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Last Modified 05/12/2009 11:32:36 AM EDT | |  NEWS AND NOTES
Museum director Helen Harrison (left) with honorees Meg Perlman, Sam Sachs, Charlie Bergman, Bobbi Coller, Shirley Kenny, Jack Marburger and Terry Netter at the gala August 3rd reception celebrating their contributions to the Pollock-Krasner House and the museum's 20th anniversary. | The museum’s 20th anniversary was celebrated last summer with a gala reception on the lawn, attended by some 250 people under a glorious blue sky. The occasion also honored key individuals who envisioned, enabled and sustain the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center: Samuel Sachs II, Charles C. Bergman and Eugene V. Thaw of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation; Barry Coller and his wife Bobbi, who chairs our advisory board; Stony Brook University president Shirley Strum Kenny and former president John H. Marburger III; former Staller Center director D. Terence Netter; and Meg Perlman, the museum’s founding director. |
 The long-awaited endowment campaign prospectus, beautifully designed by Milton Glazer, was completed in time for the celebration of the museum’s 20th anniversary. This impressive document will be a crucial tool in the fundraising efforts that are being ably led by Stony Brook Foundation president D. Lance King and his staff, including Deborah Lowen-Klein, the new advancement director for Stony Brook Southampton, who is also working on Study Center development at the satellite campus.
 The Study Center’s new home in the library now under construction at Stony Brook Southampton will open in the fall. The facilities will comprise a 2,000 volume art reference library and an archive containing documents, periodicals, photographs, microfilm, audio and video materials, and vertical files on individual artists. It will be highlighted by a beautiful 1957 oil painting, Dragonfly, by Robert Richenburg (1917-2006), donated by Ron and Ellin Delsener. The library will be accessible to Stony Brook students and the general public during the building’s regular hours. The archive will be open by appointment. Details will be posted on the Web site when the Study Center opens.
| Among other recent gifts to the Study Center collection is a group of gelatin silver print photographs created for the “10 by 10” portfolio, published in 1982 for the benefit of Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton. It includes portraits of Lee Krasner by Ernst Haas, Willem de Kooning by Dan Budnik, William King by Elliott Erwitt, and Edward Albee by Hans Namuth. The photographs were given by the Helen and Claus Hoie Chratiable Foundation, which also donated approximately 150 art books and catalogues to the Study Center’s art reference library. The library has also been enriched by gifts from Solange P. Damaz, in memory of Paul Damaz; June Schrader, in memory of Donald Schrader; Gail Levin; and the Springs Library. | 
Robert Richenburg, Dragonfly, 1957
Gift of Ron and Ellin Delsener |
 Lee Krasner & Jackson Pollock’s Legacy, a memoir by James T. Valliere, tells the story of the unique relationship between a young graduate student and America's most famous art widow. It is the museum’s first electronic publication. As director Helen A. Harrison notes in her Foreword, the book is rich with “insight, wit and candor, as well as respect and affection for the indomitable woman who was Mrs. Jackson Pollock.”
Valliere’s perceptive reminiscence of his association with Krasner, from 1963-65, offers a fascinating glimpse into the art-world politics of the era, as well as Krasner’s shrewd handling of the Pollock legacy. In his Introduction, Valliere points out that “myths about Pollock’s life and art abounded.” With his help, Krasner steered attention away from the lurid legend toward a more balanced appreciation of Pollock’s creative genius and his groundbreaking contribution to modern art.
The book is supported by funds from the Stony Brook University Research Foundation and distributed by the university’s Division of Information Technology. It may be previewed, purchased and downloaded from the museum’s Web site, (Link coming soon).
 A new family activity guide, designed by Diana Digilova and written by Beth Rosenberg, an educational consultant, was introduced in the fall. This supersedes the earlier workbook on abstract art, and enhances the visitor experience with useful information in a lively, engaging format that will appeal to young people and their parents alike. It includes multiple-choice questions, things to look for in the house and studio, fun facts, puzzles, and Web links for further information. This booklet will be distributed free, thanks to support from the Stony Brook University Research Foundation funds designated by Drs. Bobbi and Barry Coller.
IN MEMORIAM
Arthur Byron Phillips with Ruth Vered and Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas at the gala August 3rd reception | Arthur Byron Phillips, a valued member of the museum’s advisory board who for many years helped to support our summer lecture series, died on November 13, 2008 at Stony Brook University Hospital following a heart attack. He was 80 years old. A figurative painter in the manner of Andrew Wyeth, Arthur nevertheless appreciated art that differed from his own, including that of Pollock and Krasner. In fact he often told the story of buying a Pollock painting directly from the artist in 1951. Unfortunately, in spite of urgings, he never submitted it to the authentication board, and in 2005, when it was stolen from the Everhard Museum in his native Scranton, Pennsylvania, the insurance company refused to accept it as genuine. The matter has not been settled, and the painting remains missing. |
 Two days after Arthur’s death, the painter Grace Hartigan died of liver failure at the age of 86. Although a decade younger than Pollock and Krasner, she became a close friend—so close that in 1949 her wedding to fellow painter Harry Jackson took place in their house. The following year, her work was featured in the “New Talent” show at the Kootz Gallery, and a solo exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery soon followed. The Museum of Modern Art included her in “12 Americans” in 1954, and “The New American Painting,” an exhibition that toured Europe in 1958 and 1959 and introduced American abstract expressionism abroad. In 1958, LIFE magazine called Hartigan “the most celebrated of the young American women painters.” According to art historian Robert S. Mattison, who lectured on her work at the Pollock-Krasner House in 2002, “her art was marked by a willingness to employ a variety of styles in a modernist idiom, to go back and forth from art-historical references to pop-culture references to autobiographical material.”
 Summer Lectures Move to the Fireplace Project
Thanks to the kind cooperation of Edsel Williams, director of the Fireplace Project, the summer lecture series will be held in his handsome contemporary art gallery, which is diagonally across the street from the Pollock-Krasner House at 851 Springs-Fireplace Road. This will take pressure off the historic site, where parking space and seating capacity are more limited, and allow us to introduce our audience to one of Springs’ most dynamic cultural attractions. Please see the program calendar for lecture details, and join us at the Fireplace Project on Sunday evenings at 5 p.m. |
 New Cell Phone Audio Tour
Can’t get along without your cell phone? Hate to turn it off when you come to the museum? Well, if you take our new cell phone audio tour, you won’t have to silence it during open hours on Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoons from 1 to 5 p.m. in June, July and August. Developed for us by OnCell Audio®, the 35-minute tour is similar to the narration on the MP3 player that has been available for some time. With the cell phone tour, however, you can follow your own itinerary rather than a prescribed route. Both audio tours are free with museum admission. |
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Krasner Mosaic Murals Restored
 In 1958, Lee Krasner was commissioned by Uris Buildings Corporation to create two large mosaic murals for an office building at 2 Broadway in Manhattan. Working with her nephew, Ronald Stein, Krasner developed lively abstract designs based on paper collages. The mural on the Broadway façade is 12 ½ feet tall and 86 feet long—almost 1,100 square feet. For the Broad Street entrance, Krasner designed a 15 by 15 foot square mosaic. Both murals are made of Venetian glass. Instead of cutting the glass into conventional tesserae, it was smashed into large irregular pieces in order, as Krasner put it, “to break through the rigidity” of the mosaic tradition and “bring it into today.” The murals were installed in 1959.
 Over the years since then, some of the glass had worked loose, and structural cracks had developed in some areas. Last fall the murals were restored by Israel Berger & Associates, Inc., under the auspices of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, one of the building’s principal tenants. We are grateful to the building’s manager, Gerald J. Iacouzzi, and John Tobin of the management company, Colliers ARB, to Russell Newbold of Israel Berger, and to Lester Burg of the MTA for involving us in all stages of the project. The Pollock-Krasner Foundation underwrote the plaques identifying Lee Krasner as the author of these beautiful and impressive murals. |
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