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Fax, Elton Clay

Full Name: Fax, Elton Clay

Gender: male

Date Born: 09 October 1909

Date Died: 13 May 1993

Place Born: Baltimore, Baltimore Independent City, MD, USA

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): African American, biography (general genre), and Black (general, race and ethnicity)

Career(s): artists (visual artists) and authors


Overview

Author of early books on black artists and New York Times illustrator. Elton Clay Fax was born to Mark Oakland Fax and Willie Estelle Fax. Fax developed a strong passion for reading, which was inspired by his mother, a school teacher.

In 1926, Fax graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore and then attended Claflin College, a historically Black college, in South Carolina. He subsequently transferred to Syracuse University receiving his BFA in 1931. As an artist, he received a gold medal in 1932 at Baltimore’s Women’s Cooperative Civic League.

Between 1935 and 1936, Fax returned to Claflin to teach art, but left for New York City to teach at the Harlem Community Art Center until 1940, part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era art program funded by the federal government. At the Center, Fax worked under sculptor Augusta Savage (1892-1962), who directed the Center, and alongside artists including Selma Burke and Norman Lewis.

Fax’s career roughly fell into two stages: the illustrator-cartoonist era and the author-chronicler era. The former began during his college years and slowly transitioned to the latter around the 1950s, drawing inspiration from his extensive travels. Beginning in the 1930s, prominent black artists like Romare Bearden, began writing literature as well. Fax’s illustrating followed this trend (Driskell).  In 1942 he published a comic strip Susabelle.  Journals such as Astounding Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Real Western, and All Sports printed his illustrations beginning in 1943. Fax moved to book illustration in 1944, illustrating black- and racially-integrated stories such as Dr. George Washington Carver, Scientist (1944), a biography by Shirley Graham (1896-1977) and George Lipscomb (1898-1957) and Georgene Faulkner (1873-1958)’s children’s books Melindy’s Medal (1945) and Melindy’s Happy Summer (1949).  In 1949 and 1956, Fax performed chalk talk, or live drawing, for the New York Times Children’s Book Program.

He and his family moved to Mexico between 1953. During this time, he received sponsorship from the U.S. Department of State Educational Exchange Program to travel throughout Latin America and South America, concluding in 1956. In 1959, he arrived in Rome as one of the fourteen representatives of the American Society of African Culture. He published West African Vignettes, a picture travelogue, in 1960. In 1963, lectured under sponsorship in East Africa. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) also supported Fax, alongside artists Jacob Lawrence and James Lewis, to travel to West Africa. Eventually he travelled to Uruguay, Argentina, Bolivia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Bulgaria, and others. Back in the US, he became a MacDowell Colony Fellow in 1968.

The Soviet Writer’s Union invited him to the USSR in 1971.  This began a long admiration of communism as a just treatment of blacks.  Fax received the Coretta Scott King Book Award from the American Library Association in 1972 for his book Seventeen Black Artists (1971), a profile collection of famous Black artists, including Elizabeth Catlett, Roy de Carava, Benny Andrews, and Norma Morgan. In the same year, Fax’s Garvey: The Story of a Pioneer Black Nationalist (1972) was released, a biography of the Black activist Marcus Garvey (1887-1940).   He returned to the Soviet Writer’s Union in 1973.  His African visits resulted in Fax’s Through Black Eyes: Journey of a Black Artist of East Africa and Russia in 1974.  A 1976 Rockefeller Foundation Research Grant allowed Fax to travel to return to Italy. Between international travels, Fax lived in New York City.  Five years later, Fax published Black Artists of the New Generation (1977), with Romare Bearden writing the Forward, all these later books published by Progress Publishers, a Russian English-language publisher.

Fax focused in his writing on interviews in his book writing. When writing both Black Artists of the New Generation and Seventeen Black Artists, Fax interviewed every artist discussed in the two books. Fax received Syracuse University’s Chancellor’s Medal in 1990 for these works.  Politically he contrasted the traditional American view of black artists, contrasting them to the reception in African and communist Russia.

The New York Public Library and Syracuse University hold the most expansive collections of Elton Fax’s papers, with other papers, artworks, and documents stored at the University of Minnesota at Twin Cities and Boston University.


Selected Bibliography

  • West African Vignettes. New York: American Society of African Culture, 1960.
  • Contemporary Black Leaders. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1970.
  • Seventeen Black Artists. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1971.
  • ​​Garvey: The Story of a Pioneer Black Nationalist. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1972.
  • Through Black Eyes: Journey of a Black Artist fo East Africa and Russia. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1974.
  • Black Artists of the New Generation. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1977.
  • Hashar. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1980.
  • Elyuchin. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1983.
  • “It’s Been a Beautiful but Rugged Journey.” Black American Literature Forum 20, no. 3 (1986): 273-288.
  • Soviet People as I Knew Them. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1988.

Sources

  • Baker, James K. “The American Society of African Culture.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 4, no. 3 (1966): 367-369.
  • Cederholm, Theresa Dickason. Afro-American Artists: A Bio-bibliographical Directory. Boston: Trustees of the Boston Public Library, 1973.
  • Driskell, David C. “Bibliographies in Afro-American Art.” American Quarterly 30, no. 3 (1978): 374-394.
  • Falk, Pete Hastings et al. ed. Who was Who in American Art, 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America. Vol. One. Madison: South View Press, 1999.
  • Hastings Falk, Pete et al. ed. Who was Who in American Art, 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America. Vol. 1. Madison: South View Press, 1999.
  • Johnson, Toki. “Elton and Grace Fax in Mexico, 1956.” New Pittsburgh Courier, September 8, 1956.
  • Locke, Alain, ed. The Negro in Art: A Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art. Washington D.C.: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 131.
  • MacDowell. “Elton Fax.” MacDowell, accessed February 15, 2024, macdowell.org/artists/elton-fax.
  • Pendergast, Sara and Tom Pendergast. Contemporary Black Biography: Profiles from the International Black Community, Vol. 48. Farmington Hills: Thomas Gale, 2005, 67-68.
  • Peters, Ida. “Black History Feature: Elton Clay Fax.” Afro-American, February 16, 1980, 11.
  • R. Bowker. Who’s Who in American Art, 20th ed. New Providence: R. R. Bowker, 1993.
  • R. Bowker. Who’s Who in American Art, 21th ed. New Providence: R. R. Bowker, 1995.

Archives


Contributors: Zhihui Jerry Zou


Citation

Zhihui Jerry Zou. "Fax, Elton Clay." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/faxe/.


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Fax was a writer, cartoonist, Coretta Scott King Book Award recipient, and illustrator for the New York Times and many other publications. He focused on producing biographical narratives of both famous and emerging African American artists in his collections, especially in his book “Seventeen Black Artists.”

Fasola, Giusta Nicco

Full Name: Fasola, Giusta Nicco

Other Names:

  • Giusta Maria Rosa
  • G. N. Fasola

Gender: female

Date Born: 23 February 1901

Date Died: 08 November 1960

Place Born: Alba, Cuneo, Tuscany, Italy

Place Died: Fiesole, Fierenze, Tuscany, Italy

Home Country/ies: Italy

Institution(s): Università di Genova


Overview

Anti-fascist, medieval, and Renaissance art historian. Giusta Nicco Fasola was born Giustina Maria Rosa to parents Marianna Rosa Cumino (Nicco) and Carlo Nicco in Turin. Giusta acquired her full education in the city of Turin attending the local schools for her elementary, high school, and undergraduate degrees. She graduated from the Università degli Studi di Torino in 1922 and 1924 acquired undergraduate degrees in philosophy and literature, respectively. At the University she studied under both Adolfo and Lionello Venturi and received a 110 cum laude on her final assessment, the highest one can receive under the Italian university grading scale. She began her career staying in Turin to teach at many institutions such as the Liceo Classico Vittorio Alfieri where she taught art history, the Istituto Nazionale delle figlie dei militari Villa Regina di Torino where she taught courses in philosophy and pedagogy, as well as other preparatory schools such as the Liceo Domenico Berti, il Regio liceo ginnasio Vittorio Gioberti di Torino, and il Liceo Classico Cavour. At the Cavour among her students was Giulio Carlo Argan. She remained a high school educator until 1927 when she focused on her role at the Università degli Studi di Torino until 1933 as a voluntary assistant to the chair of art history.

In 1934 she married Cesare Fasola (1886-1963), an art historian later known for his participation in the MFAA program in collaboration with, Monuments Man, Frederick Hartt. She subsequently changed her name to Giusta Nicco Fasola, the name she published under. They settled in Tuscany as a couple where they completed the rest of their careers specifically in Fiesole, outside of Florence.

The decade of the 1940s was marked not only by the Second World War, but also deeply personally for Nicco Fasola. As a staunch anti-fascist, she participated in many Italian resistance movements. It is, however, documented that Nicco Fasola was a member of the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) from 1933 to 1943. However, these dates coincide with the parties controlling history and so her participation can be considered an effort to remain employed in Italy. The party ultimately dissolved in 1943 which is when her registration with the party ended. In reality, Nicco Fasola was in her words “denounced and monitored” by the PNF as she was the secretary of the Fiesole committee for the anti-German occupation group: the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN). Her main focus, however, was working in a similar organization to the CLN called the Comitato Toscano di Liberazione Nazionale where she carried out many jobs such as resettling illegal immigrants, distributing clandestine press, and organizing for the delivery of propaganda material and weaponry on behalf of the CLN. During the war, she was also a member of the anti-fascist group Partito d’Azione (PdA) which was a member party of the CLN in company with her husband since 1941. Nicco Fasola continued her political work becoming a member of the Commissione edilizia del Comune di Firenze where she helped house Jewish refugees for two years during the War. It was then in 1948 that she and her husband left the PDA committee to join the Partito Socialista Italiano. Nicco Fasola participated in many political parties and projects; her efforts as a partisan fighter were rewarded with the merit cross in April of 1950.

After the war, Nicco Fasola was able to return to her academic ambitions, teaching at multiple notable institutions in Italy. Starting in 1944 she taught momentarily at the University of Florence as well as the University of Padua, before settling at the University of Genoa as an art history professor within the Facoltà di Lettere, regarded to be a primary pioneer in developing the Institute of Art History. After more than a decade-long career, Nicco Fasola prematurely died on 8 November 1960 at age 59 in her home after a battle with an illness. In her sickness, she was surrounded by her husband and friends such as artist Antonio Bueno who commended her sense of loyalty to the teaching profession as she received students in her home when she became too ill to commute to the University of Genoa. She is buried in her family tomb in Bra, Italy.

Giusta Nicco Fasola’s art historical interest was primarily based in the Renaissance as she had a special interest in the works of Pontormo and Nicola Pisano. She produced monographs for each, Pontormo o del Cinquecento (1947) and Nicola Pisano: orientamenti sulla formazione del gusto italiano (1951). However, she also wrote on the subject of Renaissance architecture and particularly on the characteristics of Mannerism. She published Il Manierismo e l’arte Veneziana del ‘500 in 1956 and the article titled Giulio Romano e il Manierismo, in Salmi and Venturi’s art review journal, Commentari. Nicco Fasola’s work was frequently reviewed; in 1953 Rudolf Wittkower wrote of her article titled La Fontana di Perugia (1948-1949) praising her ability to make singular interpretations about Pisano and his son as artists based on the available documentation. Three years later the same work would be reviewed in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, the German art history journal, by Harald Keller where he referred to her work as having “convinced us to throw errors overboard that for generations had been favored work hypotheses”. Her papers reside with her husband’s archive (the Cesare Fasola archival production) which includes papers from their time with the CLN and letters that Nicco Fasola exchanged with her mentor Lionello Venturi and politicians: Benedetto Croce (1866-1952),and Pietro Nenni (1890-1981). Her personal library was donated by her husband to the Institute of Art History of the University of Genoa when she died.


Selected Bibliography

  • Casalone, Carla Musso. “Bibliografia Di Giusta Nicco Fasola.” Arte Lombarda 10 (1965): 294–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43106118;
  • De prospectiva pingendi. Florence: G.C Sansoni, 1942;
  • Nicola Pisano : orientamenti sulla formazione del gusto italiano. Rome: F. lli Palombi, 1942;
  • Pontormo o del cinquecento. Florence: Arnaud, 1947;
  • Ragionamenti sulla architettura. Babri: Macrì, 1949;
  • La Fontana di Perugia. Con la relazione su i lavori di restauro del 1948-49. Rome: Libreria della Stato, 1952;
  • “Giulio Romano e il Manierismo.”  Commentari 11 no.1  (1960): 60-73;
  • Storiografia del manierismo. Rome: De Luca, 1956;

Sources


Archives


Contributors: Octavia Chilkoti


Citation

Octavia Chilkoti. "Fasola, Giusta Nicco." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/fasolag/.


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Anti-fascist, medieval, and Renaissance art historian. Giusta Nicco Fasola was born Giustina Maria Rosa to parents Marianna Rosa Cumino (Nicco) and Carlo Nicco in Turin. Giusta acquired her full education in the city of Turin attending the local scho

Fine, Elsa Honig

Full Name: Fine, Elsa Honig

Other Names:

  • Elsa Honig
  • Elsa H. Fine

Gender: female

Date Born: 24 May 1930

Place Born: Bayonne, Hudson, NJ, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): African American, American (North American), Black (general, race and ethnicity), Contemporary (style of art), feminism, and Women

Career(s): publishers

Institution(s): University of Knoxville


Overview

Feminist art historian and early scholar of African American art; founded Woman’s Art Journal. Elsa Honig was born to Samuel M. Honig and ​​Yetta Susskind (Honig). She earned her Bachelors in Fine Arts from Syracuse University in 1951 and her MEd in art from Temple University’s Tyler College of Fine Arts in 1967. She married Harold J. Fine Jr. (d. 2009), a psychologist and psychoanalyst, in 1952.

Fine earned her doctorate in education of art history from the University of Tennessee in 1970, focusing on black art historians in America in her dissertation Education and the Afro-American Artist. Fine published her first book,The Afro-American Artist: A Search for Identity. The following year the book received animadversion from Romare H. Bearden (1911-1988) who, among other things, said Fine “confuses [African-Ameican] art history with social theories that are primarily racist to anyone who has a general knowledge of art.”

In 1970, Fine was appointed as the assistant professor of art at the University of Knoxville through 1975. In 1972, Fine attended the College Art Association’s annual conference where she realized the emerging issues in the feminist art movement. Over the next ten years, Fine transitioned from African-American art history to feminist art history. When both the Feminist Art Journal and Womanart magazine ceased by 1978, Fine proposed a new feminist journal at the Women’s Caucus for Art’s 1979 meeting in Washington, D.C. The next year, Fine founded the Woman’s Art Journal—a semi-annual publication devoted to women in the visual arts. Fine worked at various colleges from 1975 until 2006, including teaching some classes at Community Scholars—a university program for adults living near Beaver College (today Arcadia University). Fine served as editor of the Woman’s Art Journal until her retirement in 2006, traveling to the UK, Israel, and Scandinavia for her work.

Fine was honored by multiple awards including the Woman’s Caucus for Art Honorary Award in 1996, The Distinguished Feminist Award from the College Art Association in 2001, and the Alumni Award from Tyler College in 2002.


Selected Bibliography

  • [dissertation] Education and the Afro-American Artist: A Survey of the Educational Background of the Afro-American and his Role as a Visual Artist(1970);
  • “The Afro-American Artist: A Search for Identity.” Art Journal 29, no. 1 (1969): 32–35. https://doi.org/10.2307/775273;
  • “Mainstream, Blackstream and the Black Art Movement.” Art Journal 30, no. 4 (1971): 374–75. https://doi.org/10.2307/775378.;
  • The Afro-American artist; a search for identity. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973
  • Annemarie Weyl Carr, Constance Scheerer, Cindy Nemser, Brenda Price, Janet Catherine Berlo, Annamarie Rousseau, Sally Webster, et al. “Feminist Art Journal.” Feminist Art Journal 5, no. 1 (April 1, 1976): 1–50. https://jstor.org/stable/10.2307/community.28036294;
  • Women Et Art: A History of Women Painters and Sculptors from the Renaissance to the 20th Century. Montclair: Allanheld et Schram, 1978;
  • Woman’s art journal. 1980. Knoxville: Tenn;
  • 1989. American women artists: the 20th century. [Knoxville, Tenn.]: Knoxville Museum of Art;
  • “Some ‘Fiftysomething’ Achievers Are Neither Silent nor Male.” The New York Times. The New York Times, January 17, 1990. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/17/opinion/l-some-fiftysomething-achieve….

Sources


Archives

  • Judith K. Brodsky collection papers, Rutgers University

Contributors: Eleanor Ross


Citation

Eleanor Ross. "Fine, Elsa Honig." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/finee/.


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Feminist art historian and early scholar of African American art; founded Woman’s Art Journal. Elsa Honig was born to Samuel M. Honig and ​​Yetta Susskind (Honig). She earned her Bachelors in Fine Arts from Syracuse University in 1951 and he

Floyd, Margaret Henderson

Full Name: Floyd, Margaret Henderson

Gender: female

Date Born: 1932

Date Died: 18 October 1997

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Place Died: Boston, Suffolk, MA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): American (North American), architecture (object genre), and sculpture (visual works)

Institution(s): Tufts University


Overview

Professor of Architectural History at Tufts University, expert on Boston architecture. In 1953, Floyd graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in Art Studies. Four years later, she graduated from the University of New Mexico with a master’s degree in art history. In 1974, she earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from Boston University. Soon after, Floyd became involved in historic preservation, attempting to prevent the destruction of several old buildings, often with the Boston Architectural Center. Floyd would often give walking tours of Boston. Additionally she would lead an annual tour of mansions in Newport, Rhode Island. She was critical to the preservation of Robert Treat Paine Estate in Waltham. Floyd was also one of the four founding members of Friends of Longfellow House. In 1977, Floyd began teaching at Tufts University, founding the architectural studies program. She primarily taught classes on American art and architectural history, with her most popular being on Boston and Cambridge architecture.

In 1981, Dean Frank Colcord of Tufts University appointed Floyd to the Campus Planning and Development Committee. Two years later, under this committee, Floyd began cataloging the buildings on campus to create an architectural inventory. From 1983 to 1987, Floyd served as the chair of the Fine Arts Department. During this time, she worked to establish the Tufts University Art Gallery.

In 1989, she published Architecture Education and Boston: Centennial Publication of the Boston Architectural Center, 1889-1989, cataloging her extensive research in the city of Boston. Five years later, Floyd wrote Architecture after Richardson: Regionalism before Modernism — Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow in Boston and Pittsburgh. Floyd examines other critical American architects, Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow, in the architectural shaping of the United States. Published in 1997, her last work prior to her death was entitled Henry Hobson Richardson: A Genius for Architecture.

Floyd died of cancer on October 18, 1997 in Boston, Massachusetts. Upon her death, she passed on her extensive collection of photographic slides to Tufts University. Beginning in 2010, staff at the Tisch Library and the Visual Resources Manager in Art History cataloged and digitize these slides. Two years after her death, in honor of her many years at Tufts, the Department of Art and Art History created the Margaret Henderson Floyd Memorial Lecture. In 2006, the Architectural Studies Prize was established in her name.


Selected Bibliography

  • [dissertation:] A Terra Cotta Cornerstone for Copley Square: An Assessment of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, by Sturgis and Brigham (1870-1976), in the Context of it English Technological and Stylistic Origins. Boston University, 1974;
  • Harvard: An Architectural History. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1985;
  • Architecture Education and Boston: Centennial Publication of the Boston Architectural Center, 1889-1989. Boston: Boston Architectural Center, 1989;
  • Architecture after Richardson: Regionalism before Modernism — Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow in Boston and Pittsburgh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994;
  • Henry Hobson Richardson: A Genius for Architecture. New York: Monacelli, 1997.

Sources



Contributors: Kerry Rork


Citation

Kerry Rork. "Floyd, Margaret Henderson." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/floydm/.


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Professor of Architectural History at Tufts University, expert on Boston architecture. In 1953, Floyd graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in Art Studies. Four years later, she graduated from the University of New Mexico with a master’s de

Flam, Jack

Full Name: Flam, Jack Donald

Other Names:

  • Jack D. Flam

Gender: male

Date Born: 1940

Place Born: Paterson, Passaic, NJ, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): French (culture or style) and Modern (style or period)

Institution(s): Brooklyn College of the City University of New York


Overview

Matisse scholar and Brooklyn College, City University of New York professor of art history.  Flam was born to Max Flam and Rose Leila (Silverberg) Flam in New Jersey. He attended Rutgers University, where he recieved a B.A. in 1961. He continued at Columbia University granted an M.A., in 1963 and began teaching at Rutgers (through 1966). He entered New York University for his Ph.D. During this time he taught at University of Florida, Gainesville, as an assistant professor, until 1969. That year he recieved his Ph.D., from NYU. His dissertion on Matisse’s art theory, was written under Howard S. Conant. Flam was appointed associate professor of art in 1969 at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. He married Bonnie Suzanne Burnham, in 1972 (later divorced). He was promoted to associate professor in 1975 and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, professor. He published a work of fiction, Bread and Butter, in 1977. Flam was elevated to professor in 1980. Flam was named Distinguished Professor of Art History in 1991. 1975-91, Distinguished Professor of Art History, 1991. 


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] The Style of Matisse’s ‘Piano Lesson’: Its Significance to his Art and to his Theory of Art.  New York University, 1969.




Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Flam, Jack." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/flamj/.


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Matisse scholar and Brooklyn College, City University of New York professor of art history.  Flam was born to Max Flam and Rose Leila (Silverberg) Flam in New Jersey. He attended Rutgers University, where he recieved a B.A. in 1961.

Franc, Helen M.

Full Name: Helen Margaret Franc

Other Names:

  • Helen Franc
  • Helen M. Franc

Gender: female

Date Born: 17 May 1908

Date Died: 14 June 2006

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period)

Career(s): curators

Institution(s): Museum of Modern Art


Overview

Early female curator for the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Franc was born and raised in New York city. Her father was a lawyer.  After graduating from Horace Mann school in New York, she entered Wellesley College where her professors included the future director of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. After graduation in 1929 she followed Barr to the graduate school of art history at New York University where both had received a fellowship. In 1934, she began working in the Pierpont Morgan Library under its director, Belle da Costa Greene (1883-1950). There she curated an exhibition, “The Animal Kingdom”, and was briefly promoted to curator of drawings and paintings there. However, when the United States entered World War II concerns over the safety of the collection prompted library trustees to store irreplaceable materials underground.  Franc felt “she had nothing to curate…[and] resigned to do war work” (Ardizonne). From 1942 onward, she worked in positions at the intelligence unit of Air Transport Command, then at the Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation (which later became the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service, and finally for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Wishing to return to the arts, Franc took a position as an associate in education at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 1949 she returned to New York joining the Magazine of Art. While at the magazine, she authored the index and jacket blurb for Alfred H. Barr, Jr.’s book Matisse: His Art and His Public and worked with the Museum of Modern art board member James Thrall Soby.

After the liquidation of the Magazine of Art in 1953, Franc was hired to work for the art book publisher Harry N. Abrams. Wishing to be closer to museum work, she joined the Museum of Modern Art’s Circulating Exhibitions Program as Editorial Associate for the Department’s International Program in 1954. Her work in the International Program tied together her interests in art history and international affairs. She often worked on exhibitions used for American diplomacy in other countries. Franc was moved to MoMA’s publications department in 1962, rising to Editor-in-Chief of Publications in 1969. Among her notable works were exhibition catalog The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age to the 1968 show of the same name.  This innovative show was curated by K. G. Pontus Hultén. She retired officially in 1971, but continued to work on projects for the MoMA. Her most notable projects were those produced after her retirement, including the series of books, An Invitation to See. The first book, An Invitation to See: 125 Paintings from the Museum of Modern Art, published in 1973. It was the first book published by MoMA to introduce the general public to their collections. An Invitation to See: 150 Works from the Museum of Modern Art was published in 1992. It contained a much broader array of art and was considered a revision of Franc’s first Invitation to See.


Selected Bibliography

An Invitation to See: 125 Paintings from the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973;  An Invitation to See: 150 works from the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1992; and Szarkowski, John. 1994. The Museum of Modern Art at Mid-century at Home and Abroad. New York: Museum of Modern Art.


Sources

Marquis, Alice Goldfarb. Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary for the Modern. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989, p. 84; Franc, Helen M. “MoMA Archives Oral History: H. Franc.” Interview by Sharon Zane. The Museum of Modern Art Oral History Program, April-June, 1991. https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/learn/archives/transcript_franc.pdf; “New Director of Publications at Museum”. The Museum of Modern Art press release (1969)  https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/4382/releases/MOMA_1969_July-December_0075_149.pdf [Accessed 19 Feb. 2019]; “Paid Notice: Deaths FRANC, HELEN M.” The New York Times, June 20, 2006. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/classified/paid-notice-deaths-franc-helen-m.htm;  Ardizzone, Heidi. An Illuminated life: Belle da Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege.  New York : W. W. Norton & Co., 2007, p. 451;  oral history, Museum of Modern Art Oral History Program.  Helen Franc. .https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/learn/archives/transcript_franc.pdf.



Contributors: Arial Hart


Citation

Arial Hart. "Franc, Helen M.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/franch/.


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Early female curator for the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Franc was born and raised in New York city. Her father was a lawyer.  After graduating from Horace Mann school in New York, she entered Wellesley College where her professors included the f

Fülep, Lajos

Full Name: Fülep, Lajos

Gender: male

Date Born: 1885

Date Died: 1970

Place Died: Budapest, Hungary

Home Country/ies: Hungary

Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period)


Overview

Modernist art historian and man of letters. Fülep was early interested in Cézanne and wrote positively about the painter in his native Hungary. In 1906 he early showed appreciation for Új Versek (New Verse), the first volume of experimental Hungarian poetry by Endre Ady. Fülep lived in Italy, chiefly in Florence, from 1907 to 1914, with a Paris visit and a brief stay in London. In Florence he studied under Benedetto Croce. He returned to Hungary when the First World War erupted in 1914, along with his countryman, the philosopher György Lukács (1885-1971) (who was in Heidelberg). Fülep was a member of the illustrious discussion group the Sonntagskreis (Sunday Circle) whose members included, in addition to Lukács, intellectuals such as the sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) and art historians Arnold Hauser, Frederick Antal, Johannes Wilde, and Charles de Tolnay. He and Tolnay developed a life-long friendship; Tolnay became greatly influenced by many of Fülep’s ideas. Fülep’s Magyar Mûvészet-európai mûvészet (Hungarian Art-European Art), a group of papers on art theory, was written during the war. It appeared in book form in 1919 (1923?). Fülep embarked upon a broad philosophy of art in the 1920s which he pursued the rest of his life. In 1927 Fülep chose the Presbyterian church in Zengővárkony, Baranya County, Hungary, for ministry. Together with the choirmaster, János Császár, they collected relics of the region. In 1930 Fülep won a Baumgartner prize for his writing and critical works. He used the prize money to build a small research library in the church. Fülep formed an intellectual and personal friendship with the classical scholar Károly (Karl) Kerényi (1897-1973). Kerényi was appointed a professor in Pécs in 1934. In 1947 he was appointed professor of art at Péter Pázmány University in Budapest and was elected a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. However, the mounting dictatorship brought him a despondency. Papers on Rembrandt and a lecture on Leonardo, unpublished, were mixed with scholarship on the Hungarian painters Tivadar Csontváry-Kosztka and Gyula Derkovits. Perhaps Fülep’s strongest contributions to art history was his influence on the Michelangelo and northern Renaissance scholar Charles de Tolnay. Tolnay published a paper on Cézanne in Hungarian in 1924 in which he cited the influence of Fülep’s 1906 and 1907 papers, arguing that Cézanne’s contribution to art was depiction of the fragmented world of modernity. His book Magyar Mûvészet-európai mûvészet examined painting, sculpture and architecture. Fülep was primarily interested in the relationship between national and European art, believing that only when national features of the art transcend to a universal (European) message do they become important. His major philosophy of art project remained unfinished at his death.


Selected Bibliography

[published correspondence:] Kner, Imre, ed. Fülep Lajos és Kner Imre levelezése. Gyula: Békés Megyei Levéltár, 1990; Magyar muvészet. Budapest: Athenaeum kiadása, 1923.


Sources

Lackó, Miklós. “The Truths of the Soul: From the Correspondence between Lajos Fülep, Charles de Tolnay and Karl Kerényi.” Hungarian Quarterly 40, no. 156 (Winter 1999): ; Németh, Lajos. Tudományos ülésszak Fülep Lajos születésének századik évfordulójára. Pécs: Baranya Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága, 1986.




Citation

"Fülep, Lajos." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/fulepl/.


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Modernist art historian and man of letters. Fülep was early interested in Cézanne and wrote positively about the painter in his native Hungary. In 1906 he early showed appreciation for Új Versek (New Verse), the first volume of experiment

Furlong, George Joseph

Full Name: Furlong, George Joseph

Gender: male

Date Born: 1898

Date Died: 1987

Place Born: Dundrum, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Ireland

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: Ireland


Overview

Director of the National Gallery in Dublin. Furlong was orphaned at nine years old and educated by Jesuits at Clongowes Wood. He attended University College, Dublin and his graduate studies were at Grenoble, Paris (the Sorbonne), Munich. He received his Ph.D. in Vienna writing on the topic of 10th and 11th century Anglo-Saxon manuscript illumination. As a student in Munich he observed Hitler’s 1923 abortive putsch. A homosexual, Furlong developed strong antipathies to Nazism. In 1936 he assisted the Jewish Viennese art historian Otto Pächt in escaping from Austria by issuing him an invitation to Ireland. Furlong obtained a position as an Assistant Keeper at the National Gallery, London in 1930, lecturing at the Tate and National Galleries. By 1935 he had been appointed Director of the National Gallery in Dublin, the youngest person to ever hold that position. With limited resources at the Irish museum, he nevertheless purchased major works of art, many, such as those by Gentileschi, Crespi and Castiglione, underappreciated at the time. Furlong had to contend with conservative trustees on the museum board who rejected paintings by Monet, Gauguin and Roualt. His involvement in the Lane Bequest brought him additional controversy. He remained at the Gallery for fifteen years, lecturing and writing. In addition, he performed examiners duties in art history at both Trinity College and University College Dublin. When trustees at the Gallery turned down Murillo’s Christ Healing at Bethesda, Furlong resigned in protest and moved to London in 1950. (The painting was subsequently purchased by the National Gallery, London). He lived there the remainder of his life with his partner, Rex Britcher.


Selected Bibliography

“The National Gallery of Ireland.” Studio 138 (August 1949): 33-43.


Sources

The Times (London), May 28 1987.




Citation

"Furlong, George Joseph." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/furlongg/.


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Director of the National Gallery in Dublin. Furlong was orphaned at nine years old and educated by Jesuits at Clongowes Wood. He attended University College, Dublin and his graduate studies were at Grenoble, Paris (the Sorbonne), Munich. He receiv

Fürst, Viktor

Full Name: Fürst, Viktor

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)


Overview

Architectural historian. John Newenham Summerson described Fürst’s important book on Wren as the one that explored “the workings of his mind.”



Sources

Summerson, John. “Margaret Dickens Whinney, 1894-1975.” Proceedings of the British Academy 68 (1982): 641.




Citation

"Fürst, Viktor." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/furstv/.


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Architectural historian. John Newenham Summerson described Fürst’s important book on Wren as the one that explored “the workings of his mind.”

Furtwängler, Adolf

Full Name: Furtwängler, Adolf

Other Names:

  • Adolf Michael Furtwängler

Gender: male

Date Born: 30 June 1853

Date Died: 11 October 1907

Place Born: Freiburg im Breisgau, Hesse, Germany

Place Died: Athens, Region of Attica, Greece

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), archaeology, ceramic ware (visual works), Classical, Greek pottery styles, pottery (visual works), and vase


Overview

Professor of classical archaeology and museum director; established modern methods of ancient Greek vase analysis. Furtwängler’s father was a classical scholar and schoolmaster. From 1870 onward, Furtwängler studied at Leipzig, under Johannes Overbeck and Freiburg where he received his undergraduate degree. His dissertation, Eros in der Vasenmalerei, was written in 1874, (published 1876) in Munich under Enrico Brunn. Furtwängler would later write a memoir of von Brunn. The academic years 1876-1877 and 1877-1878 he worked under a stipend at the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (DAI), in several Mediterranean countries. In 1878 he participated in the Olympia excavation site of Heinrich Schliemann in Greece. He completed his habilitation the following year under Reinhard Kekulé in Bonn. In 1879 he published together with his colleague Georg Loeschcke, Mykenische Thongefäße. This groundbreaking study established the difference between Mycenaean and Geometric pottery. Furtwängler achieved appointments in 1880 both as assistant director at the Königliche Museen zu Berlin and as a privatdozent at the University in Berlin. In later years Furtwängler concluded he had dedicated his best years to the museum. His book on the Sabouroff collection (1883-1887) demonstrated his mastery on classical terracottas. He married in 1885 to Adelheid Wendt. The same year, his two-volume Beschreibung der Vasensammlung im Antiquarium (Writings on Vase Paining in Antiquity) appeared, a book describing over four thousand objects in a manner still emulated today. Meisterwerke der griechischen Plastik (Masterworks of Greek Sculpture) appearing in 1893, served to initiate his method to a larger audience than his earlier works and impress scholars. In 1894 he left Berlin to succeed his mentor, von Brunn, as professor of classical archaeology in Munich, adding to his duties the Director of the Glyptothek Museum. The English translation to Meisterwerke, Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, translated by Eugenie Strong, appeared in 1895. These two editions formed what Johannes Sieveking called “the Book of Books,” the “Bible of archaeologists.” Furtwängler issued a study on Greek gems and their inscriptions in 1900, Die Antiken Gemmen, demonstrating again his breadth of classical knowledge. In the same year, he renewed the excavations at the temple of Aphaia in Aigina. Furtwängler and Karl W. Reichhold began issuing a corpus of Greek vases, Griechische Vasenmalerei in 1904, issued in six “Lieferungen.” He published his research on Aphaia in Aigina in a monograph of 1906. Furtwängler embarked on writing a history of ancient art the following year, but contracted a case of dysentery in Aigina and died at age 54, cutting short a brilliant career. His students formed the most eminent of the next generation of classical art historians and archaeologists. These included, in addition to Sieveking, Ludwig Curtius, Oskar Waldhauer (1883-1935), Georg Lippold, Eduard Schmidt, Anton Hekler and initially Ernst Buschor. His research significantly influenced many major scholars, most notable among them J. D. Beazley, and the classicists Carl Blegen (1887-1971) and A. J. B. Wace (1879-1957). The eminent orchestra conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954), was his son. After his death, Friedrich Hauser assumed editorship of the project. Buschor completed volume three of Furtwängler’s Griechische Vasenmalerei in 1932. Furtwängler is buried in Athens. Furtwängler’s accomplishment cannot be overstated. He developed a pioneering method for prehistorical stylistic categorization of small artworks, principally pottery sherds. At the time, pottery fragments were thought to be of little importance by archaeologists. Furtwängler demonstrated that documenting the specific strata where vases were discovered could establish both the dating of pottery as well as the chronology of the cites. His belief in the importance of sherds also led him to assemble many many, theorizing the artists and schools of Greek vase painting. It was a technique he learned from his mentor, von Brunn, who had developed a similar method for Greek sculpture. (Furtwängler, like most of his contemporaries, still largely ignored the value of unpainted pottery). Furtwängler and Reichhold’s Griechische Vasenmalerei raised the standard for accurate drawings of vase paintings to an exceptional level. His volume on gems, Die Antiken Gemmen of 1900, remained his most influential work of his lifetime. featured exceptionally accurate drawings of vase paintings. Furtwängler’s attribution of Roman copies of Greek sculpture to artists was also influential in augmenting interest in style and artistic personalities of classical art. Following in the tracks of Winckelmann, he conceived of a history of ancient art built upon an aesthetic appreciation of “masterpieces” of ancient art that served as “records of Western art-historical development” (Marchand). Furtwängler’s work on attributing Roman copies of Greek sculpture to artists spurred an interest in the study of style and artistic personalities in classical art (Rouet). He was perhaps the last classicist to fulfill the Totalitätsideal of Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, the goal that a classical historian could master all aspects of the studies he pursued. Together with Welcker and Brunn,


Selected Bibliography

and Loeschcke, Georg. Mykenische Thongefäße. Festschrift zur Feier des fünfzigjährigen Bestehens des Deutschen Archaeologischen Institutes in Rom. Berlin: In Commission bei A. Asher und Co., 1879; Beschreibung der Vasensammlung im Antiquarium. 2 vols. Berlin: W. Spemann, 1885; Katalog der Vasensammlung im Berliner Antiquarium, 1885; Meisterwerke der griechischen Plastik: kunstgeschichtliche Untersuchungen Leipzig: Giesecke & Devrient, 1893, English, Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture: a Series of Essays on the History of Art. Sellers, Eugénie, trans. London: W. Heinemann, 1895; and Urlichs, H. L. Denkmäler griechischer und römischer Skulptur: im Auftrag des K. Bayer, Staatsministeriums des Innern für kirchen- und schulangelegenheiten. Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1898, English, Greek & Roman Sculpture. Taylor, Horace, trans. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd/New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1914; Die antiken Gemmen: Geschichte der Steinschneidekunst im klassischen Altertum. Berlin: Gesecke & Devrient, 1900; and Reichhold, Karl, and Hauser, Friedrich. Griechische Vasenmalerei: Auswahl hervorragender Vasenbilder. 3 vols. Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1904, 1909, and 1932 [only the first volume under Furtwängler]; Die Aegineten der Glyptothek König Ludwigs I: nach den Resultaten der neuen bayerischen Ausgrabung. Munich: In Kommission bei A. Buchholz, 1906; “Heinrich von Brunn” in, Geist und Gestalt: Biographische Beiträge zur Geschichte der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften vornehmlich im zweiten Jahrhundert ihres Bestehens. Vol. 1, Munich: Beck, 1959.


Sources

Furtwängler was the most important and influential German archaeologist of the nineteenth century (Lullies); John Boardman in 2001 termed Furtwängler “probably the greatest classical archaeologist of all time.” LS Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 46 mentioned; Lullies, Reinhard. “Adolf Furtwängler 1853-1907” Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 110-111; Ridgway, Brunhilde Sismondo. “The State of Research on Ancient Art,” Art Bulletin 68 (March 1986): 8, mentioned; Marchand, Suzanne L. Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996: 87, 144-146; John Boardman. The History of Greek Vases. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2001, pp. 129, mentioned; Medwid, Linda M. The Makers of Classical Archaeology : a Reference Work. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2000; Calder, William. “Adolf Furtwängler.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 475-76.




Citation

"Furtwängler, Adolf." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/furtwanglera/.


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Professor of classical archaeology and museum director; established modern methods of ancient Greek vase analysis. Furtwängler’s father was a classical scholar and schoolmaster. From 1870 onward, Furtwängler studied at Leipzig, under 1

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