Allan Frumkin (1927–2002) was an American art dealer with galleries in Chicago and New York City in the second half of the 20th century.

Life and career

Frumkin was born in Chicago in 1927. He attended public schools and graduated from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. He studied the sociology of architecture briefly at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

and

The New School for Social Research The New School for Social Research (NSSR) is a graduate-level educational institution that is one of the divisions of The New School in New York City, United States. The university was founded in 1919 as a home for progressive era thinkers. NSSR ...

in New York City. Frumkin opened the Allan Frumkin Gallery in Chicago in 1952 and a gallery with the same name in New York City in 1959. In 1979 he joined forces with William Struve and the Chicago gallery was renamed Frumkin-Struve, before closing in 1980. The New York gallery was renamed Frumkin/Adams in 1988. Frumkin retired and closed the New York gallery in 1995 but continued to work as a private art dealer for most of the rest of his life. "In the early 1950s, his Chicago gallery was instrumental in introducing the European Surrealists." He promoted the work of

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...

Max Beckmann Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920 ...

Robert Arneson Robert Carston Arneson (September 4, 1930 – November 2, 1992) was an American sculptor and professor of ceramics in the Art department at University of California, Davis for nearly three decades. Early life and education Robert Carston Arn ...

and

Richard Diebenkorn Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he bega ...

, among others. Beginning in 1976 and lasting for 31 issues, Frumkin published a newsletter with profiles of gallery artists in their studios. He was also an art collector—382 of his Beckmann prints were donated to the

Saint Louis Art Museum The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is one of the principal U.S. art museums, with paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from all corners of the world. Its three-story building stands in Forest Park in St. Louis, Mi ...

in December 2002.

Personal life

Frumkin was married to Jean Martin Frumkin, who died in 2019.

Legacy

The Allan Frumkin Gallery records are housed at the

Smithsonian Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

. A professorship "to provide high-level interdisciplinary scholarship on the connections between visual arts and society" was established at the University of Chicago in 2005, through a $3 million gift from Frumkin's family. The faculty chair is named the Allan and Jean Frumkin Professorship in the Visual Arts in the

Committee on Social Thought The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought is one of several PhD-granting committees at the University of Chicago. It was started in 1941 by historian John Ulric Nef along with economist Frank Knight, anthropologist Robert Redfield, and Univers ...

References

External links

Allan Frumkin Gallery records, 1944-2016
at

{{DEFAULTSORT:Frumkin, Allan American art collectors American art dealers University of Chicago alumni Businesspeople from Chicago 2002 deaths 1927 births 20th-century American businesspeople