Dorothy Canning Miller

Dorothy Canning Miller (February 6, 1904 – July 11, 2003) was an American art curator and one of the most influential people in American modern art for more than half of the 20th century. The first professionally trained curator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), she was one of the very few women in her time who held a museum position of such responsibility.
Early life and education
Miller, the daughter of Arthur Barrett Miller and Edith Almena Canning, was born in Hopedale, Massachusetts and grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. After graduating from Smith College in 1925, she trained with John Cotton Dana of the Newark Museum, which was then one of the most creative and ambitious museums in the country, and worked there from 1926 to 1929. From 1930 to 1932, she worked for Mrs. Henry Lang cataloging and researching a collection of Native American art which was to be donated to the Montclair Art Museum.
Career at MoMA
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 director Alfred H. Barr, Jr.'s attention in 1933, when she and Holger Cahill (with whom Miller was living in Greenwich Village — they married in 1938) were curating the First Municipal Art Exhibition in space donated by the Rockefeller family. Some of the participating artists wanted to boycott the show after the Diego Rivera mural Man at the Crossroads was deliberately destroyed during the construction 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" 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 trusted collaborator and, by 1947, curator of the museum collections.
In 1959, Miller was appointed to the art committee for One Chase Manhattan Plaza, serving with Gordon Bunshaft (chief designer for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill), Robert Hale (curator of American painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), James Johnson Sweeney (director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), Perry Rathbone (director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and Alfred H. Barr, Jr.
In 1968, she was appointed to a commission to choose modern art works for the Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, NY.
After her retirement from MoMA in 1969, Miller became a trustee and art advisor for Rockefeller University, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. She was an honorary trustee of MoMA from 1984 until her death in 2003 at age 99.
The Americans shows
From the early 1940s through the early 1960s, Miller organised six contemporary Americans shows which introduced a total of ninety artists to the American museum public. 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. 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."
Americans 1942: 18 Artists From 9 States
Darrell Austin
Hyman Bloom
Raymond Breinin
Samuel Cashwan
Francis Chapin
Emma Lu Davis
Morris Graves
Joseph Hirsch
Donal Hord
Charles Howard
Rico Lebrun
Jack Levine
Helen Lundeberg
Fletcher Martin
Octavio Medellin
Knud Merrild
Mitchell Siporin
Everett Spruce
1946: Fourteen Americans
David Aronson
Ben Culwell
Arshile Gorky
David Hare
Loren MacIver
Robert Motherwell
Isamu Noguchi
I. Rice Pereira
Alton Pickens
C. S. Price
Theodore Roszak
Honoré Desmond Sharrer
Saul Steinberg
Mark Tobey
1952: Fifteen Americans
William Baziotes
Edward Corbett
Edwin Dickinson
Herbert Ferber
Joseph Glasco
Herbert Katzman
Frederick Kiesler
Irving Kriesberg
Richard Lippold
Jackson Pollock
Herman Rose
Mark Rothko
Clyfford Still
Bradley Tomlin
Thomas Wilfred
1956: Twelve Americans
Ernest Briggs
James Brooks
Sam Francis
Fritz Glarner
Philip Guston
Raoul Hague
Grace Hartigan
Franz Kline
Ibram Lassaw
Seymour Lipton
Jose de Rivera
Larry Rivers
1959: Sixteen Americans
Jay DeFeo
Wally Hedrick
James Jarvaise
Jasper Johns
Ellsworth Kelly
Alfred Leslie
Landes Lewitin
Richard Lytle
Robert Mallary
Louise Nevelson
Robert Rauschenberg
Julius Schmidt
Richard Stankiewicz
Frank Stella
Albert Urban
Jack Youngerman
Americans 1963
Richard Anuszkiewicz
Lee Bontecou
Chryssa
Sally Drummond
Edward Higgins
Robert Indiana
Gabriel Kohn
Michael Lekakis
Richard Lindner
Marisol
Claes Oldenburg
Ad Reinhardt
James Rosenquist
Jason Seley
David Simpson
The New American Painting
On an international scale, Miller's most influential show was The New American Painting, which toured eight European countries in 1958 and 1959. This exhibition significantly changed European perceptions of American art, firmly establishing the importance of contemporary American painting, particularly the American abstract expressionists, for an international audience.
The New American Painting tour showcased eighty-one paintings by seventeen artists:
William Baziotes
James Brooks
Sam Francis
Arshile Gorky
Adolph Gottlieb
Philip Guston
Grace Hartigan
Franz Kline
Willem de Kooning
Robert Motherwell
Barnett Newman
Jackson Pollock
Mark Rothko
Theodoros Stamos
Clyfford Still
Bradley Tomlin
Jack Tworkov
Tributes
"She was a straight shooter, very respectful of the art and the artists and the museum, something you don't get that much of anymore. The Americans shows set the tone for my time. ... They were exhibitions of what was going on, pointing to the future" – Frank Stella
"Her eyes were just incredible, smart and very important in the art world. There will never be anyone quite like her again." – Ellsworth Kelly
"She brought sparkle and prestige and credibility to American art." – James Rosenquist
"Miller's career was marked by an uncanny ability to recognize new and innovative artists encompassing many different styles. In a career that spanned more than 60 years, she left many more conservative curators in her wake." – Wendy Jeffers
Awards
Awards and honors in recognition of Dorothy Miller's contributions to museum connoisseurship included:
1959: Smith College, honorary Doctor of Letters
1982: Williams College, honorary degree
1982: A Curator's Choice, 1942-63: A Tribute to Dorothy Miller, Rosa Esman Gallery, New York City.
1983: Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture governor's award
Books
(This is an incomplete list.)
1981: The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection. With Lee Boltin, William Slattery Lieberman, Nelson Rockefeller, and Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Manchester, Vermont: Hudson Hills Press. .
1983: Edward Hicks: His Peaceable Kingdoms and Other Paintings. With Eleanor Price Mather. Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press. .
1984: Art at Work: The Chase Manhattan Collection. With Willard C. Butcher, David Rockefeller, Robert Rosenblum, and J. Walter Severinghaus, the project manager for One Chase Manhattan Plaza. Marshall Lee, ed. Boston, Massachusetts: E. P. Dutton. .
1985: Art for the Public: The Collection of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. With Sam Hunter. New York City: The Authority. .
References
Further reading
External links
Dorothy C. Miller's collection at the Archives of American Art
1904 births
2003 deaths
American art curators
American women curators
People associated with the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)
Smith College alumni
People from Hopedale, Massachusetts
People from Montclair, New Jersey
People from Greenwich Village