The School That Became a Refuge For Artists From Georgia O’Keeffe to Tony Smith

Study the resumes of 20th-century American artists, and you’ll start to notice that most of them have one thing in common: the Art Students League, which has instructed some 200,000 students since its founding in 1875. Now, the New York art school on West 57th Street is celebrating its 150th anniversary with an exhibition that celebrates that often overlooked role in American art history, with works by famous alumni and instructors including Alexander Calder (1898–1976), Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), and Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) to name just a few.

“When you look at a history of American art, or even Modern and contemporary art, it’s more a question of who intersect with the League,” Esther V. Moerdler, assistant curator at the school, told me. “But so many people come to the League and they’re like, ‘I walk by you every day, and I had no idea you were here!’”

It was a group of artists at the National Academy of Design who broke away to form the Art Students League after the academy started phasing out its life drawing classes. (Radically for the time, the school let women draw from life from day one, and required that both men and women be represented on its board.)

The League is an atelier, which means it doesn’t offer a degree program. (Classes are not even graded.) There is open enrollment—entrance requirements were abolished in 1902—allowing artists of any age or skill level to take classes for as long or short a time as they desire. This can create special bonds with instructors.

The League Has Influenced Generations of Artists

The sculptor Tony Smith (1912–1980), for instance, represented here by a small granite work from the school’s collection, spoke of classes with Vaclav Vytlacil (1892–1984) as having proved invaluable in teaching him to think about volume.

“Even though Tony took a painting class here, he was able to take something from his short time with Vytlacil and carry it over into incredible sculptural practice,” Moerdler said. “There’s a closeness that you get through a place where you choose your own adventure in a way that you’re not able to get necessarily elsewhere.”

Moerdler curated the show with Ksenia Nouril, the League’s former gallery director (now assistant director of the international program at New York’s Museum of Modern Art). The pair dove deep into the archives to try to tell the school’s wide-ranging story, which includes everyone from the designer of the Oscar statuette, Cedric Gibbons (1890–1960), to comic book legend Will Eisner (1917–2005), neither of whom made the final cut for this show.

They ultimately settled on 87 works, mostly drawn from the school’s nearly 3,000-piece collection, supplemented by 20 key loans, like a Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) assemblage sculpture from the artist’s foundation, crafted around a metal chair.

The curators initially wanted to do a show of 150 artists—one for each year since the founding—but wall space proved a limiting factor.

Even the final whittled-down list required taking over not only the main exhibition gallery, but also the walls of the lobby, the registration office where current students (including actor Mark Ruffalo) still enroll for classes today, and the school café, where Jackson Pollock (1912–1956)—another noteable alumnus not represented in the exhibition—once worked.

A Historic Discovery—and a Youthful Rivalry

Pollock’s teacher while at the League, Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975), offers one of the show’s most exciting moments, with a rediscovered landscape with a family in front of a church. Here, it’s exhibited for the first time ever.

“We received it in the mail going on two years ago,” Moerdler said. “It’s a newly authenticated Benton that we’re really excited about.”

The painting came with a letter explaining its provenance: Benton made the painting as part of the instruction of a class at the League, and gave it to a student, who passed it along to her neighbor. The neighbor’s daughter later inherited the work and sent it to the school, which has worked to authenticate and restore the previously undocumented work, now slated to be part of the upcoming Benton catalogue raisonné.

The curators have teased out other fascinating stories, like the portrait of a young Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) by Eugene Edward Speicher (1883–1962), displayed next to a prize-winning still life she painted during her time at the League. Both artists were studying under William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), but it was O’Keeffe’s painting that had won best in class, which apparently didn’t sit well with Speicher.

“The story goes that Eugene had also won some prizes for portraiture, and he kind of accosted Georgia in a stairwell here at the League. He told her that she’s beautiful, and she’d make a great model, but going to be the famous artist, and she’s going to go off and teach art in some girls’ school. And so if she wants to be remembered, she should pose for a picture for him,” Moerdler said. “Speicher did have a nice career—but who do we remember today?”

Throughout the exhibition, certain juxtapositions underscore just how formative arts education could be for young artists. O’Keeffe’s painting, of a dead rabbit, shows the influence of William Merritt Chase on her early work. O’Keeffe’s painting is installed next to Chase’s still life of a fish from the same year, which shares a muted palette and other compositional similarities.

A Who’s Who of American Art History

While Donald Judd (1928–1994) is best remembered for his Minimalist sculpture and furniture, his foundation has loaned one of his lithographs from the early 1950s for the exhibition. The work may depict one of the studio spaces at the League.

“You can see in it the stark lines of space that would later characterize the Minimalist forms that he would produce. You see already in his student works from when he was studying here the beginnings of that thought process,” Moerdler said.

The show’s impressive artist list ranges from leading 19th-century landscape painter Winslow Homer (1836–1910) to recently deceased masters Audrey Flack (1931–2024) and Richard Mayhew (1924–2024), who actually gave his last interview to the League shortly before his passing last fall at age 100. (Flack’s colorful painting in the exhibition is full of art history Easter eggs, like Pollock splattering paint, while Mayhew is represented by a hazy landscape in dark green tones.)

Surprises await around every corner, such as two beautiful silver gelatin prints of New York in the 1920s and ’30s by Berenice Abbott (1898–1991)—even though the school has never offered classes in photography. Those images hang in the café with other works on paper, such as a lithograph by famed cartoonist Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003).

Lesser-known artists also have their moments, such as the former model Iria Leino (1932–2022), who lived for decades in obscurity in a Soho loft on Greene Street, leaving behind hundreds of unseen works. The abstract Finnish painter finally got her first solo show last fall, at New York’s Harper’s Gallery, which came with a glowing write-up.

“There’s a way in which the show could have been just the people who you would expect to see. But we wanted to challenge that,” Moerdler said. “We have names who were more recognized during their lifetimes than they are now, and people who are important to the League internally, like Frank Vincent Dumond [1865–1951], who was a very impactful instructor.”

The exhibition also illustrates the League’s influence beyond painting and sculpture. A trio of dishware pieces from industrial designers Mary Wright (1904–1952) and Russel Wright (1904–1976) comes from the designers’ American Modern collection, the most widely sold line of ceramic dinnerware in U.S. history. The couple’s work is on view along with a gouache work on paper depicting Serbian war refugees by their Art Students League teacher, Boardman Robinson (1876–1952), a politically engaged artist who Moerdler credits with getting the Wrights to think about social issues.

“Russell and Mary were involved in the Good Design movement, which valued affordability, usability, durability, and beauty—having something that was accessible to everybody at any price point, so everyone could bring something beautiful into their home,” Moerdler said. “What I enjoy about that is how the instructor influences the student and how the student, in turn, shapes America and how we think about the home.”

Women Play a Huge Role in the League’s History

Also telling a fascinating story is a 1943 self-portrait in oil of Hildreth Meière (1892–1961), who had a thriving career as an Art Deco muralist and mosaicist working in public buildings. The painting shows her at work on one of her large-scale commissions, such as the facade of New York’s Radio City Music Hall—one of 100 buildings across the U.S. that she helped decorate.

“Her work is all over the city, but you might not know her name,” Moerdler said.

Another woman artist who learned her craft at the league and remains a quiet fixture of the New York landscape is the sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973), whose work in the exhibition is a small but lifelike bronze of a yawning tiger. A few years ago, the city launched an initiative to erect statues of historic women, after realizing there were only five such public monuments in New York. Huntington, it turns out, had created the very first one, of Joan of Arc for Central Park, in 1915.

“Before that, every statue of a woman had been an allegory or a mythological figure. So it was a big milestone for the city,” Moerdler said. “Highlighting these women artists who we might not know, but whose work we know and walk by all the time, and making sure that those voices are heard, that was important to us.”

In some ways, the League is the same way—an institution perhaps so deeply embedded in American art history that it is easy to overlook, a foundation on which generations of artists have built their careers. And if New York has long been a beacon for artists, the League has been their refuge, offering instruction to both natives and transplants, such as Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) and Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), two more names who could have easily featured in the show.

“We wouldn’t have the League without the city,” Moerdler said. “And we like to think of ourselves as one of the best-kept secrets here.”

Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com