An interview with Dennis Adrian conducted 2015 October 8-9, by Lanny Silverman, for the Archives of American Art's Chicago Art and Artists: Oral History Project, at Adrian's home in Seaside, Oregon.
Adrian speaks of growing up in Astoria; traveling to Chicago and New York; Cannon Beach; aging and getting older; his origins; curators and curating; visual sensibilities; the Portland Public Library; opera; his parents, grandparents, and family; Finnish sensibility and humor; Portland Art Museum and classes for children; curator as voyeur; credit and accomplishments; hands on experiences; Artforum; art history; attending University of Chicago; homosexuality and coming out; looted European masterworks; Botticelli; exposure to real art; connoisseurship; collectors and collecting; a Robert Louis Stevenson letter; violin making; growing into yourself; Chicago; war; New York University; Frumkin Gallery; New York; the art world; Madison Art Center; Akron Art Museum; friendship and role models; Art Institute of Chicago; meeting Mies van der Rohe; meeting idols; education; Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Monster Roster; traveling; Chicago art politics; writing and critics; Eurocentric curators; Chicago as an undervalued city; Dog Day Afternoon; discovering art; New York sightings; and experiences running into artists. Adrian also recalls Roger Brown, Ruth Horwich, Gilda Buchbinder, Don Baum, Sherman Lee, Victor Carlson, Peter Voulkos, Lawrence Alloway, Rhona Hoffman, Allan Frumkin, June Leaf, Leon Golub, Jeremy Anderson, Robert Barnes, Tom Garver, Bruce Conner, Natasha Nicholson, H. C. Westermann, Franz Schulze, Bertha Harris Wiles, Muriel Newman, Aaron James Spire, Lillian Florsheim, John Maxon, Greg Knight, P.B. Maryan, Philip Pearlstein, Sylvia Sleigh, Nancy Spero, Irving Petlin, John Coplans, Alan Artner, Alice Shaddle, Phyllis Kind, Andy Warhol, Joseph Cornell, Tilda Swinton, Leo Castelli, Philip Guston, Dubuffet, Pussy Pepke, Bumpy Rogers, Barbara Rossi, Christina Ramberg, Philip Hanson, Miyoko Ito, Mark Jackson, Rolf Achilles, and Vito Acconci.
Biographical / Historical:
Dennis Adrian (1937- ) is an art critic, educator, and curator in Chicago, Illinois. Lanny Silverman (1947- ) is a curator at the Chicago Cultural Center in Chicago, Illinois.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Occupation:
Art critics -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Interviews Search this
Files on artwork by Baum, exhibition and loan files, photographs of artwork by others, personal correspondence, and an audio recording.
Files on Baum's artwork, organized chronologically, include photographs and slides of works, as well as titles, dates, locations if known, and occasional printed material and correspondence regarding loans or purchases. Exhibition and loan files are organized chronologically and include printed material and correspondence with the Betsy Rosenfeld Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago and various Chicago Imagist group shows, among others. Other files include photographs and slides of artwork by other artists.
Personal correspondence includes letters and postcards from Baum's children, and his friends, most of them Chicago artists, including Miriam Brofsky, Glen Davies, Gabrielle Edgecomb, Hans Gallas, Phil Hanson, Miyoko Ito, Jin Soo Kim, June Leaf, Jim Nutt, Barbara Rossi, Darthea Speyer, Sue Taylor, Ken Warneke, Karl Wirsum and others. Many of the letters are illustrated or contain objects. Also included is a radio program about Baum's assemblage houses produced by Wisconsin Public Radio, 1988.
Biographical / Historical:
Don Baum (1922-2008) was a sculptor, assemblage artist, and curator in Chicago, Ill. Baum was considered part of the Hairy Who and the Chicago Imagists.
Provenance:
Donated 1995 by Don Baum and in 2009 by Maria Baum, Don Baum's daughter.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
