CAA News Today
May Obituaries in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — May 13, 2009
CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, art historians, and theorists. Of special note are two obituaries written especially for CAA: Richard R. Ranta on Carol Purtle, and Clark V. Poling on John Howett.
- Ernie Barnes, an artist who was also a professional football player, died on April 27, 2009, at the age of 70
- John Howett, a professor emeritus of art history at Emory University, died on April 8, 2009, at the age of 82
- Jack Prip, a silversmith who taught for many years at the Rhode Island School of Design, died on April 8, 2009. He was 86
- Carol Purtle, a professor of art history at the University of Memphis, died on December 12, 2008, at the age of 69
- David W. Scott, an artist, art historian, and founding director of the National Museum of American Art, died on March 30, 2009. He was 92
- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, a literary theorist and pioneer of queer studies, died on April 12, 2009, at the age of 58
- Honoré Sharrer, a figurative American artist who rose to prominence in the 1940s, died on April 17, 2009. She was 88
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
John Howett: In Memoriam
posted by CAA — May 13, 2009
Clark V. Poling is professor emeritus of art history at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
John Howett
John Howett, professor of art history at Emory University for thirty years, died on April 8, 2009, at the age of 82. A founding member of the Art History Department and active with numerous arts organizations in Atlanta, he nurtured the careers of many artists and undergraduate and graduate students both in art history and in the interdisciplinary Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts.
After serving with the US infantry in the Philippines and Japan during World War II, Howett began his career in art as a student at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, Indiana, earning a BFA. He received an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago in Illinois, specializing in early Italian Renaissance art; during this time he was curator of the University of Notre Dame Art Gallery as well as associate professor at that university.
Arriving at Emory in 1966, Howett helped develop the Art History Department and its graduate program, summer-abroad program in Europe, and collection of works of art on paper, which subsequently became part of Emory’s Michael C. Carlos Museum. He was revered as a teacher and mentor, having received the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award, the Award for Outstanding Teaching and Service to Undergraduate Students, and the Arts and Sciences Award of Distinction. Recently, a former student established the John Howett Travel Fund for Advanced Undergraduate Seminars in Art History in his honor.
Howett was instrumental in the decision to select Michael Graves as the architect of the Carlos Museum. In recognition of his contributions there, including serving as curator for a number of exhibitions of works on paper, a gallery in the museum is named in his honor, as is the newly established John Howett Works on Paper Fund. Howett has also been awarded the Woolford B. Baker Award for service to the museum and the arts at Emory.
When Howett arrived in Atlanta in the sixties, the civil rights movement was at its height, and he became active in antiwar and social-justice efforts. He was an ardent supporter of the arts community in the city, serving on the boards of the Atlanta College of Art, Art Papers, the Arts Festival of Atlanta, Nexus Contemporary Art Center, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Georgia. A board member of the High Museum of Art for two decades, he helped in the choice of Richard Meier as architect of its new building completed in 1983. The many exhibitions for which he served as curator—at the High, the Carlos, and galleries in Atlanta—included contemporary art as well as Renaissance and Baroque illuminations, prints, and drawings. His championing of Atlanta artists in exhibitions and publications aided many careers and contributed to the burgeoning arts community.
Howett was a model of the publicly engaged academic: kind, humorous, wise, and spirited in navigating the shoals of university politics and bureaucracy and bridging the gap between academia and the broader community.
Recent Deaths in the Arts
posted by Christopher Howard — April 09, 2009
CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, and architects. Of special note is Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and June Hargrove’s obituary for CAA on the Swiss art historian Hans A. Lüthy.
- Robert Delford Brown, an artist who helped create Happenings in the early 1960s, was found dead in Wilmington, North Carolina, on March 24, 2009. He was 78
- Hanne Darboven, a German artist who was a major figure in Conceptual art, died on March 9, 2009, near Hamburg. She was 67
- Johnny Donnels, a New Orleans photographer, died on March 19, 2009, at the age of 84
- Lorenz Eitner, a professor who rebuilt the Stanford University Art Department and directed the school’s museum, died on March 11, 2009. He was 89
- Sverre Fehn, a Norwegian architect who won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, died on February 23, 2009, at age 84
- Mary Hambleton, an artist, teacher, and Guggenheim fellow, died on January 9, 2009. She was 56
- Helen Levitt, an American photographer whose first solo exhibition was at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943, died on March 29, 2009, in New York. She was 95
- Hans A. Lüthy, a Swiss art historian, died on March 8, 2009
- Stephen M. Panella, an artist based in Aurora, Illinois, died on November 29, 2008, at the age of 34
- Susan Peterson, a ceramic artist, writer, and professor, died on March 26, 2009, in Scottsdale, Arizona. She was 83
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
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.