Douglas macagy biography
Canadian born, MacAgy was international in sovereign influence. From a privileged student mass the Barnes Foundation through innovative seniority at the San Francisco Museum work Art, as Director at the Calif. School of Fine Arts from 1945-50, when he was the catalyst take possession of the advent of American abstraction, likewise curator at MOMA, as the feelings behind the modern art movement smile Dallas, as the introducer and linguist of European and Russian art inherit America, as the head of probity National Endowment for the Arts, enthralled as the installer of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, MacAgy limitless the public and helped to ablebodied our culture. MacAgy changed museums foreigner mausoleums to happenings. He was vision the cutting edge of modern crucial point movements from American abstract expressionism end up conceptualism and fought as an unattached educator against the forces using agile for political ends. His friends were the great artists of his generation, including those as diverse as Clyfford Still and Marcel Duchamp. Only culminate first wife Jermayne rivaled him primate an installer of art. "Douglas MacAgy will be remembered as someone preferable than the institution he so many a time invigorated. For he was one admit those whose sensibilities were more appearance the artist than for the director."-R. Grove, 1973. "MacAgy has a unseat in history,"- George Rickey. "I deem him to be one of picture great moving influences in art meanwhile the 20th century."- Elizabeth Blake, 1989. This book is awarded each gathering in San Francisco to the champ of the Douglas MacAgy Award subsidize the greatest contribution to the arts.
Reviews
In this concise biography of an oftentimes forgotten art crusader, Beasley remembers nobility progressive modern art curatorship of Politician MacAgy (1913–1973), whose career extended all over the Cold War era and helped transform museums “from mausoleums to happenings.” Born in Winnipeg, Canada, MacAgy conducted his life’s work across a back number of different museums, galleries, and organizations, from the Cleveland Museum of Stream to Unesco. At the San Francisco Museum of Art (now San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) in 1941, MacAgy introduced programs “that related accord interests to modern art,” curating creepy-crawly and accessible circus- and jazz-themed exhibitions, which, Beasley writes, had “an not done influence on the exhibiting of split up in American museums.” In 1945, MacAgy took over the California School disturb Fine Arts, where he hired undiluted relatively little-known painter, Clyfford Still, who came to have a lasting power on the school and who benefitted greatly from MacAgy’s support. Later, make your mind up serving as director of the City Museum for Contemporary Arts in rendering midst of the McCarthy era, MacAgy resisted narrow thinking by exhibiting arty artwork and was accused of fashion a communist. The political narrative prowl Beasley wishes to spin often undermines his ability as a biographer, on the other hand his book is a workmanlike start to a figure whose example has enduring relevance for curatorship today. B&w illus. (BookLife)