McShine, Kynaston 1935–

(Kynaston L. McShine, Kynaston Leigh McShine)

PERSONAL:

Born February 20, 1935, in Port of Spain, Trinidad; son of Austen H. McShine. Education: Dartmouth College, A.B., 1958; graduate study at University of Michigan, 1958-59, and New York University, 1960-64.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Office—Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St., New York, NY 10019-5497.

CAREER:

Writer, editor, curator. Jewish Museum, New York, NY, curator of painting and sculpture, 1965-68, acting director, 1967-68; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, associate curator, 1968-71, curator, 1971-80, senior curator of painting and sculpture, 1980-2001, acting chief curator of painting and sculpture, 2002, chief curator at large, 2003—. Hunter College of the City University of New York, assistant professor, 1968-69; School of Visual Arts, lecturer in art history, 1969-76. Member of visual arts committee, New York City Cultural Council and New York State Council on the Arts; member of advisory committee, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

MEMBER:

International Association of Art Critics, College Art Association, American Association of Museums, American Federation of Arts (member of board of trustees).

WRITINGS:

(With Pierre Descargues and Pierre Restany) Yves Klein, Jewish Theological Seminary of America (New York, NY), 1967.

(Editor, under name Kynaston L. McShine) Information, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 1970.

(Editor, with Anne d'Harnoncourt) Marcel Duchamp, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 1973.

(Editor) The Natural Paradise: Painting in America, 1800-1950, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 1976.

(Editor) Joseph Cornell, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 1980.

An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, edited by Harriet Schoenholz Bee and Jane Fluegel, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 1984.

(Editor) Berlinart: 1961-87, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 1987.

(Editor) Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 1989.

The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor, with Anne Umland) To Be Looked At: Painting and Sculpture from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 2002.

(Editor and author of introduction) Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 2006.

(Editor, with others) Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 2007.

McShine's Joseph Cornell has been translated into French and Italian. Organizer for the 1970 MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) exhibit, Information, and the 1990 show, The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect, as well as retrospectives of the artists Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell.

SIDELIGHTS:

A longtime curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), Kynaston McShine has edited numerous exhibition catalogues and mounted his own exhibitions. In 1999 McShine organized The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect, an exhibit at MOMA that was, in part, about "the spell of art and the reveries that museums can induce," according to Village Voice critic Jerry Saltz. The nearly two hundred works of art that McShine gathered from sixty artists reflected varying views of the museum as institution, social space, and icon. The works were largely from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but most stemmed from American and European artists since 1945. Saltz went on to note: "This is a show in which even the audio guide, and some of the benches, are the work of artists," and also that the exhibit as a whole was "intelligent and accessible, neither didactic nor lite." For Saltz, McShine was "an antiformalist in the House of Formalism—a kind of art-world inside man," and The Museum as Muse was his "great statement, his manifesto—and his confession."

Working as an editor, McShine has put together over a dozen catalogues of exhibitions at MOMA. Emblematic of these is the 2007 Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years, which Library Journal contributor Jack Perry Brown termed "a first-rate visual and intellectual survey of Richard Serra's … extensive sculptural career." Brown also noted that McShine "provides a thoughtful and illuminating interview with the artist."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Afterimage, July, 1999, review of The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect, p. 11.

Art History, June, 1991, David Anfam, review of Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, p. 270.

Art in America, March, 1989, review of Andy Warhol, p. 25; March, 2002, "Longtime Museum of Modern Art Curator Kynaston McShine Has Been Named Acting Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture," p. 160; May, 2003, "MOMA Names Two Top Curators," p. 168.

ARTnews, May, 1984, "Kynaston McShine; Curator, ‘International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture’," p. 63.

Library Journal, May 15, 1989, Robin Kaplan, review of Andy Warhol, p. 67; March 1, 1990, Paula A. Baxter, review of Marcel Duchamp, p. 92; September 1, 2007, Jack Perry Brown, review of Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years, p. 134.

New Statesman & Society, May 26, 1989, Philip Core, review of Andy Warhol, p. 36; November 24, 1989, Flick Allen, review of Andy Warhol, p. 41.

Publishers Weekly, March 17, 1989, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Andy Warhol, p. 83.

Village Voice, May 12-18, 1999, Jerry Saltz, "Inside Job."

Wilson Library Bulletin, December, 1989, Jean Martin, review of Andy Warhol, p. 138.