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Phyllis Barbara Kind (née Cobin; 1933–2018) was an American art dealer active in Chicago and New York. She promoted the work of the Chicago Imagists and outsider artists.

Early life and family

Phyllis Kind was born Phyllis Barbara Cobin in The Bronx, New York City on 1 April 1933 to Harold Cobin, a dentist, and Dorothy (Weintraub) Cobin. She was their only child. The family lived in Brooklyn as well as The Bronx. She and her mother also lived for about three years in St. Petersburg, Florida while her father performed military service. She attended the Bronx High School of Science and the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied chemistry. Her studies included chemistry at the graduate level.

She married Joshua Kind, whom she met at university, in 1956. The couple moved to New York City; Phyllis taught elementary school while Joshua pursued a PhD in Renaissance art at Columbia University. Phyllis also studied composition at the Mannes School of Music. They moved to Chicago in 1959; Joshua Kind taught at Northwestern University and, from 1962, the University of Chicago. Phyllis Kind received a master's degree in English literature from the University of Chicago.

They had four children, Jonathan, Gabriel, Deborah, and Rachel. The couple divorced in the 1970s.

Career

Encouraged by her husband, Phyllis Kind opened a gallery in Chicago in 1967. Called Pro Grafica Arte, the gallery dealt in master prints and drawings. In 1975, she opened a gallery on Spring Street in New York's SoHo district. The gallery moved to a larger, ground floor space on Greene Street in 1983.

In 1998, Kind closed her Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chicago, located at 313 West Superior Street, in part as a result of the death of artist Roger Brown.

For 25 years, Ron Jagger served as director of Phyllis Kind Gallery in New York.

Artists represented

Phyllis Kind became interested in the contemporary art scene of Chicago. She followed the work of a movement that, overall, was called the Chicago Imagists. In fact, the movement included three distinct subgroups: The Monster Roster; The Hairy Who; and the Chicago Imagists. She gave some of the artists in the movement their first solo shows: Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson in 1970 and Roger Brown in 1971. Among others shown in her Chicago gallery were Barbara Rossi, Richard Hull, Robert Lostutter, Ed Paschke, Paul Sierra, Christina Ramberg, Karl Wirsum, and Joseph Yoakum.

She also introduced the work of outsider artists. She was the first American gallerist to show contemporary and outsider work together. In 1972, Phyllis Kind presented her first group show of outsider art, "The Artless Artist: Contemporary 'Naive Works." Over the years, Kind showed Chicago custodian Henry Darger, Mexican artist Martín Ramírez (discovered by Nutt), and Europeans Adolf Wölfli, Augustin Lesage, Carlo Zinelli. She promoted and marketed the work of Georgian Howard Finster. She was an advisor to Sanford L. Smith & Associates' annual Outsider Art Fair since its inception in 1992, and traditionally occupied the first booth on the show floor.

In New York, she mounted the first solo show for the miniaturist Mark Greenwold in 1979. Phyllis Kind sought out artists of originality who exhibited what she called "the art of necessity," "making art not because they might want to but instead because they have to." Among those were Alison Saar, Robert Colescott, William Copley, Gillian Jagger, and Cham Hendon. In her Soho gallery, Kind also showcased the work of Dan Keplinger, an artist with cerebral palsy, who was the subject of the 1999 Oscar-winning short documentary King Gimp.

Later life and death

In 2009, Phyllis Kind closed her last gallery, a space in New York's Chelsea district that she had occupied since 2006.

Kind died in San Francisco, California on September 28, 2018, aged 85, from respiratory failure.

The 2019 Outsider Art Fair featured a space curated by Edward M. Gómez as a memorial to Phyllis Kind.

References

1. ^ Smith, Roberta (10 October 2018). "Phyllis Kind, Art Dealer Who Took In Outsiders, Dies at 85". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
2. ^ "Oral history interview with Phyllis Kind, 2007 March 28-May 11". Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
3. Gomez, Edward M. (Winter 2009–2010). "For Outsider Art, the End of an Era" (PDF). Raw Vision (58): 35. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
4. "Phyllis Kind (1933–2018)". Artforum. 1 October 2018. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
5. Artner, Alan G. (12 February 1998). "Phyllis Kind Decides to Close City Gallery". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
6. "Ron Jagger Fine Art". New York Art Beat. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
7. Cassidy, Victor M. (11 March 1998). "Two Chicago Galleries and Why They Closed". Artnet Magazine. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
8. Tully, Judd (1 December 1984). "New York Critics on Chicago Imagism". New Art Examiner. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
9. ^ Russeth, Andrew (1 October 2018). "Dealer Phyllis Kind, Champion of Vanguard and Overlooked Art, Dies at 85". ARTnews. Penske Business Media. Retrieved 18 May 2020.
10. Rosenbaum, Art (20 September 2018). "Howard Finster (ca. 1915-2001)". New Georgia Encyclopedia. Georgia Humanities. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
11. Host: Kurt Andersen Producer: Trey Kay (31 January 2004). "Howard Finster". Studio 360. Public Radio International. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
12. ^ Gomez, Edward M. (Winter 2009–2010). "For Outsider Art, the End of an Era" (PDF). Raw Vision (58): 32. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
13. Russell, John (23 October 1981). "Art: 50 Enigmatic Years of Dada and Surrealism". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 May 2024.
14. "OAF Curated Space: Phyllis Kind, Outsider Art's Grande Dame". Outsider Art Fair. Retrieved 18 May 2020.

External links

• Phyllis Kind Gallery
• Video of Kind telling the story of opening her first gallery in Chicago
• Transcript of interview with Rachel Sherman
• Remembrance by Jerry Saltz
• Gallery of images of Kind, artists, art

• 1933 births
• 2018 deaths
• People from the Bronx
• People from Manhattan
• American art dealers
• American women art dealers
• The Bronx High School of Science alumni
• University of Pennsylvania alumni