Full Name: Carter, Ernestine Mary Fantl
Other Names:
- Ernestine Fantl Carter
- Ernestine Mary Fantl
- Ernestine M. Fantl
Gender: female
Date Born: 10 October 1906
Date Died: 01 August 1983
Place Born: Washington, DC, USA
Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Modern (style or period), and prints (visual works)
Institution(s): Museum of Modern Art
Overview
First and still only woman head curator of the Department of Architecture and Industrial Art at MoMA; modern architecture and typography specialist. Born in Washington, D.C., Fantl was raised in Savannah, Georgia, where her father Siegfried Fantl (1872 – 1945), an immigrant from Southern Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), was a merchandise broker of textiles. She attended Pape School (modern Savannah Country Day School) and gained passion for French and modern dance. In 1921, her father went bankrupt and the family moved to New York where Siegfried’s two brothers were doing business in the fashion industry.
Fantl studied English language and literature at Wellesley College where she became acquainted with Alfred Barr in his modern art history class. When she graduated in 1927, Barr referred her to a position at the Fifty-Seventh Street Gallery of J. B. Neumann. Meanwhile, she modeled part time for the photographer Ralph Steiner (1899-1986) befriending him and his wife Mary Steiner (1914-2009), who later recommended Fantl as a secretary to the architect and designer William Lescaze (1896-1969). Fantl’s enthusiasm for modern architecture aligned with the interests of Barr and Philip Johnson. They recruited her to help with the Rejected Architects Exhibition. In 1932, Johnson hired her as a personal assistant to help with MoMA’s first architecture exhibition, Modern Architecture: International Exhibition. After the exhibition, MoMA established the world’s first curatorial Department of Architecture, and Fantl was officially hired as an assistant curator under Johnson. Soon after, she was also made in charge of the Department of Publications. In 1935, when Johnson resigned, Fantl took over Johnson’s position as the head of the architecture department, soon to become the Department of Architecture and Industrial Art. In the same year, she issued her first book, a staple-bound list of California architects, Modern Architecture in California. During her career at MoMA, she frequently traveled between the United States and Europe, where she encountered her future husband John Wayneflete Carter (1905-1975) on a visit to England. In 1936, she married Carter and moved to London. John McAndrew succeeded her position at MoMA.
Fantl, now Carter, remained a member of the Architecture Committee at MoMA and kept in touch with Barr. During the WWII, a book she edited on the destroyed buildings of London was published in 1941; she began working at the US Office of War Information in London in 1943, helping to bring exhibitions from the US to the United Kingdom. Her last curation efforts were the fashion portion for the Britain Can Make It exhibition at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum in 1946. She transitioned into her journalistic phase. Having worked at Harper’s Bazaar, The Observer, and Sunday Times, she retired in 1972. Her autobiography With Tongue in Chic was published in 1974.
Selected Bibliography
- Modern Architecture in California. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. 1935.
- compiled., and Barr, Alfred H., Miller, Dorothy Canning, and Newhall, Beaumont. Cubism and Abstract Art. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. 1936.
- and Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, and Wurster, Catherine Bauer. Modern Architecture in England. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. 1937.
- edited., Grim Glory: Pictures of Britain under Fire. London: Lund Humphries, 1941.
- With Tongue in Chic. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1974.
Sources
- Kinchin, Juliet. “Ernestine Fantl Carter (1906-1983)”, in Inventing the Modern: Untold Stories of the Women Who Shaped the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2024, pp.123-145.
Archives
Ernestine Fantl Carter papers, MSS-020, Wellesley College Archives, Library and Technology Services, Wellesley College. https://archives.wellesley.edu/repositories/2/resources/322
Contributors: Yuhuan Zhang