Between the years 1960-64 I cut my eyeteeth as a critic and cultural journalist by working on the Hunter College Arrow, the newspaper of Hunter College, City University of New York, while contributing poetry, short fiction, and a one-act play to the college’s literary magazine, the Echo. I did this while earning a B.A. in English Literature. In my senior year I edited the Arrow, preceded in that role by people like Paul Du Brul, Jack Newfield, Brian Sharoff, and Rita Dershowitz. Hunter College students in the Roosevelt House library, 1950s. Courtesy Hunter College. A reunion of those who worked on the Hunter Arrow in the 1950s and 1960s was held on Friday, May 7, 2010, at Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, 47-49 E. 65th St., New York, NY. […]
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Continuing her detailed coverage of the crisis of the Polaroid Collection, Charlotte Burns in the April issue of The Art Newspaper reports that a considerable number of artists and photographers with work in the collection stand ready to participate in a legal effort to intervene in its imminent dismantling. In her article titled “Polaroid row hots up,” she specifically identifies Chuck Close as having committed himself to fighting the planned June 21-22 auction of the cream of the collection at Sotheby’s in New York. […] On March 20, 2010, the fourth exhibition that I’ve curated for See+ Artspace/Gallery opened in Beijing. This two-person show comprises cross-sections of the works of Wynn Bullock and Harold Feinstein — 25 images by each photographer on the walls, with an additional 25 by each in the accompanying catalogues. It will run through May 19. While they differ in many fundamental ways, Bullock and Feinstein also have numerous affinities. These reverberations made it more than whimsical to pair them in this exhibition. . . . […] Even assuming the auction by Sotheby’s goes through as planned, it includes only 1260 works out of an inventoried total of 15,936. That leaves 14,676 still in the hands of the court-appointed trustee, John R. Stoebner, for disposition. So we need to turn some of our attention to alerting suitable repositories to the desirability and ongoing availability of the bulk of the collection, which remains a unique anthology of twentieth-century visual culture. In short, we need to help the trustee find this collection — complete as is, or minus the auction selection but otherwise intact — a good new home. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Polaroid Collection: Update 18
Artforum finally perked up its ears and noticed that something’s happening here (though they don’t know what it is). A brief notice in their March 15, 2010 online International News Digest, titled “SPECTACULAR POLAROID AUCTION PUT ON HOLD?” summarizes the situation in a lengthy paragraph. Another county heard from. ARTnews, meanwhile, notified me that they wouldn’t be interested in the story until it concluded — surely a notable position to take for a monthly magazine with “news” in its title. My, but the art press is all over this one . . . […]