Marcia Tucker 1974: An Interview

Marcia Tucker (1940-2006) was a curator, writer and art historian, known for founding the New Museum of Contemporary Art after her dismissal from her curatorial post at the Whitney Museum of American Art, due to creative disagreements.  Tucker served as the visionary director of the New Museum from 1977 to 1999, during which time she organized major exhibitions like The Time of Our Lives (1999), A Labor of Love (1996), and Bad Girls (1994), and edited the series Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art. As a curator, Tucker championed social engagement, exploration and artistic process.  She considered the museum a “laboratory” organization where both art and the practices of the institution itself were always in question. After leaving the New Museum, and until her death in 2006, Tucker worked as a freelance art critic, writer, and lecturer.

In this interview, conducted prior to her departure from the Whitney, Tucker speaks with Lyn Blumenthal and Kate Horsfield about her burgeoning career.  At the time of the interview, Tucker was known for organizing major surveys of ephemeral and post-minimalist work, including that of artists Bruce Nauman, Lee Krasner, James Rosenquist, Joan Mitchell, and Richard Tuttle.  In the video, Tucker discusses embracing the freedom of her thirties, her participation in the Redstocking feminist women’s group, and her slow realization that her original curatorial vision had been conditioned by masculine assumptions.

“The best work that any human being does in the world is the work he or she is most interested in,” she observes.

A historical interview originally recorded in 1974 and re-edited in 2006 with support from the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund.