A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World

By Liza Lou and Marcia Tucker

University of California Press
Publication date: September 2008

ISBN: 9780520942196

Digital Book format: PDF (Adobe DRM)

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This engrossing memoir brings to vivid life the behind-the-scenes struggles of Marcia Tucker, the first woman to be hired as a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the founder of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. Tucker came of age in the 1960s, and this spirited account of her life draws the reader directly into the burgeoning feminist movement and the excitement of the New York art world during that time. Her own new ways of thinking led her to take principled stands that have changed the way art museums consider contemporary art. As curator of painting and sculpture at the Whitney, she organized major exhibitions of the work of Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, and Richard Tuttle, among others. As founder of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, she organized and curated groundbreaking exhibitions that often focused on the nexus of art and politics. The book highlights Tucker's commitment to forging a new system when the prevailing one proved too narrow for her expansive vision.