Dorothy C. Miller 1904-2003 - Front Page - Obituary

Dorothy C. Miller, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art for over 30 years before her retirement in 1969, died on July 11 in her New York apartment. Although she organized many exhibitions for the museum, Miller was best known for a remarkable series of six shows devoted to contemporary U.S. art, bearing titles such as "Fourteen Americans" or "Sixteen Americans." Held periodically from 1942 through 1963, these exhibitions introduced to the American museum public a total of 90 artists, among them Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Clyfford Still, Isamu Noguchi, Morris Graves, Ad Reinhardt, Louise Nevelson, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Lee Bontecou, Claes Oldenburg, Marisol, Ellsworth Kelly and James Rosenquist. Miller's shows were distinguished by a special format. Eschewing the usual large group show in which dozens of artists are each represented by one or two works, Miller limited her choices so that each artist was given a separate small gallery. Her influential "New American Painting" toured Europe in 1958-59 and firmly established the Abstract Expressionist artists abroad.

In 1982 Robert Rosenblum wrote that "Dorothy Miller ... played a brilliant role in tracing at the right time and in the right place, two astonishing decades of American art She wrote a major history of those incredible years not through the printed word that later generations could read in libraries, but through a series of living visual events that steered spectators, both sophisticated and naive, through the most uncharted and thrilling seas the New York art world has ever known. Brava, Dorothy!"

Richard E. Oldenburg, former director of the Museum of Modern Art, said that Miller's exhibitions were notable "not only for discernment in the choice of works but also for the sensitivity and care with which they were displayed and juxtaposed. They communicated to visitors the enthusiasms and sense of discovery she felt herself." Her respect for the artists she selected is reflected in the catalogues for these shows, which consist principally of statements from the artists themselves. She believed that the artists and their work should speak directly, without any interpretation or explanation from her, and that visitors should form their own opinions. Miller's special qualities were an extraordinary eye, strong convictions and a quiet, gentle courage. Artists and dealers respected and admired her, and many of them became her friends. Her modesty and seriousness of purpose earned her the esteem of the staff with whom she worked.

Dorothy Canning Miller was born in Hopedale, Mass., in 1904 and brought up in Montclair, N.J. She graduated from Smith College in 1925. That same year she took a museum training course at the Newark Art Museum taught by John Cotton Dana, the museum's pioneering founding director. Holger Cahill (1887-1960), who later became the national director of the Federal Arts Project (1935-43), was on the staff of the museum and frequently took students from this program to visit artists' studios in New York Through Cahill, whom Miller married in 1938, she became knowledgeable about contemporary American art Miller was a member of the curatorial staff of the Newark Museum from 1926 to 1929.

In 1932, she was asked by Cahill, who had become acting director of the Museum of Modern Art during a leave of absence of Alfred H. Barr, Jr., to work on the catalogue for the museum's exhibition "American Painting and Sculpture, 1862-1932." In 1932-33, she also collaborated with Cahill on "American Folk Arc The Art of the Common Man in America, 1750-1900" and "American Sources of Modern Art." In 1933-34 Miller worked with Cahill on the First Municipal Art Exhibition in Rockefeller Center, at which time she met Barr.

On Oct. 1, 1934, Miller joined the staff of the Museum of Modern Art as an assistant to Barr. She became successively assistant curator of painting and sculpture (I 935-4 I); associate curator (1942); curator (1943-47); curator of museum collections (1947-67); senior curator (1968-69); and from 1984 until her death, honorary trustee. She was one of the few women in America at the time to hold such responsible positions in the museum world. The first exhibition she directed for the Modern was "New Horizons in American Art" in 1936.

Miller worked closely with Barr in selecting, acquiring and installing the museum's permanent collection, and together they organized many shows of recent acquisitions. Her gift for installation was much admired; she said, "I have a tremendous passion for making a good exhibition ... there has to be an element of drama in it, it [should] knock your eyes out."

In 1959 Miller was asked to join the art committee of the Chase Manhattan Bank Following her retirement from the museum in 1969 she became an act adviser to or trustee of several institutions, including Rockefeller University, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Rothko Foundation, and the Hirshhhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Her contributions to museum connoisseurship were recognized by Smith College (honorary degree 1959), Williams College (honorary degree 1982), the Art Dealers Association (special award 1982) and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (governor's award 1983). Miller's personal collection, in addition to modern painting and sculpture, reflected her love of American folk art. She was the co-author with Eleanor Price Mather of Edward Hicks: His Peaceable Kingdom and Other Paintings (1983).

COPYRIGHT 2003 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group