Chronology
1885: Arthur Lismer is born
Lismer is born on June 27 in Sheffield, England into a middle class family. At an early age he liked to draw, filling innumerable sketchbooks with his work.
1887: Teachers College at Columbia University is founded
Philanthropist Grace Hoadley Dodge and philosopher Nicholas Murray Butler create Teachers College to provide a new kind of training that combines a humanitarian concern with a scientific approach to human development. John Dewey taught there from 1904-1930.
1898 to 1906: Lismer’s education
At 13 years old, Lismer receives a scholarship to attend the Sheffield School of Art, which is known for training artisans for industry work. He also begins working for the Sheffield Independent newspaper, drawing cartoons of daily events. At 19 years old, Lismer continues his art education at the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts in Antwerp, Belgium and studies the Flemish masters.
1890: Hilla Rebay is born
Baroness Hilla Rebay von Ehrenwiesen is born in Strassburg, Germany (now Strasbourg, France) on May 31, into a minor aristocratic family. Her parents are painters and her father also carves furniture. Hilla displays artistic talent at an early age and attends various art schools in Cologne.
1904: Katharine Kuh is born
Katharine Woolf is born on July 15 in St. Louis, Missouri.
1904: Victor D’Amico is born
1907: Montessori education becomes widely known
Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori establishes her first school in Rome. Soon after, her innovative teaching method garners both intense interest and criticism throughout North America.
1909 to 1913: Rebay champions non-objective art
Despite the traditional training she received at the prestigious Academie Julien in Paris, subsequent trips to Munich and Berlin change Rebay from a conventional painter to part of the avant-garde. This begins her lifelong support of a non-objective style.
1911 to 1915: Lismer moves to Canada
Lismer moves to Toronto, marries his lifelong companion Esther Ellen Mawson, and they have a daughter named Marjorie. Despite a lack of experience, Lismer is offered a position teaching art at the Ontario Department of Education and demonstrates a natural gift for the role.
1914: Kuh’s early exposure to art
Kuh contracts polio, leaving her paralyzed and forced to wear a plaster body cast for the next 10 years. Unable to attend school, she catalogs her father’s collection of prints by Dürer, Whistler and Van Dyck, and she reads art books. On trips to Boston to see a specialist for her condition, she frequently visits the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
1914 to 1918: First World War
1916: Bank Street College of Education is founded
Bank Street opens, providing a progressive educational approach that combines current scholarship on child psychological development and practical experience.
1916: Lismer at the Victoria School of Art and Design
Lismer is offered the position of principal of the Victoria School of Art and Design (later The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design). It is one of the oldest art schools in Canada, but severely underfunded. Lismer attributes this to WWI and the resulting perception that art is an elitist, frivolous pursuit. He actively sets out to change this attitude.
1917: Lismer revives the Nova Scotia Museum of Fine Arts
Lismer helps launch the re-opening of the Nova Scotia Museum of Fine Arts as a way to expose students to the fine arts and convince the public of the importance of art. Lismer gives gallery talks about Canadian art and encourages the public to become members of the museum.
1919: The Progressive Education Association is founded
The Progressive Education Movement materializes to reform the United States school system by emphasizing not just reading and drill, but activities and experiences based in real life.
1919: Lismer at the Ontario College of Art
Lismer quickly becomes an outspoken critic for Canadian art education, which he feels emphasized academic drawing skills at the expense of preparing students for life after graduation. Lismer revises the curriculum to include more applied arts classes and creates a library of prints and other visual materials to inspire the students. When the college moves next door to the Art Gallery of Toronto (later the Art Gallery of Ontario) in 1921, Lismer integrates the galleries into his teaching practice.
1920 to 1930: D’Amico’s education
D’Amico studies fine arts, illustration and costume design at Cooper Union. He later attends the Pratt Institute, and he receives a B.S. and M.A. in Fine Arts and Art Education from Teachers College at Columbia University.
1920 to 1931: The Group of Seven art collective
Lismer and his artist friends—Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Franz Johnston, J. E. H. MacDonald, and Frederick Varley—form the art collective The Group of Seven. Their goal is to give Canada a distinct national voice through impressionistic paintings of the landscape. Throughout the decade, the group’s non-academic style draws both support and criticism.
1921 to 1929: Kuh’s education
Kuh enters Vassar College as an economics major, but switches to art history after taking a course by Alfred H. Barr Jr., who later became the founding director of The Museum of Modern Art. Kuh then attends the University of Chicago from 1925-1929 and receives her master’s degree in art history. She begins a PhD program in art history at New York University, but moves to Chicago and marries George Kuh before finishing.
1925: Lismer appointed to the Art Gallery of Toronto’s Education Committee
Considering his long relationship with the museum, Lismer is a natural choice for the museum’s new Education Committee. At the time, most museums in Canada did not have established Education departments. Lismer researches museum education models in the United States, organizes public programs, gives lectures and recruits his students to act as tour guides.
1926 to 1948: D’Amico heads the Fieldston Schools art department
1927: Rebay moves to the United States
On January 19, Rebay moves to the New York. A year later, she meets Solomon R. Guggenheim and paints his portrait. This is the beginning of a great friendship and business relationship.
1927 to 1929: Lismer and the Art Students League
Though Lismer affects significant change at the Ontario College of Art, he resigns from his position after his progressive vision for the school is not realized in totality. He becomes involved with the Art Students League, which is inspired by the anti-academic philosophy of the Group of Seven and their rejection of established art teaching methods. The group rents space from the Art Gallery of Toronto for living quarters, studios, a gallery and a craft shop.
1929: MoMA opens
Led by founding Director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., MoMA opens to the public as America’s premier museum devoted exclusively to modern art, and the first of its kind in Manhattan to exhibit European modernism.
1929 to 1937: Rebay builds the Guggenheim collection
Solomon and Irene Guggenheim hire Rebay as an art advisor. Prior to Rebay’s influence, the Guggenheim’s collect traditional art. Rebay convinces them to purchase important non-objective artworks by Marc Chagall, Vasily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy. They share a vision of the collection becoming a public museum. While waiting for the museum to open, Rebay lectures around the world about modern art. The collection travels to the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina in 1936 and the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1937.
1929 to 1938: Lismer becomes head of Education at the Art Gallery of Toronto
Lismer establishes an inclusive, accessible educational plan for the museum. One big initiative was an exhibition of children’s artwork from a school in Vienna, which Lismer cites as instrumental in showing him the potential of children. He also brings to the museum for the first time poetry readings, plays, teacher educational packets, exhibitions with music from the time period and Saturday art classes for children that emphasize exploration and experimentation over technical skill. Due to his efforts, the Toronto Board of Education passes an order in 1929 requiring select grades to visit the gallery.
1932: Early Education at MoMA
MoMA initiates key foundational programs for education in the early 1930’s, such as gallery talks, lectures, interpretive texts, temporary exhibitions, teacher workshops and programs specific for high school students.
1932 to 1935: Lismer attracts international attention
By now, Lismer is known as the most influential figure in the field of art in Ontario due in part by two month-long tours across Canada where he acted as an ambassador for the museum. Lismer lectures on topics, such as children’s art, art and community and art advocacy. In 1934 he speaks at the New Education Fellowship conference in South Africa and promotes the idea that children should think and do for themselves without interference of adults.
1933 to 1936: Lismer’s Children’s Art Centre
Lismer returns from his travels frustrated that, despite his success abroad, he still finds it difficult to communicate the value of his work to the to the Art Gallery of Toronto administration. His Education department staff is cut from about 25 to 4 people. Despite this, launches the Children’s Art Centre, a research facility and community center with intimate class sizes to supplement the Saturday classes that serve hundreds at a time.
1934: John Dewey publishes Art as Experience
In this seminal publication, Dewey posits that the art object is important not as a material work of art, but as a vehicle for experience. This is an important distinction for art museum educators.
1934 to 1942: D’Amico teaches at Teacher’s College
From 1935-1946, D’Amico was part of the editorial board of Arts Education Today at Teachers College.
1935 to 1943: The Katharine Kuh Gallery
Katharine divorces George Kuh and opens Chicago’s first commercial gallery of avant-garde art at 540 North Michigan Avenue. She champions relatively unknown and unpopular artists, such as Fernand Leger, Paul Klee, and Alexander Calder. To combat infrequent sales, she teaches art history classes. She faces aggressive criticism from the “Sanity in Art” movement spurred by Eleanor Jewett, the art critic of the Chicago Tribune, who was against modern art.
1936 to 1938: Lismer’s travels
Lismer takes a sabbatical from the Art Gallery of Toronto to continue raveling the world as an ambassador for art education. He visits Australia, New Zealand and Africa where he lectures and teaches classes using local materials for art supplies. He speaks of celebrating the history and identity of each country over arbitrary European traditions.
1937 to 1969: Victor D’Amico joins MoMA Education
Victor D’Amico joins MoMA as the first Director of Education and expands and initiates key programs for the museum.
1937: D’Amico’s New York City high school program
D’Amico prepares packaged exhibitions, slide sets, teaching models, portfolios and reproductions for circulation to New York City high school teachers. This is an unprecedented practice at the time.
1937 to 1938: Rebay and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Rebay is selected as a curator and trustee of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation whose mission is to promote and encourage art, art education and the enlightenment of the public. Of her complex new role Rebay states, “I must be a merchant, diplomat, author, lecturer, teacher, painter, musician, socialite, and businessperson.”
1937 to 1939: MoMA’s Young People’s Gallery outreach initiative
The Young People’s Gallery opens as an experimental education site off MoMA’s premises. Its purpose is to make the museum’s collection accessible to New York schools by distributing exhibitions of high-quality reproductions of artworks from the collection, often selected and arranged by high school students.
1938: John Dewey publishes Experience and Education
In this influential publication, Dewey promotes the idea that learning is a social and interactive process and that students thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum.
1938-1939: Lismer in New York City
Lismer leaves the Art Gallery of Toronto for a yearlong position at Teacher’s College. He lectures occasionally for MoMA art appreciation classes at Victor D’Amico’s request.
1938 to 1944: Rebay and the effects of WWII
Rebay becomes an outspoken critic of Hitler. Ironically, her German ways make her suspect to Americans. As a result, she is subjected to considerable bureaucratic harassment and, at one point, is under house arrest. She applies for citizenship in 1944, but is denied until 1947.
1939: Leon Winslow publishes The Integrated School Art
At the height of the Progressive Movement in Education, Winslow publishes The Integrated School Art, advocating for creative expression, curriculum integration and the importance of making education relevant to daily life.
1939: The Gallery of Art Interpretation at the Art Institute of Chicago
Director Daniel Catton Rich transforms the former children’s museum into the Gallery of Art Interpretation, one of the first permanent interpretive spaces for adults in America. Four years later, Kuh takes it over and produces innovative, educational exhibitions.
1939: The Guggenheim’s Museum of Non-Objective Painting
Due to Rebay’s tenacity, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) opens in a former automobile showroom close to MoMA. Rebay arranges for thick gray carpeting, comfortable seating and a sound system playing classical music in order to encourage patrons to linger. She hangs the paintings at a low height for children and adults to immerse themselves. She also prepares exhibitions of high quality reproductions for schools and gives scholarship money to numerous artists.
1939: The Guggenheim’s Art of Tomorrow exhibition
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Rebay organizes a landmark exhibition of the 725 masterpieces that she and Mr. Guggenheim acquired between 1929 and 1939. The exhibition includes important work by Vasily Kandinsky, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger and László Moholy-Nagy.
1939 to 1945: Second World War
World War II presents difficulties for all educators—staff members leave to join the cause, inflation is on the rise and budgets are cut. Despite these challenges, museum education gains increased respect during this time due in part to President Roosevelt’s support of the arts in the U.S. and Lismer’s advocacy in Canada.
1939 to 1955: MoMA’s Young People’s Gallery moves on-site
MoMA’s Young People’s Gallery moves into the new MoMA building in 1939. The space is used for classes and exhibitions for children and families and is designed specifically for a family audience.
1941: MoMA’s Armed Services Program
D’Amico establishes the Armed Services Program during World War II to provide art materials to United Service Organization (USO) camp bases.
1941 to 1967: Lismer and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Lismer returns to Canada from New York City for a position at the Art Association of Montreal (later the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts). His educational programs help transform the perception of the museum from an elitist, conservative institution to an accessible community center.
1942: D’Amico publishes Creative Teaching in Art
D’Amico’s publishes Creative Teaching in Art, emphasizing the importance of art education not only for personal expression, but also for the enrichment of the community.
1942 to 1963: D’Amico and the Committee on Art in American Education and Society
D’Amico founds this group that was initially dedicated to promoting the arts during wartime, and that later organizes exhibitions and annual conferences on teaching the visual arts.
1942 to 1969: D’Amico’s Children’s Festival of Modern Art
D’Amico initiates and designs the Children’s Festival of Modern Art (later renamed the Children’s Holiday Fair, Children’s Holiday Circus, and Children’s Holiday Carnival), which consists of a studio art space and a motivational area with specialty games and activities. Years of success with the on-site program leads to a mobile version of the program—the Children’s Art Carnival—that travels to Harlem, Milan, Barcelona, New Delhi and Hong Kong.
1943: Rebay and Frank Lloyd Wright
Rebay selects Frank Lloyd Wright to design a permanent museum for the Guggenheim collection on Fifth Avenue. She reads Wright’s book On Architecture and underlines the following passage: “Architecture, sculpture, and painting should be a synthesis as sympathetically executed as the composer’s score is executed by the orchestra when directed by the composer himself.” Rebay requests a circular building without stairs so as not to disrupt the aesthetic experience. For the installation, she envisions a section of objective art to stand as a precursor to non-objective art. The building wouldn’t be realized until 1959, ten years after Guggenheim’s death and seven years after Rebay’s retirement as Director.
1943: Kuh joins the Art Institute of Chicago
Daniel Catton Rich, Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, initially hires Kuh to run the museum’s public relations office, but she is quickly charged with supervising the museum’s Gallery of Art Interpretation. She states her goal is to explain art in “visual rather than verbal terms.”
1943 to 1949: Kuh changes her strategy of art education
Kuh teaches weekly art classes for the Women’s Garment Workers Union. After discovering these women weren’t interested in art history, Kuh learns to talk about art in a way that excludes historical progression, technique and even the name of the artist. Kuh also changes the location of the class from a union classroom to the galleries of the Art Institute. Of this experience, Kuh states, “They were learning how to see; I was learning that all enrichment from art is not dependent on erudition.”
1943 to 1952: Kuh and the Gallery of Art Interpretation
Kuh’s new philosophy on art education affects her designs of the Gallery of Art Interpretation. She uses few words in the interpretation and her aim is for viewers to make their own discoveries based off of their own experience. Kuh avoids technical words and keeps diagrams, photographs and visual comparisons basic. She organizes a dozen shows in the space—Explaining Abstract Art, How Real is Realism and Close up of Tintoretto.
1944 to 1948: D’Amico’s War Veteran Art Center opens
Part of MoMA’s Armed Services Program, the War Veteran Art Center opens with the goal of rehabilitating veterans. The Center distributes “art kits” and holds studio art programs. After 1948, the People’s Art Center assumes the programs of the War Veteran Art Center.
1945 to 1955: Lismer transforms art education at McGill University
Dismayed with the university’s emphasis on academic content, Lismer revises the curriculum to include more classes that develop practical skills and prepare students for life outside of school. He also teaches design theory, art history and art education, and he integrates his classes within the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
1947: Viktor Lowenfeld publishes Creative and Mental Growth
In this influential publication adopted by elementary schools throughout the United States, Lowenfeld describes the developmental stages of the child and assigns appropriate art activities for each stage of development.
1948: Rebay and WWII Aid
After the war, Rebay’s strong sense of duty prompts her to utilize the Foundation’s resources to send food, clothing and tubes of paint to European artists and their families.
1949: D’Amico establishes the Junior Council at MoMA
1949: Solomon R. Guggenheim dies
Guggenheim dies ten years before Frank Lloyd’s Wright’s design of the museum is complete. Months prior to his death, he sends a letter to the trustees attributing the success of the Foundation to the “self-sacrificing devotion” of Rebay and asks that they consult her for all decisions regarding the collection. Rebay loses a great patron and friend.
1949 to 1969: The People’s Art Center at MoMA
D’Amico initiates the People’s Art Center, an enlarged studio arts class for children and adults at the museum. The Center later assumes the programs of The War Veterans Art Center and in 1951 moves to the Grace Rainey Rogers Memorial Building designed by Philip Johnson.
1950: Education becomes a full department at MoMA
1952: Rebay leaves the Guggenheim
Rebay resigns as Director and Trustee of the museum at 62 years old due to her agitated physical and mental state, growing criticism of her leadership and a backlash against non-objective art.
1952 to 1953: MoMA produces television show Through the Enchanted Gate
MoMA co-produces with WNBC-WNBT a television series called Through the Enchanted Gate, which introduces the People’s Art Center activities to a wider audience. Printed guides help families participate in the activities at home, and children are encouraged to submit artwork for display on the show. The final, though ultimately unrealized, iteration of the project is the Art Caravan mobile vehicle, which is designed to travel throughout New York City providing art activities to schools and the community.
1953 to 1972: Kuh and the Saturday Review
Kuh writes art criticism for the Saturday Review, an alternative literary magazine to The New Yorker.
1954 to 1959: Kuh becomes curator at the Art Institute of Chicago
Kuh becomes the first woman curator of European Art and Sculpture at the museum. Due to the strong relationships she maintained with many of the artists she had first championed in her gallery, Kuh helps elevate the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection to an international reputation.
1959: Kuh retires from the Art Institute of Chicago and becomes the editor of the Saturday Review
1955-1985: D’Amico and the Art Barge
D’Amico begins teaching summer studio art classes for the museum in a converted World War I Navy barge towed ashore and beached along Napeague Harbor in Long Island. Today the site offers year-round art classes, an exhibition space and an art supply store.
1956: MoMA initiates a student membership
1956: Kuh and the Venice Biennale
Kuh selects and assembles the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Despite her integral role, she is not named the commissioner. Instead, Daniel Rich receives the honor.
1959: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens
When the museum finally opens in 1959, ten years after Guggenheim’s death, Rebay is not invited.
1960-1969: D’Amico and the Institute of Art
D’Amico establishes the Institute of Art as the nonprofit organization to assume the activities of The MoMA Education Department.
1965 to 1972: D’Amico and New York University
D’Amico teaches art and art education at New York University.
1965: Kuh and the New York World’s Fair
Kuh curates the exhibition City: Places and People at the New York State Pavilion at the World’s Fair.
1967: Hilla Rebay dies
Rebay passes away on September 27 at her home in Connecticut. Her legacy suffers due to the defamation allegations brought against her during the war and her sometimes difficult personality. Throughout her life, she amasses her own significant art collection that she gives in part to the museum as the Hilla Rebay Collection.
1968-1978: Kuh and The First National Bank of Chicago
Kuh serves as an art consultant for The First National Bank of Chicago and assembles one of the finest collections in the country at the time.
1969: D’Amico retires from MoMA
D’Amico retires from the museum closely following the retirements of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and Rene d’Harnoncourt, who served as Director of MoMA from 1949-1968.
1969: Arthur Lismer dies
Lismer dies peacefully on March 23 in Montreal at the age of 83 leaving an undeniable influence on art and art education in Canada.
1986: Museum Education: The Uncertain Profession
Dr. Elliot Eisner and Dr. Stephen M. Dobbs publish the controversial report, Museum Education: The Uncertain Profession, stating that museum educators lack a common education and therefore legitimacy in the museum field.
1987: Victor D’Amico dies
On April 3, D’Amico dies in Southampton, Long Island at 82 years old, leaving behind a significant legacy in art education, innumerable awards and an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.
1992: AAM publishes Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums
This landmark report outlines the principles to which museums should adhere in order to ensure excellence and equity.
1994: Katherine Kuh dies
Kuh passes away on January 10 at the age of 89 leaving an almost-complete draft of her memoir that she had begun in 1992. Art historian and writer Avis Berman selects, edits and completes her writings for the book that is published in 2006.
1994: Katharine Kuh: Interpreting the New
Nancy Malloy and Avis Berman curate the exhibition Katharine Kuh: Interpreting the New that premieres at the New York Regional Center Gallery and then travels throughout the year to the Gibson Gallery at the State University of New York and the Art Institute of Chicago.
1995: D’Amico exhibition at the National Children’s Castle in Tokyo
Scholar Chimako Maeda assembles an exhibition that includes reproductions of motivational art teaching toys designed by D’Amico in the 1970s.
2007: Spaces for Learning at MoMA, 1929-1969
Featuring materials from MoMA’s Library and Archives, this exhibition highlights D’Amico’s contribution to MoMA’s progressive educational activities.
2011: Art as Human Necessity series on Victor D’Amico
Chimako Maeda, visiting research scholar at Teachers College, conceives this series of programs at the Art Barge, MoMA and Teachers College that explores D’Amico’s legacy.