Miller, Dorothy Canning (1904–2003)
Miller, Dorothy Canning (1904–2003)
American museum curator. Born Dorothy Canning Miller, Feb 6, 1904, in Hopedale, Massachusetts; died July 11, 2003, in New York, NY; dau. of Arthur Barrett Miller and Edith Almena (Canning) Miller; Smith College, BA, 1925; attended New York University Institute of Fine Arts, 1926–27; m. Holger Cahill (curator and administrator), Aug 17, 1938.
Appointed curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, NY (1943), one of the few female curators in US at the time; began a series of groundbreaking exhibits (1943, 1946, 1952, and 1956) with such artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Morris Graves, Mark Tobey, Louise Nevelson, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Indiana; became curator of museum collections (1947), a position she would hold for next 20 years; was a senior curator (1968–69).
See also Women in World History.