Ruth Fine Audio Transcript Invisible City Philadelphia

Sid: Today is July 24, 2015 and we're in the home of Ruth Fine. We are interviewing her for discovery grant from PEW Center for the Arts and Heritage. The grant is called Invisible City Philadelphia in the Vernacular Avant-Garde. You were born in Philadelphia, a native Philadelphian. What did your parents do?

Ruth: My mother actually graduated from what was then the Industrial School of Art in 1935. My father on the other hand didn't graduate high school. He was enough of the feminists that in the early 30s wouldn't marry my mother until she graduated college. He was a furniture salesman. My mother painted all her life in she taught and she painted until she died at the age of 90.

S: What neighborhood you live in?

R: Initially I lived in Northern Liberties which is so trendy now. Then we moved to the Northeast and as an adult I lived in various places.

S: Was there art in your home?

R: There was art in my home and lots of visits to the museum. I started going to PCA at the age of 11 on Saturday mornings. It has been in the family for a long time.

S: At that time it was the Philadelphia Museum School of Art?

R: When I was in art school it had three names. It started out as the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, it changed to the Philadelphia Museum College of Art and then changed to the Philadelphia College of Art. All during my four years which was from 1958 to 1962.

S: Who were your teachers at that point?

R: My freshman teachers included Aurelius Renzetti, who also taught my mother. He once said to me that he could have been my father. He sent me to the great Italian restaurants for my introduction to South Philly Italian food. Bill Perry and Lisa Langley were all three dimensional teachers. Bill Hag and Peter Pan co- taught a class when I was a freshman. George Bunker was my freshman printmaking teacher. He was the most influential person on me as a student. When I was a sophomore that was when general arts was started, up until then there is no fine arts major at the school. He was the most influential person. Edna Andrade was a sophomore teacher. Louis Finkelstein. In those days, and I don't think this is true today, all of the art history teachers were the studio people so Louis Finkelstein and Dennis Leon were probably the art history teachers. Natalie Carquet* just came back from the Fulbright and started teaching sculpture when I was a sophomore. She introduced me to Larry Day who later became my husband. In the interrim I took one painting class with him.

S: You were a printmaker?

R: I majored in printmaking because if you majored in painting as a junior you had to take two days of painting and one day of painting techniques. Whereas if you majored as a printmaker you didn't have to take three days of printmaking. You could take some days of printmaking and some painting. I wanted both. It has always been amusing to me that printmaking is thought of as a technical thing but it was because of painting techniques that I didn't take painting as a major. It was useful actually because fewer people took printmaking and so when I went to graduate school at Penn I was the only applicant for a fellowship so I got the graduate fellowship in printmaking. I helped set up the printmaking studio there. The school was tiny then. What was important about the school then was not who were your teachers because Paul King* was not my teacher but I got to know him. Doris Staffel was not my teacher but I got to know her. The school was small enough that you would walk through people's classes to get to your class. You just connected with them without having them as a teacher. In some ways that was one of the great things about the PCM.

S: I can't imagine it being in the old building.

R: Everything was in one building. The courtyard was not enclosed, it was an open meeting place it was fabulous. I loved every minute of it actually. It was an amazing experience. You didn't get to know only the people from your year, it in only get 10 people from your here, Mercedes Matter was my drawing teacher for two years. Ashley Bryan, who is in his 90's now and one of the great people of the world, lives in Maine was a teacher when I was a sophomore and senior. It was a fantastic place. I went to Skowhegan the summer of '61 and one of the interesting things was having this feeling of knowing students from all into the country and I really felt I was in the right place that there wasn't anything anyone said that made me want to be someplace else.

S: During the time period of Matter and Finkelstein were at the school, he was writing for Art News. He wrote that essay on abstract impressionism and the abstract expressionist that were at PCA work were much more lyrical than the New York School. They were more nuance like Guston.

R: Klein taught at PCA in the '50s. Larry and Klein were quite friendly. But Guston was the bigger influence and that was probably through Mercedes and Larry. His work I would say started out connected to de Kooning but at the end of the 50's when he was stopped being an abstract painter he was more connected to Guston.

S: This is too early but in '52 and '54 Raymond Handler had a little gallery on Spruce Street. The gallery was basically his living room I think, but it showed San Francis' first show. Karel Appel's* first show in the United States. Shirley Jaffe's first show in the United States. He showed Pollock, Klein, and Guston. Most of the abstract expressionist including Doris Staffel and Bob Kaiser. Dubin Gallery another block away.

R: At some point there was a de Kooning show at PCA because Larry always talked about the de Kooning show of drawings and they were just push pinned to the wall hundred dollars a drawing. I think Klein arranged for that.

S: There was an issue of It Is, where they had a Philadelphia panel talking about abstract Expressionism. That was at the school.

R: In '64 Duchamp was of course was at the school with Louise Bourgeois, Larry, and Theodore Stamos. It was a courtyard studio built in the middle where all kinds of events took place.

S: That was the time period that Duchamp said in the future the artist will be underground. He was probably laughing because he was working on Étant Donnés at that time. Where you there for that lecture?

R: Of course.

S: At that time period the Duchamp's had come to the Philadelphia Museum. In '59 the Lebel* book had been printed. It was the first monograph on him. But he wasn't Duchamp like how Duchamp is today. For a long time the large glass was that the Dryer Collection in New Haven and the rest of the work was in Pasadena. R: But by the time I was a student it was here.

S: He was somebody that people thought hadn't been doing work for a number of years.

R: The Étant Donnés shifted that a lot. John's attention to Duchamp altered the attention that was given to Duchamp post Johns and Rauschenberg.

S: Robert Motherwell for Wittenborn produces the Dada painters and poets. So that happens simultaneously with the Arensberg's collection coming here. Lebel publishes his book. Duchamp still hasn't had his retrospective and that doesn't happen till '64 in Pasadena. The work is there and Rauschenberg and John are were making pilgrimages to see the work. So when you were there hearing Duchamp was it like, wow there is Duchamp?

R: Yes, it was like wow there is Duchamp. Art students were going to the museum. It wasn't until the Duchamp biography by Calvin Tompkins. I was asked at the gallery to interview Tompkins when it came out but I hadn't been to the Duchamp's room in awhile because I had been in Washington for 20 years. I was going up to meet Tompkins because I didn't want to interview him without meeting him and I never met him and I decided I would stop by the Philadelphia Museum. I realized I had grown up with that as ordinary. You go to the museum and see these strange objects which weren't straight because they were there. It was a remarkable place to have been so Duchamp was important here. S: I been asking artists and collectors about Duchamo and for other places and other historians they think of Duchamp's ideas but as an artist living in this city we have these objects. The objects are really, I mean they're the early Cubist things but then there are the large glass is cracked and it is made out of toothpaste and LimeWire.

R: In those days the large glass didn't have a fence around it so you could really see it. It was a whole other experience. I don't think people realize what a difference it is to have the large glass with something keeping you away from it. It was a totally different viewing experience than it is now.

S: It's like I when I went to the Tate Britain for the first time and saw the Hamilton large glass it was really uncanny because it's exactly the same but it isn't cracked. Something feels wrong about it and it seems so fake. It is almost like Jeff Koons made it.

R: I saw a proof of Rauschenberg's Accident before the stone cracked. A proof exists before the stone cracked. it's pretty amazing.

S: Other things that were happening in Philadelphia, in the general culture it was an interesting time Bill Haley and the Comets rock 'n roll was first starting in Philadelphia. American Bandstand was coming here. They started doing Penn Center and Ellsworth Kelly came here. Which I am sorry that it left. R: It was amazing that it left. Really terrible.

S: What is almost as worse as it leaving is that it has been retitled. It was Sculpture of Philadelphia and now it is Sculpture for a Large Wall. There is something that is dishonest about that.

R: Yeah, it is history being erased.

S: It is a part of Invisible City. To talk about printmakers, although this is somewhat commercial but very experimental commercial, there is Gene Feldman here.

R: It wasn't commercial at all. Gene Feldman was anything but commercial. Gene was setting up to shop at Penn when I was in my first year of graduate school. Anyone who knew Gene that all night long he was there printing his one-off offset lithographs of the Kennedy and the woman with the hair. There was nothing commercial about that. It was as radical as it could get. It wasn't appreciated here, it was appreciated in Amsterdam at the Stedelijk and in South America. Gene was a phenomenon, he was fantastic. There wasn't anybody in the country that I ever met who was interested in offset lithography.

S: The Stedelijk show was in 1962. How many people in Philadelphia were showing in Amsterdam? People have talked about how amazing he was as a person.

R: He took the Penn students, before the shop was set up at Penn, to Falcon Press. We would work in Falcon Press and that was our studio. I knew Gene from PCA and the type shop. Jim McWilliams brought Gene. So you had two of the most eccentric typographers in the world at Broad and Pine. Claire was not my teacher but we became friends. There was an intergenerational intermediate connection that happened there that was just remarkable.

S: Was it because the school was small or the period of time that it was taking place.

R: I think it was both. I think there was so much happening and it was small. It was a real internal support system. WC Fields probably did the biggest favor for Philadelphia because it's always been viewed as WC Fields put it and rather it be somewhere else. One that's a good thing because it kept it for those of us who really knew what it was like. Gene and Jim were amazing, really amazing.

S: You went to Penn in 1962 and in the Fall of 1962 the ICA gets established at Penn.

R: Yes it gets started in 1962. S: The first show at the ICA was Clifford Still.

R: I just gave away from inscribed catalog to young woman who said to me in the Still room in San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts that he was her favorite artist. I thought she should have this catalog. It is a big awkward catalog. He was at Penn and he came once a month only to talk about the 1949 in San Francisco. It was fascinating that was what he wanted to talk about in 1963.

S: Was he in Maryland then?

R: He was in Maryland. As a student he never struck me as bitter. He struck me as living in the past which of course seemed to me as tragic.

S: That exhibit was in a hallway?

R: No it was in ICA that had a space.

S: It was in the Furnace Building were the library is. R: I don't remember it as a hallway. It wasn't big but I don't remember it feeling like a hallway. The printmaking studio was in the basement of the Furnace Building. It was totally unsafe in terms of ventilation. I'm sure that has changed. I helped set up the etching studio and Gene set up the litho studio. James Van Dyck was a professor there and head of the department. The painting studios were way up in the stacks. By the time Kennedy died somehow there were painting studios downstairs. I remember exactly where I was when he was shot.

S: So the downstairs Is that where the architecture archives are now?

R: I haven't been in the Furnace Building probably since 1964.

S: Was it on 34th St?

R: No the Furnace Building.

S: That is the architectural archives now. It is really beautiful. There is these catacomb like... R: ...that was were the printmaking studios were.

S: That is were they have the Louis Kahn drawings.

R: Louis Kahn was there and as graduate students we could just walk out and listen to Louis Kahn being a critic. The other thing that was amazing that happened during those years and I don't know how long this went on but every Monday afternoon there was a seminar. When I was at Penn it was a two year program. Before me it was a one year program. After me it was a three year program. Both of those two years there was a Monday seminar so we had David Smith came to Penn within weeks of coming from Italy after working on alter pieces. David, Frank, Ed Reinhard, Barney Newman, Dori Ashton* was there. It was an amazing time. We sat around the seminar table with these people and talked. It was the only time I ever heard Helen Frankenthaler talk about landscape painting in a real kind of connected way. She is always talked about as a being a difficult person. But she was not necessarily a difficult person, she was wonderful and talking to students. She became a friend later in life. Annalee Newman came with Barney every time. It was funny I was the only woman in my year. Annalee at the end of her life we became friendly and she remembered me. Maybe she did because I was the only woman.

S: Do you remember who else was students at that time?

R: David Nobly*, who taught at Penn State for many years. John Fairey and Richard Miller. S: Richard Miller who became board of the ICA?

R: No a different Richard. The only think I remember about Richard was that he talked about Dennis as a faded valentine. What I remember about John Fairey was that he wouldn't leave the room when Kennedy was killed because he was so opposed to Kennedy. I wanted to kill him. James Addely* who taught at University of Michigan for many years. I can't remember if he was British or Australian but he had an an Australian wife. He may have been a first year student when I was a second year student. I had just gotten married to Leonard Lair at that time. I had loved going to Penn but my real world was still at PCA. I didn't go out with the guys and drink. The faculty was of course Pierre Deratzio* and Angelo Savelli who were real Italian guys and women belonged in the bedroom or the kitchen. They were not real helpful for me. I was glad I had other friends to be faculty for me. I was not interested in the bedroom or the kitchen. The big things that happened those years was the Folcroft race riots. A black family went to move into the community Folcroft and horrible race riots. We were all very involved with worrying about that. Jim VanDyke was involved with that. Engman came down as a critic but he didn't teach then. Folk music was a thing at Penn. There was a Yale influx because that is were Jim and Bob Engman came from. Maurice Lowe who was at Penn for many years teaching sculpture.

S: I find it interesting that you are mentioning people who came down who were abstract expressionist, the fist show was Clifford Still and the second show was Same Greene which was also abstract expressionist. Then the ICA has a shift...

R: Warhol. S: That was in '65.

R: T Grace Sharpe was there briefly and then she left.

S: She was the first director.

R: She was there when I was there.

S: After you get out of graduate school in 1964 you began teaching at PCA from '65 to '69. After that you taught at Beaver College from '69 to '72.

R: I started at Beaver before I left PCA. There was an overlap.

S: How did you meet Lessing Rosenwald?

R: Benton Spruance, who was thought of as the dean of Philadelphia lithographers, taught at PCA and was the head of the department at Beaver. My first teaching job at PCA was to replace Benton Spruance. It was a Monday afternoon lithography class. It was the most coveted classes especially for illustration students at PCA. He got sick and at the last minute they asked me to take over the class. You can image the senior illustration guys who had been dying to take lithography from Benton Spruance for four years walked in and I was their teacher. They were really unhappy and that was my first teaching job. Then when Ben died I took over the classes at Beaver. Ben took his took his students to the Rosenwald collection every other week. It was a tradition. Benton and Lessing were very close. I use to sit in on his classes to get to know the collection. Then when I went to Beaver I started following that tradition so I took the class to the Rosenwald collection every other week. I would go on my own so that I could get the collection better. I spent one day every week at the Rosenwald collection and that is how I got to know Lessing Rosenwald. Because I was continuing a tradition that his good friend had established Lessing Rosenwald felt good about me.

S: The Rosenwald's owned Sears?

R: Lessing's father was not the original founder. Two other people founded Sears and Lessing's father bought out one of those two. It was Sears Roebuck Money and it was Lessing Rosenwald who came to Philadelphia in 1920 and founded Sears on the east coast. Lessing built the Sears building at the boulevard which has since been demolished. When I was a child living in the north east that was a landmark to me.

S: So that is how it came from Chicago. R: Yes, he came from Chicago to set up Sears.

S: When I went to Tyler from '68 to '71. I transferred from Rutgers and then went back to Rutgers for graduate school. I have only lived in three states. New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. I visited the Rosenwald collection and they had these beautiful easels and the prints would be installed in this easel mechanism that was a grid. It was a wonderful study collections. There were these benches that looked like Nakashima.

R: They weren't. They were Swedish modern architecture.

S: There was a hallway that looked like it was laminated with a silver processed blue print of the building?

R: There were two aisles and between them were the print storage cabinets. Both boxes on shelves above and drawers below. There were four of these aisles. In the back at the end of the two aisles was the book study room. Rosenwald collected prints, drawings and books. The original book room had laminated foil, there was a Carl Milles head, and a wonderful table. When He had bought more books then what would fit in that cabinet he added another room. That was the more casual seating space that was lined with more traditional bookshelves. That room is now a facsimile and it is at the Library of Congress in the Rare Book Room. The laminated walls, that sculpture is on loan from the National Gallery. S: How did he start collecting drawings and prints?

R: Well as the story goes he was walking by Seislers* around 1927 and saw one of David Young Cameron's prints of the Royal Scottish Academy. That was the first print that he bought. His first collecting was in the area of British etchings which was so stylish then. David Young Cameron, James McBey, and Muirhead Bone. Lessing Rosenwald and the Boston Public Library where the two major collections in this country. In the late '20's he moved on to old master prints through Sesslers and books through A.W. Rosenbach. They were his friends. When the great collections of Europe were being dispersed in the late '20s, I believe Lessing Rosenwald asked Sessler, who would go to the great auctions in Europe, to buy anything through his account and bring it back it. And if he didn't take a certain amount he would pay him that amount. This was how the collection formed and grew to be 22,000 prints and 7,000 rare books. It started first with the prints and drawings. The drawings were the modest part of the collection.

S: The collection started in Philadelphia?

R: Yes.

S: How was it decided that the collection would go to the National Gallery as opposed to staying in Philadelphia? R: Well I can honestly say that I tried very hard to find a document that would give me that information and I never found one. There are two reasons that could be possible, one of the reasons is that it was war time and Lessing Rosenwald was working for the some board pertaining to the war and was going in and out of Washington. It may really have been a matter of patriotism that it went to Washington. Of course David Finlay and others involved with origins of the National Gallery were out beating the bushes. He gave around 40 prints in 1941 when the gallery first opened as a token gift. It wasn't until '43 when he gave the collection. I have to assume that in those two years he was being lobbied to give the collection.

S: So all that time it was still here in Philadelphia it belonged to the National Gallery?

R: He died in 1979 and the collection was moved in 1980. It took a year to pack it up and move it. The laws changed in 1967, up until then you could make a donation to a museum and retain it for your lifetime. In 1967 you no longer could do that. So Lessing stopped making donations of anything he wanted to keep here. There were a certain things that he felt were important that he bought and gave to the National Gallery directly. When he died there were several 1,000 prints that had to be gone through. Some went to the National Gallery and some went to the family. Through those years the collection belonged to the National Gallery and the deal was that the National Gallery could keep them here and have it be an outpost. That would have never made sense. Things went back and forth to Washington for exhibitions. They always did from '43 on. The curator of his collection was always a National Gallery employee. Elizabeth Mongan was the first curator and she was recommended to him by Paul Sacks. Agnes Mongan was her older sister. She stayed in Boston as a curator and Betty Mongan came to Philadelphia. I was a National Gallery employee from the time I was hired in 1972 until I left.

S: Philadelphia is a real center of printmaking. Later on there was the Brandywine Workshop...

R:...there was The Print Club which is now The Print Center. That was founded in 1915 and it is celebrating its 100th anniversary. That had international exhibitions and it was a very important center for printmaking. The days of my youth there were Friday afternoon teas every week. They were serious teas with kettles and I went to them. Bertha Van Mangeshkar was one of the great Philadelphia figures. She was amazing. It was very serene and old fashioned. The international exhibitions were very important. That is a whole other wing of research, it was internationally important and during the war when Hader was in New York he also came to Philadelphia. This may have been because of Lessing Rosenwald.

S: Carl C. Grosser...

R:...Carl C. Grosser was the first curator involved with modern prints. He worked at VIA before coming to Philadelphia. He was a major force in terms of American prints and contemporary prints. That is how the Philadelphia Museum has the key set of Merian* prints, that would have been Grosser's origins.

S: Today we have the Fabric Workshop that came out of Prints and Progress. There are people who are passionate about it but do you also think it might be connected to being a center for the publishing industry?

R: I don't know. Certainly there was nothing in my life that would lead me to feel that it was connected to the publishing industry. On the other hand I think it is a reasonable to pursue. There is the Library Company. The was a great WPA shop in Philadelphia. Richard Hood who taught at PCA was the person in charge of the WPA shop. I once tried to track down those records but I was never able to find them. It was an important shop. The Pennsylvania Historical Society and the Library Company have important WPA collections. Doc Strass* was in Philadelphia doing carborundum prints. The WPA workshop in Philadelphia was certainly smaller than the New York workshop but maybe just as important in its inventive aspects.

S: It was right across the street from PCA.

R: I think the publishing industry is worth pursuing but I don't have any evidence of that.

S: You worked for the National Gallery and you are an authority on drawing and prints. I did a show and I borrowed a Jasper Johns flag drawing and from your book I found out it was his first flag drawing. You didn't formally study art history?

R: Well at PCA you had art history every semester. I was imbued with a passion for it. I didn't study it formally or receive a PhD in art history. At Penn I also took classes in art history.

S: Gene Feldman brought Diderot to Philadelphia and was expecting him to work on die-cut books because that was what he was doing in Europe. In 1957 Diderot was doing jewelry and one of the board members thought it was wonderful and wanted him to come to the Philadelphia Museum School and teach in the jewelry department. The board member did have the authority so there was no job when Diderot he came here. He barely got back to Europe. The second time Diderot came, Gene wanted to produce a book but when he saw what Diderot was doing he went back on it because Diderot did 5,000 pages with his students. That is how Jim McWilliams got involved, because Jim was only 23 at the time.

R: Jim is amazing.

S: You knew Larry Day from school. You were married to Leonard Lare and then married to Larry Day. Can you talk about Larry and how he was know for his amazing crits?

R: Larry was amazing. When I first knew about Larry as a student was in a way that I have never seen in any other teacher I have ever known, he had the capacity to talk to you about your work, to make you think your work in new ways, and you would leave Larry with both a real sense of clarity as to were you where and what you were doing with no idea whatsoever of what he thought of it. He in no way ever imposed himself. He was remarkable in that regard. I lived with him for a long time and he was always remarkable in that regard. As a student that was the most important thing for me, to leave a crit and have so much to think about. He brought so much into the conversation. You had weeks of thinking after one or two hours with Larry. I have never known anyone with that capacity. Ben was the dean of Philadelphia Lithography and Larry was the dean of Philadelphia painting. Both of these were referenced by Victoria Donnahue. Who I gather is still alive?

S: She is alive and in Ann Harbor. I see her. She is so shy

R: She always was.

S: I wanted to interview her but she is living in the home that she grew up in. She went to Rosemont College and there are paintings that she did in the hallway. Her parents were illustrators. Up until two years ago she was still getting on the train and doing reviews.

R: Where was she doing reviews for?

S: For the Philadelphia Inquirer. She was a freelancer for fifty years. She had no benefits. She continued to do these reviews. When Ed Susanski passed away there was a memorial service and I drove her back. R: I never got to know him at all. He may have reviewed my shows in Washington but I don't remember.

S: Ed was very intelligent, could be friendly but he didn't want to get too close to people. At least in the art world because he didn't want to be biased. He didn't want people to talk to him when he entered the gallery.

R: I actually met him when he was at Larry's Poker Game show in the Woodmere Museum. I think that was the only time I was ever introduced to him. He clearly didn't want to talk.

S: Yeah he wanted to have his own take on things. Do you remember Dorothy Grefly*?

R: Of course. I even quoted Dorothy in my Norman Lewis catalogue because the Pennsylvania Academy had a show in the '50's that discussed Norman Lewis at length. PAFA was a real force in the exhibition world. I saw Steven Corn* I saw at PAFA. Even going through the Norman Lewis catalogue and seeing how many shows he was in at PAFA. We don't give PAFA enough credit for what a force they were in the art world then. Way more than the Philadelphia Museum in terms of bringing artists in and new art. S: They had those annual shows up until 1966 or 1967.

R: When I was a student the school seemed very conservative but not the exhibitions. The exhibitions were important and you didn't miss them. They brought a lot of new work in town. I've gone through those catalogues in terms of Lewis and he was in several of them. It was amazing to be quoting Dorothy.

S: I did the 50th anniversary catalogue for Tyler and it was interesting because....

R:...was Larry in that show? He was in some show at Tyler when I was in Washington. Or maybe that was at Cheltenham Art Center. The Cheltenham Art Center was a huge force. First of all they got us all jobs when we got out of school. That was the other thing there were places to get jobs in Philadelphia and that kept young artists here. My first job out of school was at the Plymouth White Marsh Art Center teaching children on Saturday mornings. I also worked at the Print Center when it was the Print Club, Prints and Progress started with us doing demonstrations in schools. We got paid 50 dollars a demonstration. This was a big deal and we had aids, that is how I met Kippy and Sylvia Egnal, Stuart Egnal's mother and Stuart Egnal. What a tragedy but he was a wonderful artist in Philadelphia.

S: Hr has been mentioned in a few interviews. Every once in a while his work comes up in auctions he must have been really prolific. R: Stuart Egnal was very prolific. I had a complete set of his etchings that have now at RISD. I printed some restrikes for his mother and she gave me a complete set. Stuart was one of the most tragic figures of my life. He was 26 when he died and he went to Penn after me. He was wealthy, handsome, and smart. I believe his mother had taken a drug when she was pregnant. He died of cancer. He was very influenced by Mirendy*. When he was sick he did wonderful sewn like pillow pieces which Natalie Charka* may have some. I wanted to get one from his mother but I never did. He went to Penn for graduate school and he may have gone to PCA for undergrad. His mother could never see me without tearing up for as long as she lived. She lived to be 102. I would remind her of Stuart because we were friends as young people.

S: Was Sylvia Egnal involved at the Y Arts Council.

R: I don't know.

S: Since you were across the street from the Y do you remember the activities going on there?

R: Not so much. Didn't they come after me? After '62?

S: Oh yeah. I think you were at Penn. R: No, when I was at Penn I was living there and I was newly married. Then I moved out to the suburbs and got involved with the art centers. Then I started teaching and I was very involved in my own work.

S: What suburb?

R: Cheltenham. First I lived in Oak Lane, Leonard and I were in West Philly while I was a graduate student on 38th and Chestnut in a building that is no longer there because they have widened 38th Street. Then we moved to a second floor apartment in Oak Lane and then we bought a house in Wyncote. We kept that house until we separated in 1969. John Moore bought the house from us.

S: Oh it is a beautiful house.

R: He sold it after a few years so I don't know where he lived after that.

S: John Moore was my first teacher so I had him in '68. First he was living close to Tyler and then he moved to Wyncote. R: That was my house.

S: It was a block from where Ezra Pound grew up.

R: I did knew that because of Helen and Bob Beautel. Helen taught literature at Beaver when I was there and Bob taught at Temple. They lived around the corner from me.

S: That is the tragedy of Philadelphia is that everybody knows these facts but nobody puts them together.

R: I am Philadelphia's biggest fan. It didn't take me long to leave Washington when I decided I was not staying. I came back here a year and a half before I retired and I commuted to Washington.

S: Philadelphia is a surprising town...

R:...it has always had a slight inferior complex because of New York. S: Nothing can compete with New York. The history of American art up until 1910 and the Aschan School Philadelphia was the center. In 1916 or 1917 McClee's Gallery had a show of works from 18 of the artists in the Armory show and that place still exists on Lancaster Avenue. Sheiler* was in Bucks County. I was just at the Museum of Modern Art and there is a Bucks County barn painting from the '30s. If Morton Livingston Schamberg hadn't died from the Spanish flu god knows what would have happened. Even John Sloane and Duchamp were friends which seems really crazy. They got on top of the Washington monument and proclaimed Greenwich Village the capital of bohemia. Can you image John Sloane and Marcel Duchamp as friends? Duchamp probably steered the Arensberg collection into Philadelphia.

R: Oh I am sure he had something to do with it.

S: I know that he designed the installation Large Glass. They intentionally cut out a door so Maria Marten's sculpture could be seen through the Large Glass.

R: Which is fantastic. Philadelphia also has these quirky things. All the little clubs...

S:...the Plastics Club...

R: Fleisher was a force when I was young. The Plastic Club, the sketch club, and the Pyramid Club which was primarily African-American but Larry showed at the Pyramid Club. You always saw Hubert Humberd Howard especially when I was young. I don't know how Hubert was a black artist in those days but he was always at the openings and he was always welcomed. I never had a sense of prejudice in the art community in Philadelphia. I lived through the whole civil rights movement with Paul Keen*. He was never my teacher and I guess this was more when I taught at PCA. He was my sounding board. There was this little cafeteria in PCA and there was a small area set aside for the faculty.

S: Where was the cafeteria?

R: It was in the basement next to the school store. Certain models like Eddie Pool, is he still alive and in town?

S: Eddie was up at Tyler but years later he would remember your name. He would sit there quiet and he was taking people's names.

R: Yeah. He later became a guard. There was this little curtain that separated the faculty part of the cafeteria from the student part. I remember talking the whole civil rights movement with Paul Keen. Dick Stester* I don't know if he taught there but he taught with me. Bill Daily was an astonishing force in and out but really critical. Dick Rienhart*. Ray Ballinger was advertising. The school was small enough that it wasn't really segregated by department in any way. My best friends when I was a student was a guy in illustration and a guy in advertising. They were not painting students. I was very friendly with an African-American photographer. I've been dying to find Bill Ruffen. I have two photographs, one of myself and one of Natalie Charko and me, taken by Bill Ruffen. I have been asking about him for years. The first thing I ever bought was a pot. When I was a senior I got a present from my grandmother for my birthday and when I was walking through the pot shop I bought a pot by Joe Winston. He was in industrial design. It was my first art purchase and I love it as much today as I loved it then. It had to do with the fact that the glazing reminded me of Alaska caves. I got in touch with Joe Winston ten years ago he is in Florida to tell him that I still have that pot. I think it was 25 dollars. I would walk through the pot shop and I always wanted to work in clay. I would sit down and try to teach myself how to throw a pot. No one was watching and the clay was there. Everything was open to everybody, I don't spend enough time there today but it doesn't feel the same. It doesn't feel like the institution I went too.

S: It isn't the same and yet they say that they want to be interdisciplinary. They are doing that as dogma and not as a fact.

R: It just happened because you walk through everybody. You couldn't get anywhere without going through someplace else. So you had to know everybody, you couldn't get to the back of the building there were no hallways. You had to walk through classes. If you were downstairs you went through the pot shop. I can just picture walking through the pot show with the clay and throwing wheels.

S: Can we talk about galleries in Philadelphia where it is not known as a place that had extensive galleries. But there was Dubin Gallery, Henler Gallery, 1015 in Wyncote... R:...when I got out of school and married to Leonard the most important gallery to use was 1015 on Greenwood Avenue. It was her home address. Every room had paintings hanging on it and they were normally group shows and also solo shows. When Ann Kaplin was clearing her record she sent me all of her stuff for 1015. If I find it I will show it to you. I think the shows changed once a month. You would park on this narrow street for their events and they were warm, loving, and supportive events. Larry, Dennis, Paul Keen, Jerry Kaplin, and Jimmy Luder showed there. David Pease may have shown there. When she got divorced was when it closed. Makler European showed European art and it was down the street from the Print Club. I don't know if I would have gone to Makler's so much. Nicolas de Staël was at Makler and I always loved to see it. They were very rarefied. Grossman Leaf was here. I remember when Marian Lock's opened. She had a narrow room behind a gift shop and she took full page ads in the art magazines. I thought that was so amazing. If you were not in Philadelphia you would think that Marian Lock's was the glitzy gallery based on the ads. There wasn't even any space. It was brilliant. Then she moved to a bigger gallery on Walnut Street.

S: I think it was 7 feet across.

R: Yeah, it was like a joke. Talk about a hallway with a full page add in every art magazine. It was so smart and interesting to me. That was my introduction to the potential power of advertising was Marian Loch's gallery ads. Gross Mcleaf who else was here?

S: Joan Kron just sent me a audio file of a Ralph Callier* interview. It was when Joan Kron and Audrey Sabol were trying to do billboards as art and nobody wanted to do it. Audrey had a Lichtenstein billboard made in her backyard. Joan was still trying to promote it and have Walter State make billboards. Lichtenstein, Joan and Ralph Callier were at the museum but before he was giving an advertisement pitch he talked about Leary's bookstore...

R:.. Market Street and 5th.

S: He talked about The Other Gallery on Pine Street. Do you remember that? It was on 11th and Pine and he was saying they have young artists like Martha Erlebacher.

R: What was it called?

S: The Other Gallery.

R: No, I don't remember it at all either. Erlebacher wasn't here early on. When did the Erlebacher's come?

S: This was '67. R: Where they here that early?

S: I think.

R: They must have just come then. I remember when they came. They would have been here before Lenny and I split in '68. So they must have been here in '67.

S: I worked for the Makler's off and on for seven years. The best thing was when they went away I would lock the door after work and go upstairs and sit in front of the Rothko. They had a Rea Stat* and I would just sit there and stay for half an hour before going home. They had a Walter and Ashford* desk. Do you remember the Vanderlip Gallery?

R: Oh sure. Dianne went to the ICA didn't she?

S: No she went to Moore.

R: Then to Denver? S: Right. Janet Carden was at PCA, then the ICA, and then the American Craft Museum. Where you around for the Focus Shows?

R: Sure, I was on the steering committee. I did the summary of it.

S: It is in the library.

R: That xeroxed summary. My entire living room was covered with Focus stuff.

S: It is amazing how that doesn't filter into the history of feminism. It got one bad review because of the Bernstein screw drawing. It was censored at the Civic Center Museum.

R: I actually had a show in that. Marian Vanvrik* and I had a two person show at the Philadelphia Textile Institute in '74. That was after I was a curator. I stopped showing pretty soon after I became a curator.

S: I did look through the whole book but I didn't realize that you had edited it. They had every institution and little space had major, historic and contemporary women showing. It was just volunteer. Philadelphia is an interesting place, maybe not perhaps now, but at one time all of the major galleries were run by women and all of the major institutions from the Print Club to the Philadelphia Museum to the ICA were run by women. There was a matriarchy here.

R: As an art student it always interested me that there were a lot of women teachers at PCA. I was never aware that women weren't suppose to be going to art school and think of them seriously. Now Edna later told me that they were not paid as well. So there was a different pay scale.

S: Wow, how did she even find that out?

R: She probably talked to one of the guys. Not that the guys were paid very much having been married to two of them I know very well what they were being paid.

S: And still paid that way.

R: Exactly. As a freshman I had Lisa Langley and as a sophomore I had Edna Andrade. Jane Piper, Doris Staffel, and Mercedes Matter was around. They were major forces. I don't even know the other areas of the school.

S: At Tyler the only woman I can think of at that point during '68-'71 was Lillian Lent. R: My sister went to Tyler before you. She is four years younger than me and she probably went to Tyler in '64- '68.

S: Did she know Andrew Spence*?

R: I don't know who she knows but I can ask her. Marian Freedenthal and Claire Van Vliet were there. Marian Freedenthal's son was Robin Freedenthal. I think he died. That was tragic. She was working with Jack Leonard Lorenson.

S: Yvonne Bobrowicz was at Drexel. She was working for Louis Kahn and doing things with Jack Leonard Lorenson. Later Adele Acres was at Tyler.

R: My sister may have studied with Adele Acres but I never knew her.

S: Do you think that there is something that makes Philadelphia different from other cities?

R: I think that is an interesting point that I haven't thought of. You may well find it was because before Ann D’Harnoncourt there was Jane Box.

S: Before that was Evan Turner.

R: Of course. Certainly the ICA and the Print Club started with women. Prints and drawings were always women because nobody cared about them. I can say that because I spent my life in it. You could get away with murder if you were interested in prints and drawing because nobody was watching. It was marvelous. Historically curators in prints and drawings were women. To be the museum and head of ICA is very interesting.

S: And all of the galleries.

R: That was not so uncommon. In New York you had...

S:...Betty Parsons.

R: Marian Willard, there were more. That tradition of women running galleries in New York was solid. But Hendler and Dubin were not women. S: Hendler was an artist that was showing his friends. His friends were...

R:...I think Larry showed there.

S: I think so.

R: You know who was looking up Hendler, Thomas McCormick who is in Chicago was dealing with someone who had shown at Hendler because he wrote me to ask me something.

S: Barry Cambell* is doing the Hendler estate now in New York. The only artist that Franz Klein ever wrote a little essay for was Raymond Hendler. Klein who was living in New York and taught in Philadelphia for a year or just a semester. It is the same year Annie Albers is teaching here.

R: That is interesting because she was a force of importance to me when I was a student.

S: She taught here and Josef Albers had about six shows at the Art Alliance. R: My first show was at the Art Alliance and it was a wonderful support system. I still haven't figured out what it is now. My first show was in a little gallery on the third floor at the Art Alliance. I was a graduate student.

S: They did Wharton Astric, Jimmy Erns, Hans Hoffman, Milton Avery, and Ree Morton. It is hard to read their history but if you look through it they happened pretty early. It doesn't have a niche. It wasn't big enough and it was awkward in the space because it was a home. It was a club. In the 60s and 70s what do you think were the five most important events or exhibits that happened in the art world? Who do you think the five most important artists are in that era?

R: Living here?

S: Yes.

R: Well it seems contrived of course but Larry was. How could I not. I don't remember what year Dennis Leon left Philadelphia do you know?

S: I think it was around '66 or '67. He was doing sculpture and writing reviews. R: He was an interesting reviewer for the Inquirer. You wouldn't put Edna Andrade in the '60s or the '70s. As a teacher she was immensely important to me. Bill Daley versus Rudy Staffel. They were apples and oranges but both really amazing and important forces in the ceramic world. I wouldn't know how to categorize them. I was not really aware of what was happening at Moore or when Tom Chimes became important. I think he was later then that. I think PCA was the stronger force as a school and Tyler was second. Maybe David Pease would have to go in there. Somebody who was a big force in the city, it depends on what you mean as a force, was Sam Maten*. He was all over the map with what he was doing. He was generous and out there lobbying for the importance of things. When Jerry Kaplan went to Tamarind in '60 or '61 Sam Maten came in and took over his classes. In a funny way Sam Maten was an important person in Philadelphia in those days. Ben Spurens was politically important, he was important for the 1% art thing. When did he die? In the '60s? When did the 1% for art come?

S: 1958. That is how they got rid of the Ellsworth Kelly because in '57 it was not 1%. Vincent Klen commissioned it and whoever owned the building owned it. It was like a piece of furniture. Ronny Rubin came in and he sold it to someone, who sold it to someone, who gave it to Matthew Marks and they flipped it. It initially got sold for $100,000.

R: I thought they gave it back to Ellsworth?

S: Matthew Marks' catalogue, which is beautiful, says that it is being torn down. It is not torn down, it was an old transportation building and now it is a law firm. Ellsworth Kelly didn't like that the windows weren't washed, you couldn't really see it, and there were birds flying around the lobby. I use to bring people over there. It was one of my favorite works of art in Philadelphia. The fact that it left says something about how abstraction is consider.

R: That is the tradition of the Academy still being pervasive.

S: It could be that.

R: It would be interesting if it is because it certainly isn't talked about but that was the tradition. When I was a student that was why we didn't have anything to do with the Academy because they were still figuring out figurative tradition. In the late '50s who would be doing that?

S: But they were showing abstraction in the gallery just not teaching it.

R: There was a big difference between the museum and the school. It was completely disconnected. I think Ben would have to be there because of his politics, he was a charming old fashion man. Apparently a real womanizer. I once said to a colleague of mine who's mother was a friend of Ben and she had a print inscribed to her. I think her mother may have had an affair with him. Maybe. Ben, Larry, maybe David, Morris Blackburn. When did he die? He was too old for me. I am trying to think of names in Philadelphia when I was there. S: I had David as a teacher. Not only was he a great teacher he also became the dean and then he went to Yale. He was also going to Norfolk in the summer and bringing back stories. So when Guston shifted to his later works he was telling us stories. I was appalled at what he had done. Later I loved them. I was just looking at them at the Museum of Modern Art for twenty minutes. But David was a conduit of information and stories. But I am not sure if he had an influence on his students if any of them became important. It was an influence on the structure of the school.

R: He was a great gossiper and storyteller. He also liked to make charts and maps.

S: There was also a guy named Richard Kramer up at Tyler and he had this color class that was very systemic. David had these classes were you played games to order things around and then Kramer had a way of looking at color very systemically.

R: Sol Mednick, photography at PCA at that moment was phenomenal. He was a really important person in the city in terms of the shows he brought. The gallery at PCA, I have given most of my catalogues away, Alexey Brodovitch.

S: If it wasn't for Alexey Brodovitch there weren't be any Irving Penn. R: Sol Mednick was a very important force was an important force in those day. He drove around in a Rolls Royce. In their living room they had a big round red velvet sofa from the Mastbound Theater. Seymour Mednick is still alive.

S: Oh yeah.

R: I knew him when he was married to Linda Lealter briefly. He took wonderful photographs of Larry that he gave me. I would love to see him. Sol was a force, he was one of the most important.

S: He was doing exhibitions, at that time the Federal Government would give universities money for educational collections. He brought Moy Bridge* books. The Guggenheim fellows in photography one year did an issue of Camera Magazine. He had that show at PCA and that was the first time Diane Arbus was ever shown in the context not as a photojournalist but as a fine artist.

R: I don't even know what Sol's work was. I think he did advertising and photography. He may be one of the lost people. You have to understand that my bias and knowledge is PCA centric.

S: That is fine, mine is Tyler's. Events or exhibits during that time period that changed the world?

R: I think the Duchamp exhibit or rather its existence of the Arensberg collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of the most important things in Philadelphia. It may have been it there earlier but I was experiencing it then. I think the museum was free then, if not as a student it was free, it was common to walk in to the museum for twenty minutes. The University Museum was really important to me as a student. I would go there all the time.

S: Is your memory of the University Museum of floor to ceiling artifacts and that they have cleaned it out?

R: I haven't been there since I moved back four years ago.

S: When I was a kid my mother and father would take me places. They took me to the University Museum and when they took me to the Art Museum I didn't like it because the University Museum had mummies. I was just shocked and enthralled. I didn't have a gestalt for art so it was less exciting but I also have this memory of the University Museum having lots of things. It isn't like that anymore. Do you remember What in the World?

R: Yes. S: That was on TV with Jay Charlton Koon and they had this little object in the dark. They would tell you what it was off camera and they would look at the object and come up with what it was, what century it was from, and what country it was from. It was such a great show. It might have primed me for the University Museum.

R: Was there a Van Gogh show during that period?

S: It was in 1968 or 1969.

R: I would say that was one of the shows that meant a huge amount to me.

S: I went to it with a 104' fever and there were lines. It was almost hallucinatory and I don't know if it was because of the fever .

R: There was a Manet show then?

S: Manet was 1965. R: When was the Warhol show at the ICA?

S: 1965.

R: Those would be my five things: The University Museum, especially the Arensberg collection and Duchamp, the Van Gogh show, the Manet show and the Warhol show. There was also the Jons print show. The Richard Fields and John Spruce show was 1970.

S: Yes because I was taking lithography at the time and I could not believe the washes that they were almost clear, transparent, and solid. But I also didn't realize that there were master printers helping them. I also loved Johns' work and I couldn't believe how wonderful those prints were.

R: Dick Field was an amazing curating. He did a silkscreen show in the '60s. That was the first silkscreen as an art show. I forget what year it may have been '68 or '67 but it had a tiny little brochure.

S: In the United States? R: No, as a serious museum treating silkscreen as an art.

S: Was that because of silkscreen utilized by '60s artists? So it was not in vogue but people were looking at it?

R: It was a great show.

S: John Tancock did the multiple show.

R: When was that?

S: 1970 maybe?

R: That was another show it was my favorite catalogue ever.

S: It was Feldman's catalogue that had an accordion in it. R: The show was amazing.

S: Italo had spoke about Diderot but that was the first time I saw the work with the little metal motorcycle with chocolate on it. I was just at the Whitney yesterday and the Rafi Ferrer piece is a multiple from the Makler Gallery. The curator that I had lunch with didn't know it was a multiple. She said why would we put a multiple. But there are prints in that show.