Full Name: Prasse, Leona E.
Other Names:
- Leona Prasse
Gender: female
Date Born: 1897
Date Died: 23 December 1984
Place Died: Cleveland, Cuyahoga, OH, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Career(s): art collectors and curators
Institution(s): Cleveland Museum of Art
Overview
Curator; prints and drawings collector and specialist; Prasse earned a B.S. in 1919 and a B.A. in 1920 from Flora Stone Mather College, a branch of Western Reserve University for women’s education. She joined the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Cleveland Museum of Art as an assistant curator in 1925 and was promoted to associate curator in 1931. Her Catalogue of an Exhibition of the Art of Lithography was published in 1948. Prasse played a key role in organizing Lyonel Feininger’s first solo exhibition in America, held at The Cleveland Museum of Art in 1951. She also wrote the preface for the catalogue of Feininger’s 1951 exhibition. In 1953, assisted by Louise S. Richard, assistant curator of the Department of Prints and Drawings, Prasse organized the first exhibition devoted to the drawings of Charles Burchfield, with a catalog published. In 1956, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for compiling a definitive catalogue of Lyonel Feininger’s graphic work. Feininger’s Memorial Exhibition was held in 1960 with the support of Prasse. She retired from the museum in 1967.
Lyonel Feininger: A Definitive Catalogue of His Graphic Work was published by the museum in 1972. In the same year, she organized another retrospective exhibition for Feininger. Following her death in 1984, the museum organized an exhibition titled “Leona E. Prasse, Connoisseur and Curator,” showcasing a selection of prints and drawings she had donated to the Museum.
She had a close relationship with Lyonel Feininger and his wife, Julia, who assisted Prasse in the preparation of Feininger’s catalog. Her work on Feininger was supported by Sherman E. Lee, who wrote the foreword to the text. The catalog was the first definitive catalog of Feininger’s graphic work, which was on par with the catalog of Paul Klee (1963) by Eberhard Kornfeld (1923 -2023) and the Kandinsky catalog (1970) by Hans Konrad Röthel (Joachim).
She played a key role in building the Cleveland Museum’s print collection, guiding acquisitions and donating nearly 500 works. She had also been long associated with The Print Club of Cleveland. Her retirement announcement noted: “her catalogue for the Exhibition of the Art of Lithography on the sesquicentennial of its invention in 1948 was the first of a series of informative, meticulously-compiled exhibition catalogues that retain their value long after the exhibition period for which they were prepared.” She donated her personal print- and graphic collection to the Museum.
Selected Bibliography
- “A Portrait Drawing by Piazzetta.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 22, no. 1 (1935): 3–4.
- Catalogue of an Exhibition of the Art of Lithography: Commemorating the Sesquicentennial of Its Invention, 1798-1948 … [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1948.
- and Frederick S. Wight. The Work of Lyonel Feininger: Catalogue of an Exhibition. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1951.
- “An Exhibition of the Drawings of Charles E. Burchfield.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 40, no. 9 (1953): 203–7.
- and Burchfield, Charles E. The Drawings of Charles E. Burchfield: Catalogue of an Exhibition Sponsored by the Print Club of Cleveland and the Cleveland Museum of Art, November 4 to December 31, 1953, the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1953.
- and Wixom, William D. “Traditions in the Chaumont Tapestries.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 48, no. 7 (1961): 182–90.
- foreword by Sherman E. Lee. Lyonel Feininger: A Definitive Catalogue of His Graphic Work: Etchings, Lithographs, Woodcuts. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1972.
Sources
- [Obiturary] “Administration – Obituary – Leona E. Prasse”. Cleveland Museum of Art. December 31, 1984. http://archive.org/details/cmapr3240.
- [Biography] Salsich, Anne Cuyler, “Prasse, Leona E. (1897-1984) | Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.” 2024. https://clevelandartarchives.libraryhost.com/agents/people/120.
- “Leona E. Prasse Retires.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 55, no. 1 (1968): 34–34.
- Joachim, Harold. [Review of Lyonel Feininger, A Definitive Catalogue of His Graphic Work: Etchings, Lithographs, Woodcuts]. The Burlington Magazine 116, no. 852 (1974): 164–65.
- “Leona E. Prasse – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation….” Accessed November 15, 2024. https://www.gf.org/fellows/leona-e-prasse/.
Archives
Prasse, Leona E. (1897-1984), Cleveland Museum of Art Archives
Contributors: Yuhuan Zhang