Maurice Berger

Maurice Berger (1956) is an American cultural historian, curator, and art critic.

Biography

Maurice Berger is a cultural historian, art critic, and curator. He is Research Professor and Chief Curator at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. A student of the pioneering theoretical art historian, Rosalind E. Krauss, he completed a B.A. at Hunter College and Ph.D. in art history and critical theory at the City University of New York. He then turned his attention to race.[1] One of the few white kids in his low-income housing project on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Berger grew up hyper-sensitized to race. Due to his experiences, he looked beyond the world of "critical theory" to address the relevance of visual culture, and especially images of race, to everyday life.[2]

Berger engages the issues of racism, whiteness, and contemporary race relations and their connection to visual culture in the United States. He is one of the first art historians to meld the methodologies and practices of cultural and art history with those of race studies and critical race theory, work begun by Berger in the mid-1980s as an assistant professor of art and gallery director at Hunter College. [3] His earliest effort in this area--co-organized with the anthropologist Johnnetta B. Cole at Hunter College in 1987--was an interdisciplinary project (that included a book, art exhibition, and film program) entitled "Race and Representation." His widely-anthologized study on institutional racism--"Are Art Museums Racist?"--appeared in Art in America three years later, and helped spur a national debate on the exclusionary practices of American art museums. [4] [5] In the early-1990s, Berger extended his work on visual culture and race to include sustained study of the work of African-American artists, performers, filmmakers, producers, and cultural figures, culminating both in solo exhibitions ("Adrian Piper: A Retrospective" and "Fred Wilson Objects and Installations"), multimedia projects (including compilation videos and elaborate context stations for art exhibitions), and essays (on subjects as diverse as black artists and the limitations of mainstream art criticism, the racial implications of art historical and curatorial efforts to evaluate "outsider" art, the stereotypical representation of Jewish masculinity on American television, and the Jewish identity of the African-American entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr.).

Berger has also curated a number of race-related concept-based exhibitions, including For All The World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights--a joint venture of the National Museum of African American History and Culture of the Smithsonian Institution and the Center for Art, Design & Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. This exhibition is the first to comprehensively examine the role played by visual images in shaping, influencing, and transforming the modern struggle for racial equality and justice in the United States. [6] It opened at International Center of Photography in New York in May 2010 and travels to the DuSable Museum of African American History (Chicago), Smithsonian National Museum of American History (DC), Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (Baltimore), Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, MA) and other venues. For All the World to See was selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities as the tenth NEH on the Road exhibition, an initiative that will adapt the exhibition in a smaller, lower security version and travel it to up to 35 more venues, mostly smaller and mid-size institutions across the country over a five year period from 2012 to 2017. [7]

Berger is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts, and awards and citations from the American Library Association, W.E.B. DuBois Institute of Harvard University, Boston University School of Social Work, Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change of the University of Memphis, International Association of Art Critics, Association of Art Museum Curators, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Berger is Political Director of PollTrack, a website that tracks "American elections and social and cultural issues from the perspective of where it matters most: with voters on the ground." [8]

Publications

Berger is the author of eleven books on the subject of American art, culture, and the politics of race. His memoir, White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999) was one of the earliest books to introduce the idea of "whiteness" as a racial concept to a more general audience. [9] [10] [11] The book was a finalist for the Horace Mann Bond Book Award of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research, Harvard University and received an honorable mention from the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award of Boston University School of Social Work. Other books include: Masterworks of the Jewish Museum (Yale, 2004)[12]; The Crisis of Criticism (The New Press, 1998)[13]; Constructing Masculinity (Routledge, 1995); Modern Art and Society (HarperCollins, 1994); How Art Becomes History (HarperCollins, 1992); Labyrinths: Robert Morris, Minimalism, and the 1960s (Harper & Row, 1989). Berger’s writing on art, film, television, theater, law, and the politics of race have appeared in many journals and newspapers, including Artforum, Art in America, New York Times [14], Village Voice[15], October, Wired[16], and Los Angeles Times [17]. He has also contributed essays to numerous exhibition catalogs and anthologies.

Exhibitions

Berger's exhibitions on race and culture include retrospectives of the artists Adrian Piper (1999)[18] and Fred Wilson (2001)[19], both traveling extensively in the United States and Canada. In 2003, he organized White: Whiteness and Race in Contemporary Art, which featured the work of Cindy Sherman, Nayland Blake, William Kentridge, Gary Simmons, Paul McCarthy, Nikki S. Lee, Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, and Mike Kelley, among others.[20] [21] In addition to his work on race, Berger has advocated for more aggressive educational outreach and broader cultural and social context for high art in museums, creating complex, multi-media "context stations" for numerous exhibitions, including Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976, Jewish Museum (2008) [22] and Black Male: Representations of Masculinity, 1968-1994 (1994) and The American Century: Art & Culture, 1950-2000, (1999), both at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.[23] Additionally, he was the curator of Hands and Minds: The Art and Writing of Young People in 20th-Century America, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1998), an exhibition, and a catalog with a preface by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, on the importance of arts education that traveled across the United States.

Awards and Honors

Berger is the recipient of numerous honors, including multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Peter Norton Family Foundation, Trellis Fund, and J. Patrick Lannon Foundation. For his work on the “For All the World to See” segment of WNET Sunday Arts, Berger received an Emmy Award nomination from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, New York chapter. [24] His book White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999) was named as a finalist for the 2000 Horace Mann Bond Book Award of Harvard University and received a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award from Boston University School of Social Work. His companion book for For All the World to See (Yale, 2010) was named Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2010, Art and Architecture from the American Library Association and was a finalist for the Benjamin L. Hooks National book Award from the University of Memphis (2011), which recognizes a publication that best advances an understanding of the American civil rights movement and its legacy. [25] His curatorial honors include “Exhibition of the Year 2008” (Action/Abstraction) and “Best Exhibition in a University Museum 2010” (For All the World to See) from the Association of Art Museum Curators, [26] [27] and “Best Thematic Exhibition in New York, 2008” (Action/Abstraction) from the International Association of Art Critics, American Section. He has also received the Alumni Achievement Award from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (1998) and the Award for Excellence and Achievement in German Studies from the German Counsel General, New York (1977).

Sources and External links

Articles on Berger and his Work:

Roediger, David. “Books: White Lies” (review), Village Voice (23 February 1999), p. 125 [28]

Jefferson, Margo. “On Defining Race, When Only Thinking Makes It So,” The New York Times (22 March 1999), p. E2 [29]

Lee, Felicia. “Facing Down His Color as a Path to Privilege,” The New York Times (5 May 1999), pp. E1, 10; reprinted as “A Writer Confronts His Color as A Path to Privilege,” in The International Herald Tribune (6 May 1999) [30]

Cotter, Holland. "A Canvas of Concerns: Race, Racism and Class," The New York Times(24 December 1999)[31]

Hayt, Elizabeth, “Items Found on the Internet Dress Up an Art Exhibition, The New York Times (7 October 1999), p. C3. [32]

Williams, Patricia. “Remembering in Black and White,” The Nation (February 28, 2000), p. 9. [33]

Dawson, Jessica, "The Darkness of White," Washington Post (4 December 2003), p. C1 [34]

Holland Cotter, “Pumping Air into the Museum So It’s As Big As The World Outside,” The New York Times (30 April 2004), p. E1 [35]

Jefferson, Margo. “Playing on Black and White: Racial Messages Through a Camera Lens,” The New York Times (5 January 2005), p. E1 [36]

Smith, Roberta. "Rivalry Played Out on Canvas and Page," The New York Times (2 May 2008), p. E1. [37]

Patricia J. Williams. "The Buzz Board: PollTrack," The Daily Beast (25 January 2009) [38]

Cotter, Holland. "Images That Steered a Drive for Freedom," The New York Times(21 May 2010), p. E1 [39]

Lee, Trymaine. "Black Like Us: In Pictures," AOL Black Voices (9 June 2011) [40]

Trescott, Jacqueline. "For All the World To See Explores the Impact of Visual Culture of the 1960s," Washington Post (9 June 2011) [41]

Allsop, Laura. "How Posters and Badges Spread Civil Rights," CNN (1 July 2011) [42]

Ali Childs, Arcynta. "The Power of Imagery in Advancing Civil Rights," Smithsonian Magazine (October 2011) [43]

External Links:

• [44] "The Power of Pictures in the Struggle for Civil Rights," profile of For All the World to See on NPR Weekend Edition, 1 August 2010
• [45] Curator tour of For All the World to See on PBS Sunday Arts
• [46] Official Website of For All the World to See
• [47] Excerpt: White Lies - Race and the Myths of Whiteness] by Maurice Berger, published January 1, 1999 in The Multiracial Activist
• [48] Online version of exhibition, "White: Whiteness and Race in Contemporary Art" with audio by curator Maurice Berger on Newsweek/MSNBC website
• [49] Interview with Maurice Berger, "Taking on Skin Color, Art and Politics in "White," NPR
• [50] PollTrack, Political Director Maurice Berger

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Name	Berger, Maurice
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Date of birth	1956
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