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J. Kirk T. Varnedoe (1946-2003)
Kirk Varnedoe in 1990
at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
© Photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Kirk Varnedoe, born in Savannah, was the youngest of four children of Samuel Varnedoe and Lilla Train.
He attended St. Andrews School in Middletown, Delaware, and Williams, where in 1967, he received his A.B cum laude. At
Williams, he was involved in a multitude of activities including: College Council,
House Coordinator, Kappa Alpha, and Gargoyle, and he was an athlete who participated
as a member of the Rugby, Football, Lacrosse, and Squash teams. He taught ARTH
101 to students right after graduation and also served as an defensive backfield
coach for the Williams football team. He was awarded the College's Bicentennial
Medal in 1993, one of the College's highest honors for an alumnus.
He received his M.A. and Ph. D. from Stanford University in 1970 and 1972. His dissertation on the work of Auguste Rodin prompted the exhibition Rodin Drawings True and False at
the National Gallery of Art in 1971. After finishing his doctoral work, Varnedoe taught as an assistant professor at Stanford and subsequently at Columbia University. While teaching at Columbia, he curated a major Gustave Caillebotte retrospective at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. In 1980, he was appointed associate professor at The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. In
1982, while at the Institute, Varnedoe curated an exhibition of early modern
Scandinavian art that toured the Brooklyn Museum, the Corcoran Gallery, and
the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts.
In 1983 he married sculptor Elyn Zimmerman. 1984 was a tremendously successful
year for Varnedoe. He was asked by the Museum of Modern Art's Painting
and Sculpture Director, William Rubin, to collaborate on Primitivism and Modern Art. Rubin subsequently hired Varnedoe to be adjunct curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture in 1985. Simultaneously, Varnedoe became a full professor at NYU, a position he would hold until 1988 and, most impressively, he was awarded a five-year MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship,
the result of which was his pivotal book of essays titled A Fine Disregard: What
Makes Modern Art Modern.
In 1989, Varnedoe was appointed Chief Curator of MoMA - a somewhat controversial appointment as Varnedoe was a scholar with little experience in museum management. In 1990, with his former student Adam Gopnik, Varnedoe organized the exhibition High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture at
MoMA - one that stirred up the art world for its mixing of everyday objects
with "high art." He also created a series of exhibitions Artist's Choice,
in which he allowed contemporary artists such as Chuck Close and Ellsworth
Kelly to sift through the Modern's collection to organize special exhibitions.
During his tenure as Chief Curator, Varnedoe was responsible for many major
acquisitions for the permanent collection, including works by Van Gogh, Matisse,
Picasso, Twombly, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Kelly, and Close. Varnedoe's
career at MoMA culminated in two major retrospectives : "Jasper Johns: A Retrospective" in 1996 and "Jackson Pollock," 1998,
with his student Pepe Karmel.
In 1992, Varnedoe became Slade Professor at Oxford University. He left MoMA in
2002 to be professor of the History of Art at the Institute for Advanced Study
in Princeton. He was the fourth art historian to hold this position, first
held by Erwin Panofksy in the 1930s.
In
2003, he gave the Fifty-Second A. W. Mellon Lectures
in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington,
entitled "Pictures of Nothing:
Abstract Art since Pollock."
Varnedoe died in 2003 at the age of 57.
Selected Bibliography:
[dissertation:] Chronology and Authenticity in the Drawings of Auguste Rodin. Stanford
University, 1972 and with Albert Elsen The Drawings of Rodin. New
York: Praeger Publishers 1971
Gustave Caillebotte: a Retrospective Exhibition, 1976-1977. Houston:
Museum of Fine Arts, 1976
Northern Light: Realism and Symbolism in Scandinavian Painting, 1880-1910. Brooklyn,
NY: Brooklyn Museum, 1982
Vienna 1900: Art, Architecture & Design. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1986
Gustave Caillebotte. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987
Northern Light: Nordic Art at the Turn of the Century. New Haven,CT: Yale University Press, 1988
A Fine Disregard: What Makes Modern Art Modern. New York: Abrams, 1990
Modern Art and Popular Culture: Readings in High & Low. New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1990
Cy Twombly: a Retospective. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1994
Jasper Johns: a Retrospective. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1996
Jackson Pollock: New Approaches. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1999
Rodin: a Magnificent Obsession. New York: Rizzoli, 2001
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