Magician of the Modern

December 4, 2000
Transcending the usual dusty confines of museum curatorships with unusual artistic range, grasp, ambition and flair, Austin (1900-1957) shone as director of Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum and Florida's Ringling Museum. Born to a rich family, Austin married for social position, despite a flamboyant bisexual life (apparently reported matter-of-factly to his wife). By his late 20s he was already running the Atheneum, burning old paintings he disliked in the museum furnace and going on buying binges in Europe, usually snagging rare masterworks at bargain basement prices. In a typical case, he facilitated the world premiere of the Virgil Thomson-Gertrude Stein opera Four Saints in Three Acts (recently thrice-revived) at the Atheneum, and helped arrange George Balanchine's arrival in America to found what became the New York City Ballet. (The choreographer took one look at Hartford in the 1930s and fled to Manhattan.) Gaddis (Austin Memorial: The First Modern Museum), who currently curates the Austin House museum at the Atheneum, points out that many of Austin's artistic friends, from architect Philip Johnson to historian H. Russell Hitchcock, were gay, but fails to detail whether Austin's work and sexuality were related. A pioneer in the appreciation of film as art, baroque painting and the links between 19th-century kitsch and modern art, Austin seems here an ever open-minded intelligence, unique in his time and even more valuable today, when his like would languish in the bureaucratic, hype-obsessed art world.

October 15, 2000
Gaddis, archivist at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, is well placed to write a biography of A. Everett "Chick" Austin, the transformative director of that institution for over 20 years, from the 1920s to the 1940s. First-time biographer Gaddis tells the compelling story of Austin's transformation of the Atheneum from a parochial backwater to a focal point of modernism in America. He deftly weaves together the strands of Austin's many interests, spread across theater, fine art, and dance. While overseeing key exhibitions of such Modern artists as Picasso, Dali, and Bakst, Austin also used his position at the Atheneum to produce Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein's important opera, Four Saints in Three Acts, and helped George Balanchine set up his dance company in America. Gaddis sensitively recounts Austin's chaotic personal life and brings it together with the work in this excellent example of biography. Highly recommended for collections of biography or art in America.--Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2000
The Wadsworth Atheneum of Hartford, Connecticut, America's oldest public art museum, was transformed into an avant-garde landmark by Arthur Averett "Chick" Austin Jr., director from 1927 to 1945. He was known to the art world as a passionate modernist with the solid underpinnings of an Old World connoisseur. Austin was trained in Europe in Italian Renaissance painting, but his keen and adventurous aesthetic was inspired by Egyptian and Mexican archaeological digs. Boasting movie-star looks and a flair for the bold and original, this chain-smoking, debonair, bisexual champion of the avant-garde mounted America's first major Picasso exhibit, and staged the world premiere of Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein's opera " Four Saints "in Three Acts in his personally designed Bauhaus-inspired addition to the museum, the Avery Memorial, welcoming such opening-night guests as Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi, and Buckminster Fuller. Austin also oversaw the nation's first surrealist exhibit, featuring " Persistence of Memory "by a young Spaniard named Dali. Gaddis' scholarly research in this title, complemented by extensive endnotes and a bibliography, does justice to this pioneer of modernism in America.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)