An interview of Anne Rorimer conducted 2010 November 15-16, by Judith Olch Richards, for the Archives of American Art's Elizabeth Murray Oral History of Women in the Visual Arts project, at Rorimer's home, in Chicago, Illinois.
Rorimer speaks of her family background; her early life and education in New York City; her father, James Rorimer, and his influence as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; college life at Bryn Mawr; how she became interested in modern art; her internship at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London after college; her master's degree thesis on Tony Smith; her job as a curator at the Albright-Knox Gallery and then at the Art Institute of Chicago; memorable exhibitions at the AIC throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, including the annual "American Exhibition," "Europe in the Seventies: Aspects of Recent Art," (1977), and "Idea and Image in Recent Art" (1974); her close relationship with Anne D'Harnoncourt; how she left the AIC in 1984 to write, "New Art in the '60s and 70s: Redefining Reality," (2001); her role in acquisitions of contemporary art at the AIC; her thoughts on art education; her work with collectors; the process of getting her book published and reactions to it; her curatorial projects in the 1980s and early 1990s that focused on conceptual art; her relationship with artists like Michael Asher and Daniel Buren; her extensive book collection; her thoughts on being a freelance curator and writer. She recalls Whitney Stoddard, Robert Beverly Hale, Theodoros Stamos, Leo Castelli, Henry Geldzahler, Anne D'Harnoncourt, Renee Marcuse, Bates Lowry, Tony Smith, Marcia Tucker, A. James Speyer, Bruce Nauman, Lawrence Weiner, Vito Acconci, William Wegman, Robert Morris, Lucy R. Lippard, Katharine Kuh, Sol Lewitt, John Maxon, Eva Hesse, Muriel Newman, Judith Kirschner, Dan Graham, Benjamin Buchloh, and Marcel Broodthaers.
Biographical / Historical:
Anne Rorimer (1944-) is a curator and art historian in Chicago, Illinois. Judith Olch Richards (1947-) is a former executive director of iCI in New York, New York.
General:
Originally recorded on 4 memory cards. Reformatted in 2010 as 6 digital wav files. Duration is 5 hr., 36 min.
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 historians -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Interviews Search this
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
Painting in Italy in the eighteenth century: rococo to romanticism. An exhibition organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Toledo Museum of Art. Edited by John Maxon and Joseph J. Rishel
