Curating Modern Life

The first book to consider the poet Frank O’Hara’s distinguished curatorial career for the Museum of Modern Art, and his role in shaping the international reception of American modern art during the Cold War period.

This is the first book to closely examine the curatorial work that the celebrated poet Frank O’Hara (1926-1966) undertook for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, from 1950 to his death. It traces O’Hara’s distinguished curatorial career at home and abroad, situating his work for MoMA’s International Program, as well as the Jewish Museum in New York, within the Cold War politics of the day.

Upon his premature death, the New York Times obituary ran with the headline: ‘Frank O’Hara, 40, Museum Curator / Exhibitions Aide at Modern Art Dies – Also a Poet’. However, in the half a century since, his fascinating career as a curator, where he oversaw exhibitions of the likes of Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, Mark Tobey and Seymour Lipton, among others, has been eclipsed by the critical attention given over to his poetry. Drawing on a broad range of unpublished archival material, Curating Modern Life reveals the impact O’Hara’s curatorial work had both on the reception of American modern art abroad and on the curatorial profession itself. Through close examination of O’Hara’s curatorial practice and career, the book illuminates the organization and reception of modern art exhibitions during the 1950s/1960s Cold War period more broadly, and also considers the ways in which O’Hara’s style of thinking and writing about art were prescient in terms of the methodologies championed today.

Bringing together readings of O’Hara’s poems and letters with a selection of illustrations, Curating Modern Life argues for O’Hara’s sense of exuberant continuity between life as a writer and a curator, an American and a cosmopolitan – revealing that he was so much more besides the quintessential New York poet. It is perfect reading for anyone interested in American art in the mid-20th century, curatorial and museum studies, or simply this lesser-known but fascinating aspect of the legendary poet’s career.