BiographyEleanor Munro is a writer, art critic, and speaker whose 1979 book ORIGINALS: AMERICAN WOMEN ARTISTS provided early in-depth interview-essays with forty major figures from O'Keeffe and Nevelson to Jennifer Bartlett and Patricia Johanson. In print for 20 years, it was reissued in 2000 including younger artists Maya Lin, Kiki Smith, Julie Taymor, and Janet Saad-Cook, and an overview of the culture's widened opportunities for women artists. Munro has lectured widely and, as a participant in the Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow program, has been a resident at some 15 colleges. Since her early days as an associate editor at Art News magazine and managing editor of the Art News Annual, she has published articles and reviews in the national and art press. Among her other books are ON GLORY ROADS: A PILGRIM'S BOOK ABOUT PILGRIMAGE and MEMOIR OF A MODERNIST'S DAUGHTER. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Born Brooklyn, N.Y. to Alabama-born pianist Lucile Nadler and Thomas Munro, Professor of philosophy, student of John Dewey. Later, family moves to Cleveland, Ohio, where father is Curator of Education at the Museum of Art and Prof. of Esthetics at Western Reserve University. 1949 Graduates Smith College, major History of Art. '49-'50: Fulbright-French Gov.Fellowship,Paris. '51-52 First job Washington D.C, staff of American Federation of Arts, while working toward MA in Comparative Literature at Columbia (degree in '68 with thesis on Hazel Hutchison:an American Poet). 1953-59: ArtNews magazine, editing, writing reviews and articles, eventually Managing Editor of ArtNews Annual, while also writing poetry, fiction, and acting with The Living Theater (in Picasso's Desire Caught by the Tail and Auden's Age of Anxiety). 1960 marries art historian Alfred Frankfurter; first book, An Encyclopedia of Art (Golden Press), published 1961.Son David born; Alexander born 1963. Frankfurter dies 1965; marries journalist E.J. Kahn Jr., 1969. Publishes Through the Vermilion Gates (Pantheon, 1971), on Tang Dynasty arts and culture. 1970s, free lance reviewing, lecturing, and working on draft of a personal memoir. Based on this experience, writes Originals: American Women Artists (Simon and Schuster, 1979), essay-interviews with forty artists from Cassatt, Nevelson, Bourgeois and Krasner to Bartlett and Mary Miss. It includes historical survey and Munro's thesis about narrative memory as generative source of these women's creativity. The book, one of the New York Times Notable of that year, remains in print, reissued in 2000 (Da Capo Press) with four younger artists including Maya Lin and Kiki Smith and an overview of widened opportunities for women in the arts. 1980s-present: after extensive travel and research, Munro writes On Glory Roads: a Pilgrim's Book about Pilgrimage (Thames & Hudson, 1988), suggesting correlation between esthetic and religious imagery. This too is a New York Times Notable Book of the year. Memoir of a Modernist's Daughter published in 1989. Continuing free lance writing (articles/ Studio School: "After the End of the End: Art and Prophecy." Also, Board Member of Truro Center for the Arts, Truro, Mass., (President 1987-9), and teacher (non-fiction, memoir-writing). 1991: Participant, seminar on Clinical Application of a Relational Approach to Women's Development, with Jean Baker Miller and The Stone Center, Participant, Summer Intensive, C. G. Jung Institute, Boston. 1993. Son Alexander, photographer and theater-artist, diagnosed with schizophrenia, dies, turning Munro's focus to relationships between mental illness and creative work ("Postmodern art and Schizophrenia", N.Y. Times, 2002 and project forthcoming). Service on Board of NARSAD (National Alliance of Research into Schizophrenia and Depression). Other selected recent publications: Review of "My Love Affair with Modern Art: Behind the Scenes with a Legendary Curator" in Provincetown Arts, 2006 My Castle Hill, essay on an art center, Provincetown Arts, 2006 Penelope Jencks, review of exhibtion, in Provincetown Arts, 2006 "Mona's Garden Walls," exhibition catalogue, catalogue 2006 Louise Kramer, exhibition catalogue, 2006 "Joyce Kozloff: Exterior and Interior Cartographies," exhibition catalogue, 2006 “Those Fantastic Visionaries,” in ArtTable: Changing the Equation, 2005 “On Equal Ground: Provincetown Art Colony,” photos by Norma Holt, preface (2001) "Art in America," in Openings: Original Essays by Contemporary Soviet and American Writers, eds. Robert Atwan, Valeri Vinokurov (Univ. of Wash.Press/ Fitzkultura i Sport, 1990). "Mary Frank's Paintings," New York Times, Oct. 8, 2000. "Penelope Jencks' Portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt," Provincetown Arts, 1996. Entries on Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, in Reader's Companion to American History,(Houghton Mifflin, 1991). "Light Revealed: artists Dale Eldred, Charles Ross, Janet Saad-Cook, James Turrell," Metropolis, April, 1991. "On the Pilgrim's Path to Lourdes," San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, Oct. 25, 1987 (reprinted Best Essays of 1987, Ticknor & Fields, 1988; in Subject & Strategy, eds. Eschholz and Rosa, St. Martin's, 1990). "Art in the Desert: artists Nancy Holt, Michael Heizer, Walter DeMaria, etc." The New York Times, Dec. 7, 1987. "The Geography of Memory," New York Times, July 7, '85 "Richard Serra in Foley Square," NY Times, 5/ "Siva, the Armed Vision," Art in America, May, 1982. Memberships: American and International Associations of Art Critics Art Table Authors Guild College Art Association PEN American |
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