This Arts Council-funded grant supports an effort entitled Dealer’s Choice: The Samuel Kootz Gallery 1945–1966 proposed by Rebecca Schoenthal, Curator of Exhibitions at the Fralin Museum of Art

The Dealer’s Choice: The Samuel Kootz Gallery 1945–1966 will be the first exhibition and catalogue that examines the legacy of seminal American art dealer Samuel M. Kootz (1898–1982), an entrepreneur, businessman, and visionary in American and European modernist art. While there have been numerous exhibitions devoted to Abstract Expressionist artists, little scholarly attention has been paid to the key role that dealers such as Kootz played in advancing American art. His New York gallery was instrumental in launching the careers of several major Abstract Expressionist artists, including Robert Motherwell, Hans Hofmann, Adolph Gottlieb, and William Baziotes. As a 1921 law graduate of UVA, Kootz holds deep ties to the University. Celebrating his impact on American postwar art will be particularly meaningful for students, alumni, and museum visitors.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a illustrated scholarly publication. This catalogue will include research and essays by noted experts that closely examine Kootz’s career and activities with the Gallery, his writings, relationships with individual artists, collectors, and dealers, and the trajectories of the artists who showed at his gallery, in order to provide a new perspective on this moment in American art. Utilizing archival research and works originally shown at the Samuel Kootz Gallery, the exhibition and catalogue will illustrate how a small group of American artists created a radically new visual language that transformed established ideas about art and, in connection with dealers such as Kootz, made New York City the center of the art world, establishing modern American art as an international force.

This exhibition will be used to spark creativity and innovation among UVA students. Our yearlong class, University Museums Internship Course, will use the exhibition as a model for creating their own exhibition, to open the following April. Students will have the opportunity to act as Kootz himself, promoting artists in our collection that they feel have not received their due. Additionally, our student docent corps of over seventy students will have the opportunity to lead tours and engage visitors in discussion of Kootz and his artists. The UVA student experience will be further enhanced when they visit The Fralin with their classes as a result of interdepartmental outreach and collaboration. There are several departments that frequently integrate exhibitions into coursework including Art History, Studio Art, History, Arts Administration, English, Media Studies, Dance, Liberal Arts Studies, and marketing and entrepreneurship courses within the McIntire School of Commerce.

We also will use the exhibition in our Clinician’s Eye workshops, a partnership with the School of Medicine that trains students in visual analysis to improve diagnostic abilities. As our region’s largest educational museum, we serve both the University community and citizens of Southeastern Virginia. Our programs are built around our guiding principle of art as an enriching experience that builds visual literacy. This exhibition will bring works by significant artists of the mid-twentieth century to the University and Charlottesville, some for the first time. As The Fralin’s major exhibition for 2017–18, Dealer’s Choice: The Samuel Kootz Gallery 1945–1966 will be the subject of our most prominent education program,Writer’s Eye. Entering its 31st year, Writer’s Eye is an ekphrastic writing competition for third grade through adults, which serves an audience of more than 4,400 students from Charlottesville and twelve surrounding counties, with tours led by student and community docents. In addition, at the beginning of the fall semester, we will hold

the Teacher’s pARTy, an experiential tour to familiarize K-12 educators with the exhibition. We expect to have an impact on a broad range of visitors through University programs, such as Clinician’s Eye workshops and “Looking Inward” meditative art tours, as well as community programs such as Writer’s Eye, Eyes on Art (our program for Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers), Family Art Jams (parent/child art program), Fun for the Young (our pre-K program), and our partnership with Arc of the Piedmont. Many of our programs serve individuals in under-served groups, who will have the opportunity to view and study work of the highest quality locally; the impact of which would be significant.

The exhibition will enhance the University within the wider community through our many public programs. The Dealer’s Choice: The Samuel Kootz Gallery 1945–1966 will also travel to the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York, further expanding the scope and impact of this project. Additionally, the exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated scholarly publication. This publication will be the first on this topic, generating new research and including essays by lead scholars in the field. Dr. Jennifer Farrell, former Curator of Exhibitions at The Fralin, now Associate Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will serve as editor, and Dr. Rebecca Schoenthal, Curator of Exhibitions at The Fralin, will contribute an essay. The catalogue will be available in conjunction with the Fall 2017 exhibition, to enrich the experience of the faculty, student, and community members who visit The Fralin. In addition, it will extend beyond the scope of the exhibition, and will be used by scholars for both subject-based research and also to broaden academic discussions past the traditionally artist-focused approach to scholarship of this period. This publication will position The Fralin and the University as a leading source for information about Kootz and his gallery for scholars and art historians worldwide. We will also be intensifying exhibition promotion outside of our region, focusing on target audiences in New York, Washington DC, and other metropolitan areas.

This project aims to educate a wide-ranging audience about the impact Samuel Kootz  and his gallery made on the domestic and international art world. Until now, Kootz has been underrepresented in the scholarship of the postwar period, despite the fact that he represented much of the major talent in twentieth-century art. The show will focus exclusively on art supported by Kootz, and will reflect this critical period in American art through the unprecedented lens of gallerist and agent, one that had a global impact and whose influence continues to be strongly felt today. We hope that this work will increase scholarship around the important contributions of Samuel Kootz, inspire other institutions, galleries, and museums to explore new curatorial angles, and encourage our students to bring this innovative approach with them as they move into positions with art-focused organizations in the future, ultimately creating a ripple effect.

Check back for more information on this Arts Council-funded project’s unfolding timeline.

The Arts Council provides advocacy, advice, and support in the Arts at the University of Virginia. It strives to develop and strengthen the bonds of interest and participation among the Arts Departments, their associated programs,  and their alumni and friends; to advocate on their behalf; to advise and assist with communications; and to help raise funds in support of academic programs, facilities, and special events. Among its multitude of arts advocacy efforts, the Council awards annual Arts Council Grants. These grants have, and continue to play an instrumental role in a number of  residencies, workshops, project and research-based endeavors proposed across Arts Grounds annually. This series of articles will highlight each funded project and serve to inform the UVA community of their unique timelines, progress and outcome reports.