Dorothy Canning Miller (February 6, 1904 – July 11, 2003) was an American artcurator and one of the most influential people in Americanmodern art for more than half of the 20th century.[1] The first professionally trained curator at theMuseum of Modern Art (MoMA),[2] she was one of the very few women in her time who held a museum position of such responsibility.[3]
Miller, the daughter of Arthur Barrett Miller and Edith Almena Canning, was born inHopedale, Massachusetts and grew up inMontclair, New Jersey.[4] After graduating fromSmith College in 1925,[5] she trained withJohn Cotton Dana of theNewark Museum, which was then one of the most creative and ambitious museums in the country,[1] and worked there from 1926 to 1929.[3] From 1930 to 1932, she worked for Mrs. Henry Lang cataloging and researching a collection ofNative American art[4] which was to be donated to theMontclair Art Museum.
The Museum of Modern Art, founded in 1929, did not yet have its own building in the early 1930s and was housed in a series of temporary quarters. Miller first came to directorAlfred H. Barr, Jr.'s attention in 1933,[3] when she andHolger Cahill[6] (with whom Miller was living inGreenwich Village[1] — they married in 1938[3]) were curating the First Municipal Art Exhibition in space donated by theRockefeller family.[1] Some of the participating artists wanted to boycott the show after theDiego Rivera muralMan at the Crossroads was deliberately destroyed during theconstruction of Rockefeller Center. Miller asked Barr to intercede in the controversy, which he did.
Not long after that she put on her "best summer hat"[1] and went to the Museum to ask him for a job. Barr hired her as his assistant curator in 1934 and over the years she progressed through the ranks, becoming Barr's most trustedcollaborator[1] and, by 1947, curator of themuseum collections.[4]
In 1959, Miller was appointed to the art committee forOne Chase Manhattan Plaza,[7] serving withGordon Bunshaft (chief designer forSkidmore, Owings and Merrill), Robert Hale (curator of American painting at theMetropolitan Museum of Art),James Johnson Sweeney (director of theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum), Perry Rathbone (director of theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston), andAlfred H. Barr, Jr.
In 1968, she was appointed to a commission to choose modern art works for theGovernor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, NY.[8]
After her retirement from MoMA in 1969, Miller became atrustee and art advisor forRockefeller University, thePort Authority of New York and New Jersey, and theHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.[4][5] She was an honorary trustee of MoMA from 1984 until her death in 2003 at age 99.
From the early 1940s through the early 1960s, Miller organised six contemporaryAmericans shows[9][10][11] which introduced a total of ninety artists to the American museum public.[3] In contrast to the usual large group shows, in which hundreds of artists are represented by one work each, Miller devised a format in which larger selections of works by a smaller number of artists were represented in individual galleries.[12] She famously said, "What you try to achieve are climaxes—introduction, surprise, going around the corner and seeing something unexpected, perhaps several climaxes with very dramatic things, then a quiet tapering off with something to let you out alive."[13]
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On an international scale, Miller's most influential show wasThe New American Painting,[4][14] which toured eight European countries in 1958 and 1959.[15] This exhibition significantly changed European perceptions ofAmerican art,[5] firmly establishing the importance of contemporary American painting,[2] particularly the Americanabstract expressionists,[3] for an international audience.
The New American Painting tour showcased eighty-one paintings by seventeen artists:
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Awards and honors in recognition of Dorothy Miller's contributions to museumconnoisseurship[3][4][5] included:
(This is an incomplete list.)
Unlike hermentor, who tended to spend most of his time amid the white-glove set on theUpper East Side, Miller was most comfortable in thebohemian casualnessdowntown. ... Her favorite hangout in the thirties wasRomany Marie's Cafe, on8th Street, which served cheapRomanian food and beer and had, at the time, the bestsalon ... 'At Marie's, people didn't have enough money to get drunk. People just talked and talked and talked,' she said.
Remarkable both for its quality and breadth, the Dorothy C. Miller collection echoes the lively aesthetic debates that took place in and around herGreenwich Village apartment during the intellectual genesis ofAbstract Expressionist art in the 1930s and 1940s. ...Alexander Calder ... fabricated the mobileThe Red Ghost for the focal point of the ceiling of her apartment. As Miller told the story, Calder arrived with pliers, a suitcase full of wires and various biomorphic shapes which, after mounting a rickety wooden stepladder, he hung from a chandelier finial in her ceiling.
TheAmericans 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.
Unfortunately, their names are no longer familiar to many in the art world who owe them a sizable debt, butHolger Cahill and Dorothy Miller helped to put American art, especially American modernist art, on the map. ... contrary to what many people still believe,American modernism achieved prominence, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of Cahill and Miller, well before theNew York School was formed in the 1940s.
The exhibition principally comprises numerous letters or missives that the artist Byars sent to the MoMA curator Dorothy C. Miller
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