Barbara Rose
Barbara Ellen Rose (June 11, 1936 – December 25, 2020) was an American art historian, art critic, curator and college professor. Rose's criticism focused on 20th-century American art, particularly minimalism and abstract expressionism, as well as Spanish art. "ABC Art", her influential 1965 essay,[1][2] defined and outlined the historical basis of minimalist art. She also wrote a widely used textbook, American Art Since 1900: A Critical History.
Barbara Rose
December 25, 2020 (aged 84)
- Art historian
- academic
- filmmaker
1963–2020
2
Early life and education[edit]
Barbara Ellen Rose was born on June 11, 1936,[3] in a Jewish family in Washington, D.C. to Lillian Rose (née Sand) and Ben Rose.[4] Her father owned a liquor store, and her mother was a homemaker.[5][6] She graduated from Calvin Coolidge High School in the Takoma neighborhood of Washington D.C.[7]
At the age of 17, Rose enrolled at Smith College, but after two years transferred to Barnard College, where she received a B.A. in 1957.[8] She completed her graduate studies at Columbia University,[5][9] studying with Meyer Schapiro, Julius S. Held, and Rudolf Wittkower,[7] and started work on a PhD, but did not complete it.[10] She was eventually awarded a PhD in history of art by Columbia in 1984.[11] The university accepted "various books by Rose, published between 1970–1983" as her dissertation.[11][3][5]
In 1961, she received a Fulbright scholarship to visit Pamplona, Spain, which sparked a lasting interest in Spanish culture and art.[5][9] The cinematographer Michael Chapman introduced Rose to many New York artists, including Carl Andre and Frank Stella (to whom she was married 1961–69),[9][3] which gave her an insight into the New York art scene during the 1960s and 1970s.[12]
Personal life[edit]
Rose was married four times to three men.[10] In 1959, she married Richard Du Boff, an economic historian;[5] the marriage ended in divorce after a year.[10] In October 1961 in London, Rose married the artist Frank Stella;[5][10] they had two children[6] and divorced in 1969.[3] In the mid-1980s, she was living in Italy and purchased a villa in Perugia.[3] She married the lyricist Jerry Leiber in Rome, and the two returned to the US to live in Greenwich Village. The marriage ended in divorce after ten years.[20][10] Rose remarried Du Boff in 2009.[7][5]
Rose died from breast cancer on December 25, 2020, under hospice care in Concord, New Hampshire.[6][5][17]