Elizabeth McCausland (1899–1965) was an American art critic, historian and
writer.Partner Berenice Abbott
Queer Places:
Smith College (Seven Sisters), 9 Elm St, Northampton, MA 01063
Barnard College (Seven Sisters), 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
50 Commerce St # 1, New York, NY 10014, Stati Uniti
Maple Grove Cemetery, 1000 N Hillside St, Wichita, KS 67214, Stati Uniti
Elizabeth McCausland (1899–1965) was an American art critic, historian and
writer.
Elizabeth McCausland was born in Wichita, Kansas, on April 16, 1899. [1]
A few years after graduating from Smith College (Bachelor's degree in 1920 and Master's in 1922), she began working for Springfield Sunday Union and The Springfield Republican, both newspapers based in Springfield, Massachusetts. She became deeply invested in the Sacco-Vanzetti case and eventually complied a series of articles in a pamphlet called The Blue Menace. [2] [1]
She taught at Barnard College (1956), New School for Social Research (1946), Design Laboratory (1939) and Sarah Lawrence College (art history, 1942-1944). [1]
She worked in close cooperation with Berenice Abbott at the Federal Art Project's Changing New York (1939), authoring the texts. [1]
Much of her interest in art scholarship was rooted in aspirations towards democracy and social justice. [2]
Starting from the mid-1930s, she worked as an art critic and freelance writer, contributing to Parnassas, The New Republic, and Magazine of Art. [1]
In the fall of 1934 Elizabeth McCausland and Gertrude Stein met at Hotel Kimbell, Springfield, Mass
Writing primarily on Social Realist painting and photography, McCausland’s reaction to the art world’s turn to abstraction in the 1950s was grim, stating that she felt it “to be the artist’s flight from reality and from responsibility.” Her feelings softened somewhat in later years, and she wrote that in her holistic commitment to the social aspects of art, she felt she had neglected her own emotional and poetic sides. [2]
Commerce Street
Along with many works on individual artists, including a monograph of photographer, Berenice Abbott, her partner, McCausland authored Work for Artists (1947), which outlined the living conditions and economic status of the American artist. [2] Other books includes: The Life and Work of Edward Lamson Henry, N.A., 1841-1919 (1945), A. H. Maurer (1951), George Inness, An American Landscape Painter (1946), Charles W. Hawthorne, an American Figure Painter (1947), Careers in the Arts, Fine and Applied (1950), Art Professions in the United States. [1]
She wrote poetry and designed limited edition publications which she printed on her private press. [1]
In 1939 she organized the retrospective exhibition Lewis Hine at the Riverside Museum. Other exhibitions of which she was the organizer includes The World of Today (Berkshire Museum, 1939), an exhibition of silk screen prints for the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts and New York State Museum (1940), and Photography Today (A.C.A. Gallery, 1944). [1]
In 1943, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, US & Canada, for her study of "the status of the artist in America from colonial times to the present, with especial attention to the relation between art and patronage". [1]
IIn 1944 she was appointed on the Advisory Committee of the Department of Photography of the Museum of Modern Art. [1]
In 1950 she worked as a special consultant at the Corcoran Gallery for an American Processional exhibition and was editor of the accompanying book. [1]
McCausland's extensive research focused particularly on E. L. Henry, Lewis Hine, George Inness, and Alfred H. Maurer. She spent the last fifteen years of her life researching painter Marsden Hartley. [1]
McCausland corresponded with Arthur Dove and Alfred Stieglitz, of whom she was good friend. [1]
She moved to New York City in 1935 and died on May 14, 1965. For all this period she lived with Berenice Abbott at 50 Commerce Street, Manhattan. After McCausland's death, Abbott moved to Maine where she died in 1991. McCausland is buried at Maple Grove Cemetery, Wichita. [1] [3]
The papers of Elizabeth McCausland are in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [1]
My published books:
