Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7034-5715
Defense Date
2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Art History
First Advisor
Tobias Wofford
Second Advisor
Kathleen Chapman
Third Advisor
Massa Lemu
Fourth Advisor
Catherine Roach
Fifth Advisor
Michael Taylor
Abstract
For decades Kynaston McShine’s (1935–2018) exhibitions have been the subject of intense interest in modern and contemporary art and curatorial studies, but the subjective core of his curatorial practices has been markedly understudied. As the first person of African descent to hold a ranking curatorial position at the Museum of Modern Art (1959–65; 1968–2008) and the Jewish Museum (1965–68), McShine occupied a contentious space for his entire career. A figure of scrutiny and speculation in critical and scholarly literature, McShine himself remains largely mythologized—his race, Caribbean background, and subjectivity as probable but unaddressed factors shaping his fifty-year career in the predominantly white, Anglo-European art world.
Bridging art history, curatorial studies, and histories of globalization informed deeply by diaspora studies, this dissertation is about Kynaston McShine’s curatorial practices and exhibitions. By considering the three exhibitions that have largely defined his career and the art historical record, it seeks to demonstrate that McShine’s life story, which took him from Trinidad to MoMA, is intertwined in now-canonical mid-to-late twentieth century avant-garde aesthetic formations. The project is grounded in McShine’s curatorial philosophy of being “in favor of one’s time,” which he attributes to poet-curator Frank O’Hara. While seemingly straightforward, this phrase is an expression of McShine’s often ambivalent relationship to the New York arts scene and his place within a distinct generation of twentieth-century Caribbean thinkers. I cast McShine’s work as a discursive practice that variously challenged the art establishment, thereby opening possibilities and rules for exhibition-making and the curatorial vocation.
Rights
© Sarah Edith Kleinman
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
5-9-2024