{"id":389852,"date":"2019-07-23T12:36:09","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T16:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=389852"},"modified":"2021-11-08T09:21:48","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T14:21:48","slug":"a-model-of-scholarly-possibility-remembering-douglas-crimp-389852","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/a-model-of-scholarly-possibility-remembering-douglas-crimp-389852\/","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018model of scholarly possibility\u2019: Remembering Douglas Crimp"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Douglas Crimp, the Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History and a professor of visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester. (Regen Projects photo \/ Catherine Opie)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An internationally renowned art and cultural critic, theorist, curator, and activist, Douglas Crimp\u2014the Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History<\/a> and a professor of visual and cultural studies<\/a> at the University of Rochester<\/a>\u2014created work important to thinkers across the arts and humanities. Those who knew him say his intellectual nimbleness and acumen were matched only by his gentle kindness and generosity.<\/p>\n

Crimp died on July 5, at age 74. He was a \u201ctowering figure in many fields,\u201d says Jonathan Binstock, the Mary W. and Donald R. Clark Director of the University\u2019s Memorial Art Gallery<\/a>. \u201cPhotography, dance, and visual forms of political activism are only a few of the areas where his influence was, and remains, global and profound.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born and raised in Coeur d\u2019Alene, Idaho, Crimp studied art history as an undergraduate at Tulane. After graduating in 1968, he moved to New York City, where he found himself at a convergence point of contemporary art and gay culture. His experiences were the subject of his 2016 book, Before Pictures\u00a0<\/em>(University of Chicago Press).<\/a> The book \u201cmoves from anecdote to criticism to research, back to anecdote, and so forth, and also from my gay life to my art world life,\u201d he told Rochester Review\u00a0<\/em>in 2017<\/a>. But he resisted those who termed the work a memoir; its focus was on the historical moment and what he called the division \u201cbetween the art world and the queer world.\u201d The book concludes with his curation of the exhibition Pictures <\/em>at the gallery Artists Space in 1977, a show that made him famous.<\/p>\n

Crimp remained an important part of the New York art community for the rest of his life. As recently as 2015, he worked with the Museum of Modern Art as part of the curatorial team for its exhibition Greater New York<\/em>. \u201cCrimp\u2019s influence has been vast,\u201d Alex Greenberger, senior editor of the magazine ARTnews<\/em>, wrote in an obituary.<\/a> \u201cIt has become impossible to write the history of postmodern art without referring at least once to his criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crimp\u2019s view of art history wasn\u2019t traditional. He rejected the Romantic ideal of the solitary genius, considering instead the context in which the artist emerged and worked. Pictures\u00a0<\/em>brought together artists such as Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, and Laurie Anderson, whose works reflect their upbringing in a media-saturated, consumerist world. Different generations have different relationships to art and culture, Crimp argued, and he was one of the first critics to take note of what later became known as the \u201cPictures Generation.\u201d The Museum of Modern Art mounted The Pictures Generation, 1974\u20131984<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>in 2009, a show that used Crimp\u2019s exhibition as its foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cDouglas insisted that art history, and the museum along with it, needed to change,\u201d says Sharon Willis, a professor of art and art history, and of visual and cultural studies. Crimp was an influential practitioner of institutional critique\u2014viewing museums, galleries, and other arts institutions as a kind of \u201cframe\u201d for art, driven by ideological principles of curation, rather than as a neutral venue. He collected his essays on the institutions and politics of contemporary art in his book On the Museum\u2019s Ruins\u00a0<\/em>(MIT Press, 1993).<\/a><\/p>\n

Between 1977 and 1990, Crimp edited the contemporary art criticism and theory journal October<\/em>, published by MIT Press.<\/a> \u201cThe work that he did in October\u00a0<\/em>was absolutely field shaping. That remains a cutting-edge journal, but he was there on the ground floor,\u201d says Willis. When Crimp decided in the 1980s to devote an issue to the role of art in confronting the AIDS crisis, he first immersed himself in the lives of the people on the front lines of a battle over politics and public policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cImmediately, I started going to ACT UP meetings\u2014the activist organization\u2014to learn about the crisis in order to properly do a special issue of a magazine. And that just pulled me right into the activist movement,\u201d Crimp said in a 2014 University of Rochester video. He published the October <\/em>special issue, AIDS: Cultural Analysis\/Cultural Criticism<\/em>, in 1987. It offered a series of critical essays on the culture of the disease. MIT Press republished the essays a year later, the first book-length treatment of the cultural meaning of AIDS.<\/p>\n