Talk

Eye of the Sixties, Judith Stein’s biography of the New York art dealer Richard Bellamy (1927-98), illuminated the birth of today’s market for contemporary art, for which Bellamy was its inadvertent midwife. (Read the Introduction to the book here.) An unconventional, bi-racial Midwesterner with counter-cultural values, he launched the careers of most of the iconic artists of the sixties during the five-year lifespan of his fabled Green Gallery (1960-65). “There was no one like him,” said his better-known colleague, Leo Castelli.

In this talk, Stein will open with reflections on the process of writing a biography. She will then turn to considering Bellamy's passion and peculiar path, alongside the Pop, Op and conceptual artists, mavericks, and minimalists he favored as postmodernism elbowed the past aside.

Dr. Judith Stein is a writer and curator specializing in post-WWII American art. As curator at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts she organized The Figurative Fifties, New York School Figurative Expressionism, and the award-winning exhibition, I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin. A former arts reviewer for NPR’s Fresh Air and Morning Edition, Dr. Stein has written for Art in America and The New York Times Book Review, among others. She is the recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts in literary nonfiction as well as a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Her book, Eye of the Sixties, Richard Bellamy and the Transformation of Modern Art (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016), won the Athenaeum Literary Award. She is the executive vice president of the American section of the International Art Critics Association.

Note: Due to SVA's Coronavirus-related policies, the event is IN-PERSON for members of the SVA Community and can be accessed ONLINE for members of the general public. The latter should RSVP to receive the link for access.