Dorothy Miller, Discovered American Artists
Bill Schenley
Dorothy Miller, one of the first curators hired by the
Museum of Modern Art, in 1934, and the woman
responsible for pioneering exhibitions of new
American artists that helped propel generations of
painters like Pollock, Rothko, Frank Stella and Jasper
Johns onto the international scene, died yesterday at
her apartment in Greenwich Village. She was 99.
Ms. Miller was a clairvoyant curator with unusually
wide-ranging tastes. Her career began when American
modernists like Stuart Davis were still young and lasted
into the early heyday of Mr. Stella, Ellsworth Kelly,
James Rosenquist and Claes Oldenburg. She included
Mr. Oldenburg and Mr. Rosenquist in the last of her "
Americans" exhibitions, in 1963.
The "Americans" shows began in 1942 with a selection
of what were then mostly unknown artists of eclectic
styles from across the country. The format was to have
a select group of artists, abstract and figurative, each
presented in some depth. The slender catalogs had
statements by the artists. Typically, Ms. Miller wanted
them to speak for themselves rather than presuming to
speak for them.
She was invariably a step ahead of public taste. The
1942 show was panned. The museum's trustees were
appalled. Some threatened to quit. Even Alfred H. Barr
Jr., the Modern's visionary director, who otherwise
supported Ms. Miller, quietly tried to distance himself
from it.
Ms. Miller would organize her "Americans" shows at the
last minute, to remain perfectly up to date and to keep
secret the names of the artists until just before the
opening. "Congratulations, Dorothy," Barr told her after
one opening. "You've done it again. They all hate it."
But over time, many of the artists she discovered came
to be admired. "I was fortunate to have two brilliant
guides," she said, modestly, "Alfred H. Barr Jr. and my
husband, Holger Cahill."
Dorothy Canning Miller was born on Feb. 6, 1904, in
Hopedale, Mass., and was reared in Montclair, N.J.
After graduating from Smith College in 1925, she enrolled
in the Newark Museum apprentice program and was
hired at the museum in 1926. There she met Mr. Cahill, a
curator, with whom she worked on exhibitions of
progressive American art that caught Mr. Barr's attention.
He hired her. When Mr. Cahill was appointed director of
the W.P.A. Federal Art Project in Washington in 1935, he
asked Ms. Miller to join him. She declined, saying she had
landed the "best job in the museum world" at the Modern.
Her first show there was about W.P.A. art. After she
organized "Americans 1942," she put together "American
Realists and Magic Realists" in 1943, "Fourteen
Americans" in 1946, "Fifteen Americans" in 1952, "Twelve
Americans" in 1956, "Sixteen Americans" in 1959 and her
last "Americans" show in 1963. The 1946 show included
Gorky, Isamu Noguchi and Robert Motherwell; the 1952
show had Pollock, Rothko and Clyfford Still; the 1956
show introduced Larry Rivers and Grace Hartigan to a
wide public; the 1959 show had Mr. Stella, Louise
Nevelson, Jay de Feo, Robert Rauschenberg and Mr.
Johns. The 1963 show, besides Mr. Oldenburg and Mr.
Kelly, featured Cryssa, Lee Bontecou, Richard Lindner
and Robert Indiana. Reviewing it in The New York Times,
John Canaday said it answered "the 30-year-old question
of what ever happened to vaudeville. It moved to the
Museum of Modern Art."
The most influential exhibition that Ms. Miller organized
was surely "The New American Painting," which toured
Europe in 1958 and 1959.
It significantly changed European perceptions of
American art, putting Abstract Expressionism on the map
there once and for all.
In 1969 Ms. Miller retired from the Modern and became
an adviser to various corporate collections and, with
Eleanor Price Mather, was co-author of "Edward Hicks:
His Peaceable Kingdom and Other Paintings," about the
early 19th-century American folk artist. She is survived
by a stepdaughter, Jane Cahill Blumenfeld of
Albuquerque, N.M.; a niece, Edith White Danton of
Osterville, Mass.; and a nephew, Reid White of Lenox,
Mass.
Russell Lynes, in his history of the Modern, said Ms.
Miller was "looked upon by artists either as a benign
goddess or as a disdainful one, depending on whether
or not she smiled on their work."
Mr. Stella said yesterday: "She was a straight shooter,
very respectful of the art and the artists and the
museum, something you don't get that much of
anymore. The `Americans' shows set the tone for my
time. You were either in or you were not. They were
exhibitions of what was going on, pointing to the
future, and they were definitive. Or if they weren't
definitive, they were certainly exciting."