My Love Affair with Modern Art: Behind the Scenes with a Legendary Curator

In the 1930s interest in modern art was low - but Katharine Kuh opened a gallery in Chicago anyway, exhibiting many then-obscure artists form Paul Klee to Ansel Adams and Marc Chagall. Her passion for modern art fostered their careers and led to a world-wide revitalization of interest, documented here in a blend of modern art history and autobiography. Her friend Avis Berman, a art historian, edited her writings for this book after Kuh's death: it provides a moving memoir of a life in the art world at a time when her artists' visionary works weren't widely recognized. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

This is a wonderful book. It consists of short vignettes about the author's interaction with artists she met in the course of her career as a curator at the Chicago Institute of Art and later as a gallery owner. Her insight and her ability to describe the artists are wonderful. The story about Edward Hopper was just great!!

As a general reader with an appreciation for art, I loved MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MODERN ART. It is a vital and highly readable document of one of the most important eras in art history. Katharine Kuh (1904 - 1994) was a gallery owner, then curator, then art critic (Saturday Review) and in the course of her long career, she came to know the international movers and shakers. Many came to trust her and call her their friend and shared their private lives and ideas about art with her. She outlived just about all who parade across her pages--each chapter profiles a different artist or collector--and had the luxury of reflection at the end of her life to select what about each personage mattered most. For example, though she opens the chapter on Mark Rothko with the tragedy of his 1970 suicide, that's not how she wants him remembered and thus her story emphasizes what he was like twenty years before as he struck his flow. The chapter on world-class collector Bernard Berenson seems anomalous at first--his heart was pre-Modern--but in many ways the story of such a man living in the heart of the Modern era is quite revealing. That is the one chapter where the very private Kuh allows for some self revelation as well. The portraits of the lights like Brancusi, Hopper, Noguchi and Kline, to name a few, are priceless, and they offer Kuh a chance to discuss a number of issues, including the dynamics of cultivating collectors in hopes of donations to museums, government interference, general public taste, fakes, curating a retrospective exhibit, and artists' estates. Though she keeps the attention on the artists, Kuh comes through as a very interesting person, one who chose to go against the conventional choices for women of her time. Avis Berman, who edited and completed the book posthumously, has kept Kuh's extraordinary voice intact without a quiver.

while the writing is superb, this costly edition is printed on the cheap. At a minimum, the pages with pictures should have been in full color on glossy stock. Kuh would have been ashamed.

Those interested in American art of the last century will find great pleasure in reading this book. Chicago and New York are the centers from which Katharine Kuh radiated. As a museum curator, art dealer, and published critic, she was personally close to many of the modern masters. In this book, she provides short but telling stories about their work and lives. I especially liked the chapters on Rothko, Tobey and Noguchi. Disparate side characters, such as Judge Learned Hand and LBJ, pop up and add further to the value of Ms. Kuh's memoir. Avis Berman has done a great service to all those interested in the history of twentieth century American art by completing the memoirs of Katharine Kuh. The author's reflections have been preserved in a form, while still true to the author, that is likely better than had the elderly Ms. Kuh herself remained alive to complete the job. Notes to the text and a more complete description of Katharine Kuh's personal background are some of the very much-appreciated work accomplished by Ms. Berman.