of the Milwaukee Art
Museum, gift of Gimbel Bros., Milwaukee, M1959.
The graduate center, the city university oF New York