Robert Storr Gives 25,000 Volumes, the Core of His Library, and Papers From His Professional Archive to Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College

Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (March 29, 2023) – The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) today announced that acclaimed curator Robert Storr has donated major selections of his library and archive, an intensely comprehensive research collection that significantly enhances CCS Bard’s campus resources. Consisting of over 25,000 volumes, the library deepens CCS Bard’s holdings to include publications spanning the early, mid, and late 20th century art history, criticism, theory, and literature, including artist monographs, rare periodicals, and out-of-print exhibition catalogs from major international museums and galleries.

Complementing this rich resource, Storr’s personal papers trace his influential career as a critic; as senior curator of painting and sculpture and decade-long tenure as Director of the Projects program at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); as the first American Director of Visual Arts of the Venice Biennale; and as Dean of the Yale School of Art, among other leadership positions at major arts institutions. Reflecting the breadth of Storr’s imprint on the art world, also represented are archives relating to his independent curatorial projects, scholarly writing, and teaching. The gift also includes a small study collection of select artworks that were given to Storr through the years by artists with whom he closely worked, including Louise Bourgeois, Yto Barrada, Luca Buvoli, Chuck Close, Leon Golub, Jenny Holzer, Deborah Kass, Gerhard Richter, and Rachel Whiteread, as well as works he purchased himself by Richard Artschwager, Francesco Clemente, Seydou Keïta, Raymond Pettibon, and Cindy Sherman. Over time, more works by these and other artists will join this initial group.

“This gift is a gamechanger for the research collections at CCS Bard in that it expands the historical time periods represented in our collections to include the early 20th century, creating greater context for the research and innovation generated by the CCS Bard graduate program,” said Tom Eccles, Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and Founding Director of the Hessel Museum of Art. “We thank Robert for his generosity in donating his collection, so it may serve as a living resource for current and future generations of curatorial leadership.”
"My goal in passing along these materials is to provide students with pieces of the puzzle they aren't likely to find in standard texts on modern and contemporary art or online,” said Storr. “I hope to link them physically as well as conceptually with the multiplicity of art tendencies, discourses, situations, and scenes they will need to know about and be comfortable with when making decisions about the vitally and contentiously cosmopolitan reality for which they'll be responsible. Libraries are worlds but never worlds unto themselves. They are only meaningful if used as jumping off points for further explorations."

The gift builds on Storr’s longstanding relationship to CCS Bard, where after being the Milton Avery Professor of Painting at Bard College in the 1980s, he served on the faculty from 1999 to 2008 and participated as a thesis advisor and as a member of the CCS Bard Graduate Committee over the years. Highlights from the collection include publications authored by or dedicated to artists with whom Storr worked closely including Max Beckmann, Louise Bourgeois, David Hammons, Philip Guston, Ilya Kabakov, Alex Katz, Ellsworth Kelly, Kerry James Marshall, Elizabeth Murray, Adrian Piper, Yvonne Rainer, Gerhard Richter, Tony Smith, and Robert Ryman, as well as titles on Soviet photography and Russian conceptualism, contemporary African art, Mexican modernism and muralism, and conceptual art practices from Argentina, among a diverse variety of other topics. It also features copies of all publications Storr authored or contributed to, encompassing more than 200 titles with several in multiple language editions.

Insights into Storr’s relationships throughout the art world are available through original correspondence with artists, documents relating to his many administrative positions at major institutions, as well as documentation of his activities as an advisor to and board member of a wide variety of arts organizations including the L'Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts, Paris, France; Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Madison, Maine; Yaddo, New York; MacDowell, New York; FAPE (Foundation for Arts & Preservation in Embassies), Washington DC; La Fondation Cartier, Paris, France; the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri; Art Journal, the College Art Association, New York; The Andy Warhol Foundation, New York, and more.

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College
The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is the leading institution dedicated to curatorial studies, a field exploring the conditions that inform contemporary exhibition-making and artistic practice. Through its Graduate Program, Library and Archives, and the Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard serves as an incubator for interdisciplinary practices, advances new and underrepresented perspectives in contemporary art, and cultivates a student body from diverse backgrounds in a broad effort to transform the curatorial field. CCS Bard’s dynamic and multifaceted program includes exhibitions, symposia, publications, and public events, which explore the critical potential of the practice of exhibition-making.

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Resnicow and Associates
Juliet Sorce / Chelsea Beroza / Emilia Litwak
Tel: +1 212-671-5158 / 212-671-5165 / 212-671-5168
Email: [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

IMAGES:
High resolution images can be downloaded here.

This event was last updated on 03-29-2023

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