Archives of American Art Blog

American Women Tastemakers: Dorothy Canning Miller

Dorothy Canning Miller, ca. 1938. Soichi Sunami, photographer. Dorothy C. Miller papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

This is one of several stabiles by Calder that Miller considered for installation at the World Trade Center. Alexander Calder standing by stabile The 100 yard dash, not before 1969. Perls Galleries, photographer. Dorothy C. Miller papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Calder writes to Miller providing instructions on the installation of his “stabile” at the World Trade Center, with an illustration of the plates at the base of the work. Alexander Calder letter to Dorothy Miller, 1971 Jan. 6. Dorothy C. Miller papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

From the mid–1930s through the 1970s, Dorothy Canning Miller was one of the most influential women in the New York contemporary art scene and a radical champion of new American work. Miller is best remembered as the first curator Alfred H. Barr hired in 1934 for the newly opened Museum of Modern Art; she worked there until 1965.

Perhaps less known, however, is Miller’s successful second career as an advisor to private, corporate, and municipal collectors—well documented in her papers at the Archives of American Art.

Miller guided Nelson Rockefeller and other members of the Rockefeller family in building large collections of contemporary American art and American folk art. She was also a member of the first art committee of the Chase Manhattan Bank—now the JP Morgan Chase Art Collection—one of this country’s oldest and largest corporate collections of modern and contemporary art.

In the early 1970s, she consulted with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANJY) and was primarily responsible for selecting the initial artwork and sculpture installed in the World Trade Center, including Alexander Calder’s stabile “Bent Propeller” which was sadly destroyed on 9–11, along with a rare tapestry by Joan Miró and numerous other contemporary paintings and sculpture.

Explore more:

• Oral history interview with Dorothy C. Miller 1970 May 26-1971 Sept. 28
• Oral history interview with Dorothy C. Miller, 1981 May 14

Barbara Aikens is the Chief of Collections Processing at the Archives of American Art.

Little Pictures Big Lives

What do artists look like when they aren’t posing as artists? Are they regular people just like you and me? Or, do their shoeboxes and albums full of snapshots of vacations, parties, friends and family reveal something more? And what if that proverbial “shoebox” were really the thousands of boxes of photos that make up a substantial part of the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art?

Jackson Pollock with his dogs Gyp and Ahab, ca. 1955. Photographer unknown. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

When I began working on Little Pictures Big Lives for the Archives, I was immediately struck with two ideas: that snapshots of celebrities (in this case American artists) are great fun to look at because they pretend to deliver a more intimate and “just you and me” look at people whose lives are more often than not poses created for public consumption; and that the various mini dramas suggested by an archive of images—say for example, the many snapshots of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock that are found in theirs and Charles Pollock’s papers—provide lively stories, but complicated ones. Wow! The heroic abstract painter lounging about on the beach? Jackson smiling in the studio with his dogs? Is this the real Jackson? Or do these photos offer only another detail, no more or less “real” than any other?

These small photos of artistic lives, often recorded serendipitously on the spur of the moment, create evocative histories somewhere between fact and fiction and dependent both on them, the subjects, and us, the viewers. These pictures demand our interaction. We search them for clues, trying to remember or confirm who and what and why.

Andy Warhol and Philip Pearlstein in the cafeteria at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, ca. 1948-49. Photographer unknown. Philip Pearlstein papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Since the first Kodak snapshot cameras were introduced in 1888, we’ve all been enabled and encouraged to record our lives, not quite as they are lived, but the way we want to see life represented in pictures. These small snapshot images are marveled over, talked about, laughed at, cried over. Then glued into photo albums, fitted into frames, and tucked away in wallets, shoeboxes, and most often forgotten.

The words “found” and “anonymous” accompany most collections of snapshots. For the majority of snapshots found in flea markets and in family albums assembled long ago, names and places are missing and the original occasion of their making is lost.

And that is what makes the snapshots found in the collections of the Archives of American Art special. In the archives, photos are never far from the rest of the ephemera of artistic life: letters, diaries, calendars, and postcards. And even more potent is the measure we take of these little pictures as companions to other, more official portraits. Rather than the usual snapshot narrative that requires us to imagine who is in the picture, these snapshots give us additional information about artistic biographies in a style that is both captivating and instructive.

Colin de Land looking at Polaroids, ca. 1980. Photographer unknown. Colin de Land collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Friends of Colin de Land looking at Polaroids, ca. 1980. Photographer unknown. Colin de Land collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

How wonderful to look at Philip Pearlstein’s playful snapshots of a young Andy Warhol, and know how that crazy college kid turned out and more wonderfully know how photographic images, everyday snapshots among them, became the center of Warhol’s art? And closer to now than then, the Polaroid snapshots in gallery dealer Colin de Land’s archives, create a moment by moment report of time and place that is almost cinematic. It reminds us that today when our lives are so completely dictated by visual communications of all kinds, photography—weird, amusing, embarrassing, emotional, loving, and provocative—happens all the time. Paper or digital, it still proves our need to be seen, recognized, and remembered.

Merry Foresta is guest curator of the exhibition Little Pictures Big Lives: Snapshots from the Archives of American Art. Join her for a free gallery talk about the exhibition on Friday, July 15 at 3:00 p.m. in the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Archivist on the Road: Homecoming

While I travel all over the country in search of archival material to bring back to the Smithsonian, I recently had a rare opportunity to visit my own hometown of Fort Worth, Texas.

Vernon Fisher’s studio on the north side of Fort Worth. Photo: Jason Stieber.

Born in nearby Granbury, painter Vernon Fisher has made his home in Fort Worth for his entire career despite a level of success that might have sent other men to the art centers of New York or Los Angeles. Having been driven by teenage wanderlust—an affliction I suffer from to this day—I left Fort Worth two weeks after my high school graduation. So I was curious to meet Vernon, who has built such an enviable career in a place I had once abandoned as less than conducive to a creative temperament.

Vernon built his studio in a storefront near the old stockyards on Fort Worth’s northside. Like many artists, he bought the building years ago, well before the stockyards became a tourist trap lined with steakhouses, bars, and expensive western apparel shops. Nevertheless, Vernon’s corner of northside retains its desolate and un–charming qualities. This gives it an odd sense of credibility.

Vernon has worked in a wide variety of media, including painting, sculpture, installation, and book arts; however, words in both their graphic and semiotic richness have remained an important component of his artistic output. Photo: Jason Stieber.

I immediately recognized Vernon’s casual hospitality as uniquely Texan. His workspace is that of an intellectual and writer. In fact, much of his work is literary in nature, drawing upon text both original and borrowed—everything from newspaper articles and encyclopedia entries to poetry by Goethe.

Like any good Texan, Vernon is casual and warm. Photo: Jason Stieber.

We occupied most of our time with discussion of books we had in common and topics in religion, philosophy, and travel. Vernon experienced his own wanderlust as a youth, selling Bibles throughout the American South during the tense years of the civil rights movement. Eventually, he settled down to a family (with fellow artist Julie Bozzi) and a teaching job at the University of North Texas.

Big studios are more affordable in Fort Worth. Vernon’s space includes several large rooms like this one. Photo: Jason Stieber.

It occurred to me during our discussion that a body of work like Vernon’s, touched as it is by a frank humanity and a passion for thinking, has little to do with living in the right city or drinking with the right people at gallery openings. It is the product of a singular mind capable of recognizing in its own environment and perceptions a shared human experience.

Before I left Fort Worth, at the age of 18, my grandmother said to me, “Wherever you live, you have to live with yourself.” I get it now.

Jason Stieber is one of two Collections Specialists at the Archives of American Art. Jason travels throughout the United States in search of treasures to add to the Smithsonian’s collections.