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Dorothy Canning Miller (6 February 1904 — 11 July 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, she was one of the very few women in her time who held a museum position of such responsibility.

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 at the Montclair Art Museum, curating a collection of Native American art.

The Museum of Modern Art

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 the 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.

Exhibitions

“Dorothy Miller… played a brilliant role in tracing, at the right time and in the right place, two astonishing decades of American art. She wrote a major history of those incredible years … through a series of living visual events that steered spectators, both sophisticated and naive, through the most uncharted and thrilling seas the New York art world has ever known.”

— Robert Rosenblum, Art in America        

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 a larger selection of works by a smaller number of artists were represented in individual galleries.

Americans 1942: 18 Artists From 9 States

1946: Fourteen Americans

1952: Fifteen Americans

1956: Twelve Americans

1959: Sixteen Americans

Americans 1963

“If I hadn’t known any artists, I certainly wouldn’t know a damn thing about art. You simply have to know the people and see them working and let them tell you about their pictures.”

— Dorothy Canning Miller, New York Magazine        

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:

Tributes

• “Dorothy Miller… was MoMA’s first curator and director Alfred Barr’s most trusted collaborator, a Greenwich Village scenester for several decades, and the woman who did the most for postwar American art.… For much of Miller’s tenure, the gallery scene in New York was almost nonexistent. The museum was a lifeline for young artists, and Miller was virtually a modernist den mother… ” —Lindsay Pollock

• “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

• “She brought sparkle and prestige and credibility to American art.” —James Rosenquist

• “Her generosity, and her smile, and her eyes. Her eyes were just incredible, smart and very important in the art world. There will never be anyone quite like her again.” —Ellsworth Kelly

• “Miller approached painting with a very particular, personal, what I would call a womanly warmth. Her physical presence—the voice was part of it, this very subtle, imperceptible animation. I lived in a very out-of-the-way place in a very out-of-the-way part of the building. Just to visit was an act of generosity on her part. There was no big ego out there to block her vision.” —Jack Youngerman

• “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

“One day in 1942, Louise Nevelson arrived at the museum with an ornately decorated shoe-shine stand that she had discovered on the street, along with the Italian bootblack who had made it. Miller found it remarkable, and called Barr down, who agreed, whereupon they decided to display it in the lobby… Miller always wished MoMA had purchased the shoe-shine stand.”

— Lindsay Pollack, New York Magazine        

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.

After Miller's retirement from MoMA in 1969, she became a trustee and art advisor for Rockefeller University, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and other institutions. She was an honorary trustee of the Museum of Modern Art from 1984 until her death, at age 99, in 2003.

Awards and honors in recognition of Dorothy Miller's contributions to museum connoisseurship have 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. ISBN 0-93392-024-5.

• 1983: Edward Hicks: His Peaceable Kingdoms and Other Paintings. With Eleanor Price Mather. Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press. ISBN 0-87413-208-8.

• 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. ISBN 0-52524-272-4.

• 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. ISBN 0-91477-300-3.

References

1. ^ Lindsay Pollock (3 November 2003). "Mama MoMA". New York Magazine. Unlike her mentor, who tended to spend most of his time amid the white-glove set on the Upper East Side, Miller was most comfortable in the bohemian casualness downtown.… Her favorite hangout in the thirties was Romany Marie's Cafe, on 8th Street, which served cheap Romanian food and beer and had, at the time, the best salon. There she met Buckminster Fuller, and hung out with Isamu Noguchi and even Vilhjálmur Stefánsson, the Arctic explorer. "At Marie's, people didn't have enough money to get drunk. People just talked and talked and talked," she said. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
2. ^ Wendy Jeffers (November 2003). "Dorothy C. Miller: The discerning eye of the collector-curator". Christie's art auction catalogue. Remarkable both for its quality and breadth, the Dorothy C. Miller collection echoes the lively aesthetic debates that took place in and around her Greenwich Village apartment during the intellectual genesis of Abstract Expressionist art in the 1930s and 1940s.… Alexander Calder… fabricated the mobile The Red Ghost for the focal point of the ceiling of her apartment. As Miller told the story, Calder arrived with pliers, a suitcase full of wires and various biomorphic shapes which, after mounting a rickety wooden stepladder, he hung from a chandelier finial in her ceiling.
3. ^ Rona Roob (September 2003). "Dorothy C. Miller 1904-2003 - Front Page - Obituary". Art in America. Her respect for the artists she selected is reflected in the catalogues for these shows, which consist principally of statements from the artists themselves. She believed that the artists and their work should speak directly, without any interpretation or explanation from her, and that visitors should form their own opinions. Miller's special qualities were an extraordinary eye, strong convictions and a quiet, gentle courage. Artists and dealers respected and admired her, and many of them became her friends. Her modesty and seriousness of purpose earned her the esteem of the staff with whom she worked.
4. ^ "Dorothy C. Miller Papers". Museum of Modern Art Archives.
5. ^ Michael Kimmelman (12 July 2003). "Dorothy Miller Is Dead at 99; Discovered American Artists". The New York Times. The Americans shows began in 1942 with a selection of what were then mostly unknown artists of eclectic styles from across the country. The format was to have a select group of artists, abstract and figurative, each presented in some depth. The slender catalogs had statements by the artists. Typically, Ms. Miller wanted them to speak for themselves rather than presuming to speak for them. She was invariably a step ahead of public taste. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
6. Michael Kimmelman (14 May 1993). "Art in Review: Dorothy Miller and Holger Cahill Archives of American Art". The New York Times. Unfortunately, their names are no longer familiar to many in the art world who owe them a sizable debt, but Holger Cahill and Dorothy Miller helped to put American art, especially American modernist art, on the map.… This splendid exhibition, organized by Wendy Jeffers, who is preparing a biography of Miller and Cahill, focuses on their pioneering advocacy in the 1930's of an impressively wide range of work.… contrary to what many people still believe, American modernism achieved prominence, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of Cahill and Miller, well before the New York School was formed in the 1940's. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
7. John Russell (5 February 1982). "Art: She Found the New in American Painting". The New York Times. …on six occasions during the period from 1942 to 1963, Dorothy Miller was curator of an anthology of new American painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. Though much contested at the time, these anthologies gave a first institutional showing in New York to many artists of whom much has been heard since. Miss Miller showed Arshile Gorky, Robert Motherwell and Saul Steinberg in 1946, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and Bradley Walker Tomlin in 1952, James Brooks, Philip Guston, Franz Kline and Larry Rivers in 1956, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson and Frank Stella in 1959 and Ad Reinhardt, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Lindner, Marisol and Robert Indiana in 1963. It would have been difficult to top that list during the years in question. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
8. "Americans 1942: 18 Artists from 9 States". Exhibition catalogue description, AntiQbook.
9. "Americans 1963". Exhibition catalogue description, International League of Antiquarian Booksellers.
10. Lawrence Campbell (January 1996). "Objects on parade - paintings by Herman Rose". Art in America. In contrast with the wide-ranging surveys of American art then shown annually at many museums, this exhibition was intended to display a small number of artists in depth. Miller had ventured far and wide, and in making her selection she ignored what was, in 1952, fashionable taste.
11. AHB (Alfred H. Barr, Jr.). "The New American Painting 24 February – 22 March 1959". Tate Britain.
12. "The New American Painting: As Shown in Eight European Countries, 1958-1959". Questia Online Library. Museum of Modern Art.
13. TIME magazine (30 June 1961). "Wall Street Treasure". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
14. David W. Dunlap (20 October 1987). "J. Walter Severinghaus, 81, Former Architect". The New York Times. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Further reading

• Francis Morrone review of James Lee Byars: The Art of Writing at the Museum of Modern Art (20 September 2007). "Notes From a Young Artist". The New York Sun. The exhibition principally comprises numerous letters or missives that the artist Byars sent to the MoMA curator Dorothy C. Miller… {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

• 1904 births
• 2003 deaths
• People from Worcester County, Massachusetts
• People from Montclair, New Jersey
• People from Greenwich Village, New York
• Smith College alumni
• American curators