Kynaston McShine (February 20, 1935 – January 8, 2018) was a
Trinidadian
Trinidadians and Tobagonians, colloquially known as Trinis or Trinbagonians, are the people who are identified with the country of Trinidad and Tobago. The country is home to people of many different national, ethnic and religious origins. As a ...
born curator and public speaker. His visions about contemporary art made lasting contributions to the lives of countless artists and colleagues at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City where he worked from 1959 to 2008. He is said to be the first curator of color at a major American museum and at his retirement he had risen to the position of chief curator at large of painting and sculpture.
Early life and education
Born Kynaston Leigh Gerard McShine to Leonora Pujadas and Austen Hutton McShine, Kynaston McShine was the elder of two children. Pujadas was president and founder of the League of Women Voters in Trinidad while his father was president of a bank.
As a child, McShine and his brother attended
Queen's Royal College
Queen's Royal College ( St.Clair, Trinidad), referred to for short as QRC, or "The College" by alumni, is a secondary school in Trinidad and Tobago. Originally a boarding school and grammar school, the secular college is selective and noted for it ...
in Trinidad and Tobago. In 1958, McShine earned a bachelor of arts degree from
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...
, where he studied philosophy. He began graduate studies at
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
in 1959. After a brief period of employment, he continued his graduate studies at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
.
Career
In 1959, McShine was hired in the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
(MoMA)'s public information department. From there, he moved to its department of circulating exhibitions, where he organized a traveling exhibit of work by
Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American Abstract Expressionism, abstract expressionist Painting, painter, printmaker, and editor of ''The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology''. He was one of the youngest of th ...
.
McShine was Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the
Jewish Museum A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area.
List of Jewish museums
Notable Jewish museums include:
*Albania
** Solomon Museum, Berat
*Australia
** Jewish Mu ...
from 1965-68, and served as acting director there from 1967-68.
While there, he organized the first museum survey of
Minimalist art
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or conc ...
, the seminal
''Primary Structures'': ''Younger American and British Sculptors''''.'' In his review of the show,
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
art critic
Hilton Kramer
Hilton Kramer (March 25, 1928 – March 27, 2012) was an American art critic and essayist.
Biography
Early life
Kramer was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and was educated at Syracuse University, receiving a bachelor's degree in English; Col ...
called ''Primary Structures'' "one of those exhibitions that defines a period and fixes it irrevocably in one's consciousness."
After becoming associate curator at the MoMA in 1968, he initiated the ''Projects'' series, devoted to emerging, experimental art. Exhibitions in the ''Projects'' series included an early survey of
Conceptual art
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...
, titled ''Information'' in 1970, as well as exhibitions of ''
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
'' (1973), ''
Joseph Cornell
Joseph Cornell (December 24, 1903 – December 29, 1972) was an American visual artist and film-maker, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of Assemblage (art), assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde e ...
'' (1980), ''
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...
'' (1989), ''The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect'' (1999), ''
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch ( , ; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter. His best known work, ''The Scream'' (1893), has become one of Western art's most iconic images.
His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dr ...
: The Modern Life of the Soul'' (2006) and ''
Richard Serra
Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material quality and exploration o ...
Sculpture: Forty Years'' (2007).
He held the position of associate curator in MoMA's Department of Painting and Sculpture until 1971, after which he assumed the roles of Curator of Exhibitions from 1971 to 1984; Senior Curator, 1984–2001; Acting Chief Curator 2001-03, and Chief Curator at Large from 2003 until his retirement in 2008.
In 2003, McShine was the recipient of the
CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence.
From 1965-1968 McShine taught at
Hunter College
Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...
.
Notable exhibitions
''Primary Structures''
McShine's 1966 exhibition,
''Primary Structures'': ''Younger American and British Sculptors'', at the
Jewish Museum A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area.
List of Jewish museums
Notable Jewish museums include:
*Albania
** Solomon Museum, Berat
*Australia
** Jewish Mu ...
was the first museum survey of
minimalist art
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or conc ...
. It included work by artists such as
Anne Truitt
Anne Truitt (March 16, 1921December 23, 2004), born Anne Dean, was an American sculptor of the mid-20th century.
She became well known in the late 1960s for her large-scale minimalist sculptures, especially after influential solo shows at André ...
,
Tony Smith,
Gerald Laing
Gerald Ogilvie-Laing (11 February 1936 – 23 November 2011) was a British pop artist and sculptor. He lived in the Scottish Highlands.
Early life
Laing was born in Newcastle upon Tyne on 11 February 1936, a son of Maj. and Mrs. Gerald Ogilvie ...
,
Carl Andre
Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear and grid format sculptures and for the suspected murder of contemporary and wife, Ana Mendieta. His sculptures range from large public art ...
,
Donald Judd
Donald Clarence Judd (June 3, 1928February 12, 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism (a term he nonetheless stridently disavowed).Tate Modern websit"Tate Modern Past Exhibitions Donald Judd" Retrieved on February 19, 2009. In ...
,
Robert Morris, and
Sol LeWitt
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism.
LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...
before the term "Minimalism" was used to describe their work. The groundbreaking show was restaged by the Jewish Museum in their 2014 exhibition ''Other Primary Structures''. The show posited for the first time that artists may master design rather than a craft. Artist
Mark di Suvero
Marco Polo di Suvero (born September 18, 1933, in Shanghai, China), better known as Mark di Suvero, is an abstract expressionist sculptor and 2010 National Medal of Arts recipient.
Biography Early life and education
Marco Polo di Suvero was bor ...
called the exhibition "the key show of the 1960s."
''Projects'' series
McShine began MoMA's ''Projects'' series that focuses on small scale experimental work by emerging artists. The first exhibition in the series was work by artist
Keith Sonnier
Keith Sonnier (July 31, 1941 – July 18, 2020) was a postminimalist sculptor, performance artist, video and light artist. Sonnier was one of the first artists to use light in sculpture in the 1960s. With his use of neon in combination with epheme ...
, and continued with work by artists like
Jonathan Borofsky
Jonathan Borofsky (born December 24, 1942) is an American sculptor and printmaker who lives and works in Ogunquit, Maine.
Early life and education
Borofsky was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mel ...
,
Sam Gilliam
Sam Gilliam ( ; November 30, 1933 – June 25, 2022) was an American color field painter and lyrical abstractionist artist. Gilliam was associated with the Washington Color School, a group of Washington, D.C.-area artists that developed a form ...
,
Bill Beckley
Bill Beckley (born February 11, 1946) is an American narrative/conceptual artist.
Early life
Born in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, a small farming town in the Amish countryside, Bill Beckley attended college at Kutztown University from 1964 to 1968 and ...
and
Rafael Ferrer.
''Information''
In 1970, McShine curated an international survey of new conceptual art. The exhibition included 130 artists, filmmakers and collectives and was centered around the new influence of communication technologies and criticized the involvement of the US government in the war in Vietnam. The exhibit was effectively
institutional critique, disrupting the accepted canon, unpacking art's new direction and introducing lesser known international artists like
Hélio Oiticica
Hélio Oiticica (; July 26, 1937 – March 22, 1980) was a Brazilian visual artist, sculptor, painter, performance artist, and theorist, best known for his participation in the Neo-Concrete Movement, for his innovative use of color, and for ...
,
Marta Minujin and
Group OHO alongside more familiar American artists like
Lucy R. Lippard
Lucy Rowland Lippard (born April 14, 1937) is an American writer, art critic, activist, and curator. Lippard was among the first writers to argue for the " dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. ...
,
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson (January 2, 1938 – July 20, 1973) was an American artist known for sculpture and land art who often used drawing and photography in relation to the spatial arts. His work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and m ...
,
Richard Serra
Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material quality and exploration o ...
, and
Yvonne Rainer
Yvonne Rainer (born November 24, 1934) is an American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is regarded as challenging and experimental. . The catalog for the exhibition featured a typewriter font and inexpensive stock, offering each artist space to do as they chose. In the catalog, McShine suggested painting might not be suited to tackle more contemporary issues that Conceptual art can.
''Museum as Muse''
In his 1999 exhibition, ''Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect'', McShine re-examined
institutional critique, bringing together artists that use the museum as their subject matter. He brought together work from artists like
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
,
Joseph Cornell
Joseph Cornell (December 24, 1903 – December 29, 1972) was an American visual artist and film-maker, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of Assemblage (art), assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde e ...
,
Hans Haacke
Hans Haacke (born August 12, 1936) is a German-born artist who lives and works in New York City. Haacke is considered a "leading exponent" of Institutional Critique.
Early life
Haacke was born in Cologne, Germany. He studied at the '' Staatlic ...
,
Ed Ruscha
Edward Joseph Ruscha IV (, ''roo-SHAY''; born December 16, 1937) is an American artist associated with the pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography and film. He is also noted for creating severa ...
,
Sherrie Levine
Sherrie Levine (born 1947) is an American photographer, painter, and conceptual artist. Some of her work consists of exact photographic reproductions of the work of other photographers such as Walker Evans, Eliot Porter and Edward Weston.
Early ...
,
Fred Wilson,
Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler (born 1947) is a U.S. artist and photographer living in Brooklyn, New York.[Louise Lawler ...](_blank)
,
Daniel Buren
Daniel Buren (born 25 March 1938, in Boulogne-Billancourt) is a French conceptual artist, painter, and sculptor. He has won numerous awards including the Golden Lion for best pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1986), the International Award for ...
and
Janet Cardiff
Janet Cardiff (born March 15, 1957) is a Canadian artist who works chiefly with sound and sound installations, often in collaboration with her husband and partner George Bures Miller. Cardiff first gained international recognition in the art worl ...
. There were 182 works included of painting, video, printed brochure and installation art that ranged from critiquing the museum to celebrating it.
Controversies
In 1984, McShine curated ''An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture'' at MoMA. The exhibition purported to present the most notable recent work in contemporary art. Of 165 artists in the show, only 13 were women, spurring a group of women artists of the time to form
Guerrilla Girls
Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. The group formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality into focus within t ...
, who continue their activist performance and multi-media work today.
In 2017, it was revealed that a wedding cake sculpture commissioned by McShine for the Museum of Modern Art from
Pat Lasch as part of its fiftieth anniversary celebrations in 1979 was discarded by the museum sometime in the 1990s, a fact which was not disclosed to the artist until 2016.
Personal life
McShine was photographed by
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Michael Mapplethorpe (; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-p ...
in 1988.
References
External links
Artnet, Remembering Kynaston McshineArtforum, Kynaston Mcshine, 1935-2018
{{DEFAULTSORT:McShine, Kynaston
1935 births
2018 deaths
American art curators
People associated with the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)
Trinidad and Tobago emigrants to the United States
University of Michigan alumni
Alumni of Queen's Royal College, Trinidad
People from Port of Spain