Oral History Interview with Joyce Kozloff, 2011 Jul 12-13
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Oral history interview with Joyce Kozloff, 2011 Jul 12-13 This interview is part of the Elizabeth Murray Oral History of Women in the Visual Arts Project, funded by the A G Foundation. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with Joyce Kozloff on 2011 July 12-13. The interview took place at Kozloff's home and studio in New York, N.Y., and was conducted by Judith Olch Richards for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Elizabeth Murray Oral History of Women in the Visual Arts Project, funded by the A G Foundation. Joyce Kozloff and Judith Olch Richards have reviewed the transcript and have made corrections and emendations. The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. Interview JUDITH RICHARDS: This is Judith Richards interviewing Joyce Kozloff for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, disc one. This is July 12, 2011. We're at 152 Wooster Street in New York. I'd like to start with asking you to talk about your family background, going back as far as you'd like, but certainly to your grandparents or any other relatives you – JOYCE KOZLOFF: Okay. My mother was much closer to her family than my father was, but I think both sides of the family were relatively close, and I knew those people quite well. They were very much around and part of my childhood. My mother's parents, Mary and Robert Rosenberg, came from Pennsylvania, but they had moved to New Jersey by the time I knew them. My grandfather, Robert Rosenberg, always said he was the first Jewish lawyer in Harrisburg. My mother was one of five children, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. MS. RICHARDS: What was – MS. KOZLOFF: Her mother, Mary Rosenberg, played the piano, and even before she died at 101 in the nursing home, she would sit down and play her classical repertoire – in complete dementia, but that part of the brain is not affected. And I'm seeing the same thing in my mother now, who is 95. She's not in complete dementia, but she's had memory loss. But not the piano: she can sit down and sight-read anything, even if she's never seen it. And my grandmother was the same. They were both raised in this country. They weren't Old World grandparents. [Laughs.] My grandmother was born in Harrisburg and my grandfather lived in Philadelphia, although he was born in Lithuania [then Russia]. MS. RICHARDS: So when your family came from Europe – MS. KOZLOFF: It was the previous generation. MS. RICHARDS: – they came to Pennsylvania? MS. KOZLOFF: Yes, and my grandfather went to law school — in those days it was one year, which was college and law school — and became a lawyer in Philadelphia. It was the University of Pennsylvania. But this would have been the early part of the century. My grandmother was born in 1890 – Mary Rosenberg – and Robert Rosenberg, who was born in Vilna Gebevnia, Russia, came to the U.S. as an infant in 1882. I don't know why he moved to Harrisburg from Philadelphia. I don't know the story of how they met. But they lived in Harrisburg, they had these five children, and I always hear about the struggles during the Depression, how hard it was for them. All five children went to Dickinson College, which they commuted to, outside of Harrisburg – not really very close, not like a suburb. It's a distance, but all five of them went there and worked their way through and commuted. It was a very ambitious family in terms of upward mobility and education. And that family – my mother's family – there are 12 cousins, and I'm the oldest. And my – MS. RICHARDS: In other words, the five children had 12 children. MS. KOZLOFF: Children had 12 children. We get together, the first cousins – they're terrific people – at family events. But we used to have these Seders together, and because I was the oldest, I sometimes got to sit at the adults' table, not the children's table. MS. RICHARDS: So was your mother also the oldest of the five? MS. KOZLOFF: No, my mother was the second, but she was the first to get married and have children. MS. RICHARDS: What did she study at Dickinson? MS. KOZLOFF: She majored in English. She's always played the piano, and she took piano lessons, but she didn't really have a career. She did a lot of community volunteer work all her life. She was a very, very active community participant in all kinds of organizations all her life, and I remember that. I remember the meetings and the arrangements for that. But she did not have a career. MS. RICHARDS: Do you think that your social activism reflects – MS. KOZLOFF: And my father was, too. They were both very, very active in their community. I don't know. It's possible. I kind of never really acknowledged that. My mother was active in the Girl Scouts and in Jewish organizations and in community, like the United Fund and cultural things. My father was the district attorney at one point, which was an office that you ran for. So he was involved in politics. He was a liberal Democrat. MS. RICHARDS: Going back to your mother's side of the family – MS. KOZLOFF: Right. MS. RICHARDS: So she went to Dickinson. MS. KOZLOFF: Right. MS. RICHARDS: And when – let's go back to – MS. KOZLOFF: She met my father there. MS. RICHARDS: Let's go back to your father's side of the family. MS. KOZLOFF: Okay. My father grew up in this town called Manville, New Jersey. MS. RICHARDS: And his name? MS. KOZLOFF: Leonard Blumberg. B-L-U-M-B-E-R-G. And his – MS. RICHARDS: Sorry – the name of the town? MS. KOZLOFF: Manville. M-A-N-V-I-L-L-E. MS. RICHARDS: Pennsylvania? MS. KOZLOFF: No, New Jersey. I think his family lived some of the time in Manville and some of the time in Somerville, which is the county seat out there. They had a hardware store, Blumberg Hardware, in Manville. And they might have had a hardware store at one time in Somerville. There are some family trees with this information. Anyway, he had two sisters, an older sister and a younger sister, and – MS. RICHARDS: And what was his mother's name? MS. KOZLOFF: His mother's name was Fanny, and his father's name was Jacob – Jake. Fanny was born in Russian [now Lithuania] in 1887. Jake was born in New York City in 1880. She was brought to New York as an infant. My father always says he was born in Bayonne, but I don't think they lived there very long – Bayonne, New Jersey. His mother and father moved there from New York. His mother grew up on the Lower East Side. She always said she came from Delancey Street. And his father I don't remember as well. I remember them both from my childhood, but the other three grandparents lived into my adult life, whereas the paternal grandfather died when I was in school. I was a kid in school. I remember him, but maybe not as well. MS. RICHARDS: And your father had – MS. KOZLOFF: Two sisters – an older sister, who just died last year at 97 – my father died last September at 95 – and a younger sister, who just turned 90, Ruth, who's very, very sharp and lives alone. Her husband died 20 years ago. MS. RICHARDS: What's her last name? MS. KOZLOFF: Loeb, L-O-E-B. And it was her husband, Lou Loeb, who continued the family hardware store. MS. RICHARDS: That's Lewis, L-E-W-I-S? MS. KOZLOFF: No, L-O-U-I-S. Continued the family hardware store in Manville, and Ruth lives in that town to this day. Now, Manville was dominated by the world's largest asbestos factory, the Johns-Manville factory, and most of the people who lived in the town worked in the factory. It was a company town. Most of the people in the town were Polish immigrants and Catholic. So my family was more educated – and we were Jewish – than most of my classmates growing up. MS. RICHARDS: Going back to your father – MS. KOZLOFF: Yes. MS. RICHARDS: And so he grew up there – MS. KOZLOFF: Yes. MS. RICHARDS: – and went to law school. MS. KOZLOFF: Okay. Then he went to Dickinson College and Dickinson Law School, where – and he met my mother. His best friend in college was my Uncle Bill, who was my mother's oldest brother. During their first year in school, my mother was a senior in high school, and Bill brought my father home to the family house for dinner – like Friday night dinner — and that's where they met. And they were together from the time they met when she was a senior in high school, though they didn't marry until a long time after. They courted all the way through college and law school until he set up his practice and they got married. But they were together for 76 years. It's amazing, I know. Anyway, when he finished law school, he came back to Manville and set up his law practice, and I think he was the first lawyer in that town.