Marcia Tucker
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| Marcia Tucker | |
 Marcia Tucker
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| Born | 1940 |
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| Died | 2006 |
| Board member of | New Museum of Contemporary Art |
Marcia Tucker (April 11, 1940 to October 17, 2006) was the founding director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art from 1977 to 1999, a museum located in New York City dedicated to innovative art and artistic practice. There, she organized such major exhibitions as The Time of Our Lives (1999), A Labor of Love (1996), and Bad Girls (1994), and was co-curator of a retrospective exhibition by the Catalan artist Perejaume at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona in 1999. She was the series editor of Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art, five books of theory and criticism published by the New Museum. From 1999 to 2006 she worked as a free-lance art critic, writer, and lecturer. Recent faculty appointments had been at Cornell University, Colgate University, and The Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies. Most recently she was a Critic in Residence in the Fine Arts Department and Graduate Studies: Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design from 2005-2006 while living in Santa Barbara, California.
In a 1998 lecture, Ms. Tucker said the museum, “like a handful of other contemporary art venues in the United States, is a ‘laboratory’ organization not only by virtue of the kind of work we show, but because we try to look critically at museum practice, especially our own, questioning our own premises and methods regularly.” (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, April 16, 1998; “The Contemporary Art Museum as a Site of Innovation and Resistance”)
Ms. Tucker was Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1969 to 1977, where she organized major exhibitions of the work of Bruce Nauman, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and Richard Tuttle, among others. In 1984 she was chosen as the U.S. Commissioner for the 41st Venice Biennale. She received the Skowhegan Governors Award for Lifetime Service to the Arts (1988), was the 1999 recipient of the Bard College Award for Curatorial Achievement, and the Art Table Award for Distinguished Service to the Visual Arts in 2000. She was also awarded three Yaddo fellowships in 2003, ’04, and ’05.
She wrote for the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Art in America, Art Forum, and Art News, among others. Her memoir, A Short Life of Trouble, which describes a vital period in American art from the mid-1960s on, including friendships and encounters with such artists as Marcel Duchamp, James Rosenquist, Lee Krasner, Andy Warhol, Joan Mitchell, and Bruce Nauman, is forthcoming.
[edit] Catalogues and publications
“No Title,” in The Space of Art: Buddha and the Culture of Now, ed. Jacqueline Baas and Mary Jane Jacob, University of California Press, 2005.
“No Title,” in Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, ed. Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, 2004.
“A Labor of Love,” in Objects and Meaning: Readings that Challenge the Norm, ed. Anna Fariello and Paula Owen, Scarecrow Press, Maryland, 2003.
Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age, Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art, Vol. V, published by the New Museum of Contemporary Art in conjunction with The M.I.T. Press, 1998, Series editor and foreword.
"Museums Experiment with New Exhibition Strategies," The New York Times, Arts and Leisure section, Sunday, January 10, 1999.
"Questing for New Definitions of Contemporary Art," The New York Times, Arts and Leisure section, Sunday, March 29, 1998.
"Adventures in Liza Land," Liza Lou, Smart Art Press, 1997.
"A [Re]Movable Feast," Grantsmakers in the Arts, Spring 1997, Volume 8, Number 1.
"The New Museum: Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art," American Art Review, (Special Issue: The Henry Luce Foundation), February/March 1995.
"Collecting: The Strategy of Desire," a catalogue essay for the exhibition, Mettlesome & Meddlesome: Selections from the Robert J. Shiffler Collection, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1994.
"A Moment in Reverse," The Hamburger Monument against Fascism by Jochen and Esther Gerz, Verlag Gerd Hatje, Germany, 1994
Condensed version of a presentation delivered at The Contemporary Museum, Hawaii, on July 25, 1993, ARTbeat, November 1993.
Different Voices: A Social, Cultural, and Historical Framework for Change in the American Art Museum, Project Director. Introductory essay, “Who’s on First? Issues of Cultural Equity in Today’s Museums,” by Marcia Tucker, Association of Art Museum Directors, New York, 1992.
Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art, Vol. IV, published by the New Museum of Contemporary Art in conjunction with The M.I.T. Press, 1990, Series Editor and foreword.
Discourses: Conversations in Postmodern Art and Culture, Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art, Vol. III, published by the New Museum of Contemporary Art in conjunction with The M.I.T. Press, 1990, Series Editor and foreword.
"Common Ground," Museum News, July/August 1990.
"Nancy Dwyer Makes Trubble," Artforum, November 1989.
"Women Artists Today: Revolution or Regression?" Making Their Mark: Women Artists Move into the Mainstream, Maidenform, Inc., 1989.
"Equestrian Mysteries: An Interview with Deborah Butterfield," Art in America, June 1988.
"The Painted Equation: An Artist’s [Alfred Jensen] Rendering of Nature’s Laws," The Sciences, March/April 1988.
Blasted Allegories: An Anthology of Writings by Contemporary Artists, Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art, Vol. II, published by the New Museum of Contemporary Art in conjunction with The M.I.T. Press, 1987, Series Editor and foreword.
"Not Just for Laughs: The Art of Subversion," SF Camerawork Quarterly, March 1987.
PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE: Photographs by Daniel Faust, Amanda Means, Andres Serrano, Susan Unterberg, and Carrie Mae Weems, 1986.
Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art, Vol. I, published by the New Museum of Contemporary Art in conjunction with David R. Godine, 1984, Series Editor and foreword.
"An Iconography of Recent Figurative Painting: Sex, Death, Violence and the Apocalypse," Artforum, Summer 1982.
"Terry Allen (on everything)," Artforum, October 1982.
"The Ring: ‘A Story which Swallows its Own Tale,’" Terry Allen, exhibition catalogue, The Nelson Gallery/Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri, 1981.
"An Interview with Jack Tworkov," Jack Tworkov, Paintings 1950-1978, Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, Scotland, 1979.
"Mythical Vision: The Work of Alfred Jensen," Alfred Jensen: Paintings and Diagrams from the Years 1957-1977, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y., 1978.
"Cultural Irony," (Charles Garabedian, H.C. Westerman, Jim Roche), Critical Perspectives in American Art, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1976.
Introduction, Heavily Tattooed Men and Women, compiled by Spider Webb, McGraw Hill, Inc., N.Y., 1976.
Preface, Art Talk: Conversations with Twelve Women Artists, by Cindy Nemser, Charles Scribner & Sons, N.Y., 1975.
Guest Editor, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Arts Journal, (New York/California Issue), No. 10, March/April, 1976.
"Bypassing the Gallery System," Ms. Magazine, February 1973.
"Pat Steir: ‘The Thing Itself, Made by Me,’" Art in America, January/February, 1973.
"The Anatomy of a Brush Stroke: Recent Paintings by Joan Synder," Artforum, May 1971.
Robert Morris, Praeger Books, Inc., N.Y., 1970.
"PheNAUMANology," Artforum, December 1970. Reprinted in "Bruce Nauman," Hayward Gallery, London: 1998.
American Painting in the Ferdinand Howald Collection, Catalogue Raisonné, The Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 1969.
