Johanna Burton: I’d like to focus on your time at the New Museum, but I think you’re also a great example of somebody who can reflect on the time both before and after you were at the New Museum, and who can think about kinds of institutional priorities with a little bit of distance as well.

What brought you to the New Museum, in 1980?

Lynn Gumpert: Sure. So, I grew up in Marin County in Northern California. First generation, of parents who had fled Nazi Germany. They settled in San Francisco. I went to Berkeley as an undergrad, discovered art history, realized that was what I wanted to do. I spent my junior year in Paris at the École du Louvre. I then went to graduate school from 1975 to ’78—at the University of Michigan, did all my doctoral coursework, and then I got frustrated with academia and moved to New York.

My first job in New York, was working for a very few months at Blum Helman Gallery, and then a position opened up at the Jewish Museum, and I worked there as a curatorial assistant with Susan Goodman for two years. When the job for a curator at the New Museum was posted in the New York Times, I applied for it.

Johanna Burton: Do you remember the interview?

Lynn Gumpert: I remember one interview in particular. I think it was the second interview with Marcia Tucker [founding Director, 1977–98] at the Elephant & Castle restaurant on Greenwich Street. That’s what I remember the most.

Johanna Burton: So, when you moved to the New Museum in 1980—can you describe it? The Museum was still housed within the New School?

Lynn Gumpert: It was definitely housed within the New School. The office was very small. Everybody shared an open space, except for the Development Director and Marcia, who both had small enclosed offices.

When I got there, Allan Schwartzman [Curator, 1977–80] was working. I think the other early curator, Kathleen Thomas [Curatorial Associate, 1978–80], had already left.¹ We might have overlapped a little bit. Cheryl Cipriani [Curatorial Coordinator, 1977–81] was still there, as well as Ed Jones, who was the Head of Education [1980–84].²

Johanna Burton: Right. The education programs have been really, again, key, I think, in terms of not thinking about education as supplementary, but as central.

Lynn Gumpert: Exactly.

Johanna Burton: What was the vibe like in the office?

Lynn Gumpert: I don’t know how to describe the vibe. I remember very specifically having staff meetings where we would all sit in the exhibition space, because there wasn’t enough room in the offices, before the museum would open. The gallery was off the lobby, and it had these carpeted floors. It was kind of a funky space. We’d sit around in a circle at the staff meetings. And, of course, Marcia promoted this nonhierarchical notion that everybody would all have equal say and we’d all have a chance to take part.

Johanna Burton: When you first started at the Museum, what were your priorities for choosing artists that you wanted to show?

Lynn Gumpert: Well, the thing that I remember the most – and this is what I’ve talked about the most when I’ve talked about my days at the New Museum – was Marcia’s philosophy that you looked at as much art as you could see and then curated things that stuck with you, or that you were bothered by, or that you responded to—the things that made you think the most.

That it was not to say, “This artist is going to be the important artist who is going to survive this period,” but “Out of all the works that I’ve seen”—I’m always in a sense qualifying it—“what I see in this artist is the most interesting to me because either it’s more provocative, or the work is bringing up new issues, or the artist is tackling different kinds of subject matter.” So, we just chose the work that resonated the most with us.

Johanna Burton: Right. So, in a way, working against the idea of posterity—

Lynn Gumpert: Yes. Exactly. That’s exactly right. So that it was just that this work makes sense within this context.

Johanna Burton: Now.

Lynn Gumpert: Now. And out of all the work I’ve seen, I feel it should be presented in the public context. Because, I think, we were working on the show “Persona” [1981], so we looked at a lot of different work.

Can you speak a little bit about your own perspective on that moment—I’m thinking also about the founding of the Museum, but certainly the early part of the ’80s into the mid-’80s—where ideas of overt politics were really being thought of in terms of the Museum? I’m curious to hear you talk a little bit about that period.

Lynn Gumpert: Yes. I curated a show called “The End of the World” from 1983 to 1984. And I think that was very much around the time that Ned and I worked on the retrospective of Leon Golub [1984]. Leon and Nancy Spero were nearby and such prominent presences in the New York art world at that time. And I think Ned shared that interest in presenting work that dealt with social and political critique.

So, I think the idea of overt politics in opposition to mainstream culture was definitely in the air. People were aware of it. We had done “Alternatives in Retrospect” [1981], and that kind of led up to it.

But then, also, the Events: “Fashion Moda” exhibition in 1981. That’s when Keith Haring came and did his first wall piece in a museum [Christmas Story (3 parts), 1980].

And we always talked a lot about politics and diversity. Marcia was very, very concerned with this notion early on, far ahead of most people, which was pretty remarkable. And we just wanted to have a forum where more and different kinds of people could exhibit their work, so we were always open to looking at that issue. Everybody on the staff bought into that idea and felt that it made sense.

So, tell me about that transitional stage with the move to the Broadway location.

Lynn Gumpert: A big moment for the Museum was during the Venice Biennale [“Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained: American Visions of the New Decade,” 1984].

Johanna Burton: I want to talk about that too.

Lynn Gumpert: Yeah. It was in 1984.

Johanna Burton: Uh-huh, so mid-term for you?

Lynn Gumpert: Yeah. I didn’t get that involved with the Venice Biennale. Marcia and Ned went, which was fine because I was working intensely on “The End of the World: Contemporary Visions of the Apocalypse” [1984] at that time. So, all of those themes coincided.^{6 7}

And, it was interesting times. We organized some really wonderful shows of Ana Mendieta’s work [“Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective,” 1987–88, and “The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s,” 1990]. We had some really interesting guest curators.

Oh, and Russell Ferguson had started by that point, too. But he was also the librarian [1986–91].

Johanna Burton: Mm-hmm. Do you remember the critical anthologies starting up, which Russell had a hand in editing [Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art, 1984–2004]?

Lynn Gumpert: Yes, very clearly.

Johanna Burton: And what were the conversations around those?

Lynn Gumpert: The conversations were really lively. It was great. We all felt that this was a really important endeavor, to make real books. Hank Luce [President of the New Museum Board of Trustees, 1978–98] was a funny character, but he made a lot happen.¹⁰

Johanna Burton: To me those books remain a really important part of —

Lynn Gumpert: And they were absolutely essential and, you know, helped with theory—just being able to put together a bunch of different things. And Brian [Wallis]—he oversaw them with Phil Mariani, who was the designer, if I remember that correctly.

Johanna Burton: Yeah. It’s a really interesting part of the history.

Lynn Gumpert: Yeah, the history of the Museum. And I think, again, this was one of Marcia’s strengths, that she saw the big picture, and she realized that it wasn’t one thing or the other, but a combination of different kinds of activities. We were not going to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, necessarily.

Johanna Burton: Yeah, absolutely.

Johanna Burton: I want to just touch on a couple of things before we move to now. Can you talk a little bit about the slide project that you did with Marcia of unknown artists? I want to know more about that.

Lynn Gumpert: The slide program.

Johanna Burton: Yeah.

Lynn Gumpert: We were very open to having anybody submit slides that we would look at. I think we had a regular schedule where we would look at the slides and decide if we’d do studio visits. And so, at that point, especially in the first half of my tenure there up until the mid-’80s, there was probably nobody who showed in SoHo or Tribeca whose slides we hadn’t seen. We always had an intern or a volunteer help us then send a letter back and say, “Please submit new slides in a year.” We tried to keep on top of it. We had just five-by-six index cards, and we’d write every time who wrote in or who looked at them. So, we kept this pretty big card file of all the artists who had submitted slides.

I remember that Peter Halley submitted his slides, and they stood out because they were geometrical—nobody else was doing geometrical painting at that point—and I went to do a studio visit. So, it was well-used. I mean, I think people always appreciated it. It was a little bit like the Drawing Center’s open policy of reviewing artists.

So that was a really key part, and I don’t know if we reviewed them once a week, or every other week, but the card system was very helpful in keeping track. And then we also had slide showings where we’d just sometimes pick images that had come through the slide viewing program and show them. I think there are lists of those, too. It’s almost a community service, just saying there are people here that will look. In a sense, giving back to the community.

Johanna Burton: So, is there anything that I haven’t touched on that you would like to talk about?

Lynn Gumpert: You know, the part of the history that I remember, too, is just taking groups around to artists’ studios. And Vera List [New Museum Trustee, and Trustee Emeritus, 1977–2002]—she would buy something, then everybody else would buy something. And Elaine Dannheisser [New Museum Trustee, 1979–89], and all these amazing collectors that, kind of, came on board. Those were memorable.

I remember one of the first things for me when I first came to the Museum was taking Joan Mondale and a group of supporters to artists’ studios. In particular, I remember one visit circa 1980 where there was a rat on one of the steps of one of the lofts as we were walking up. [Laughs.]

So, I remember the dynamic that our Trustees and collectors brought as being a very important part. It was a very interesting group of people.

Then, also, Marcia’s belief, you know, that we shouldn’t ask artists for artwork at galas, because that’s their livelihood. But you could ask them to make a hat, or you could ask them to make a mask. And so, that’s how a lot of the first galas were. I still have a hat by Mary Stoppert that I bought at an auction.

Johanna Burton: Wow.

Lynn Gumpert: Well, I think that’s good.

Johanna Burton: Thank you.

[End of interview.]