May 21, 1975
In her final show as Curator of Prints and Drawings at The Brooklyn Museum, Jo Miller presents a summary of her acquisitions during the past seven years. Curator’s Choice: Durer to Dubuffet, on view from May 21 through August 31, consists of more than 100 prints and drawings by about 70 artists.
Ranging widely in time, style, and country of origin, the show includes works by such diverse artists as Albrecht Durer, German (St. Jerome in the Desert, engraving, 1495-97); Odilon Redon, French (Head of Christ, lithograph, 1887); Mary Cassatt, American (Afternoon Tea, drypoint and aquatint, 1891); James Montgomery Flagg, American (Illustration for Cosmopolitan Magazine, ink drawing, ca. 1920); Pierre Bonnard, French (Le Bain, lithograph, 1922); Marc Chagall, Russian (The Shepherd and His Flock, etching and drypoint, 1927-30); Reginald Marsh, American (Steeplechase Swings, etching, 1935); Pablo Picasso, Spanish (Satyr and Sleeping Woman, etching and aquatint, 1936); Henry Moore, English (Elephant Skull, etching, 1969); Alberto Burii, Italian (Untitled, etching and aquatint, 1973); prints by the Americans Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Donald Judd; and eight plastic panels by John Cage.
Admission to The Brooklyn Museum, Eastern Parkway and Washington Avenue is free.
“Ideally,” Jo Miller writes in the exhibition catalogue*, “a curator collecting for a major museum in the 1970’s should be more than an art historian, broader than a critic and less subjective than a creative writer. A curator needs the business acumen of a Rockefeller, the drawing power of a Kennedy, the dramatic flare of a Hurok, and the taste and integrity of Meyer Schapiro. Since few of us possess such attributes, we must strive to perfect our individual skills. A curator should have catholic tastes, but must be necessarily cautious in indulging in personal taste .... It has been my responsibility to study the strong and weak areas of the collections in my care and endeavor to fill gaps as well as select what I think will be significant in the future.”
Since 1958, during her tenure at The Brooklyn Museum, Ms. Miller has been research assistant, assistant curator, associate curator and curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings. The Brooklyn Museum owns more than 30,000 prints and drawings, one of the great national collections.
* Curator’s Choice: Durer to Dubuffet, 20 pp., 8 b&w illustrations; preface by Michael Botwinick, Museum Director, checklist and introduction by Jo Miller. Published by The Brooklyn Museum, New York.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1975, 007. View Original
