First, I shall always be grateful to Louise Nevelson, whose numerous meetings with me provided the inspiration and the groundwork for this book.
I am extremely grateful to the many members of Louise Nevelson’s family, living and dead, who shared recollections of their time with their sister, sister-in-law, mother, or grandmother as work on this biography has proceeded. These include her siblings, Nate Berliawsky, Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein; her sister-in–law, Lillian Mildwoff Berliawsky; her granddaughters, Maria Nevelson and Neith Nevelson; her great-granddaughter Issa; as well as some more distant relatives: Barbara and Joel Fishman, Jeffrey Entin, Elaine Crasnick and Alex Berljawsky. I give a very special thanks to her son, Mike Nevelson, whom I was able to interview both in 1977 and again in 2014 and who made it possible for us to reproduce Nevelson’s art in this book.
The two people closest to Nevelson for the last twenty-five years of her life, her dealer Arne Glimcher and her assistant Diana MacKown, have given me invaluable assistance, opening their archives and meeting and speaking with me frequently over the years. Milly Glimcher was also generous with her time and assistance, as were many members of the staff at Pace Gallery, including Joyce Pommeroy Schwartz, Diane Brown Harris, and Judy Harney. At Pace Prints I thank Richard Solomon. In addition I had the good fortune to meet with David Anderson, the son of Martha Jackson, Nevelson’s dealer in the late 1950s, who not only told me wonderful stories about the artist’s time with his mother but also opened his archives at the University of Buffalo. Rufus Foshee, who worked with the artist at Jackson Gallery, was equally generous in sharing his memories and archival material. Other gallerists and museum curators who added greatly to my understanding were Georges Fall, publisher of the first book on Nevelson; Dorothy Miller, a close friend and ardent supporter from MoMA; Giorgio Marconi; Jeffrey Hoffeld; Richard Gray; Lotte Jacobi; Hope and Paul Makler; and Martin Friedman. Marius Péladeau, former director of the Farnsworth Museum, and his wife Millie were instrumental in helping me understand Nevelson’s last years and her changed relationship to her hometown, Rockland, Maine.
Among the scholars who have read and/or discussed the research I have done on Nevelson over the past forty years, my first thanks go to Rose-Carol Washton Long, my dissertation advisor and ever supportive friend; Vera Camden; Valerie Fletcher; Phoebe Jacobs; Luba and Richard Kessler; Carol Neumann de Vegvar; Susan Sheftel; Jennifer Stuart; Nellie Thompson, Joann Turo; Francis V. O’Connor; Lora Urbanelli; Elizabeth Vercoe; Christina Weyl; Aaron Rosen; Mary and John Gedo. I am also grateful to Marc Grossman, the brilliant doctor who literally saved my life and also happily turned out be a Nevelson collector.
In a special category is Don Lippincott, who not only answered every question I asked but generously loaned me all his files on Nevelson’s metal sculpture done at Lippincott Sculpture Fabrications workshop in the 1970s and 1980s. I am likewise indebted to his son, Jonathan D. Lippincott, who designed this book.
I conducted hundreds of interviews with Nevelson’s friends and artist colleagues as well as journalists and scholars who wrote about her. I am grateful to all and can only mention a few here: Edward Albee, Jan Adlemann, Dore Ashton, Elizabeth Baker, Will Barnet, Louise Bourgeois, Minna Citron, Edgar Crockett, Merce Cunningham, Dorothy Dehner, Barbaralee Diamonstein, Majorie Eaton, Jimmy Ernst, Mary Farkas, Jan Gelb, Sidney Geist, Connie Goldman, Peter Grippe, Chaim Gross, Robert Indiana, Una Johnson, Bill Katz, Lillian Kiesler, Richard Kramer, Ibram Lassaw, Herbert Lust, Cindy Nemser, Steve Poleski, Irving Sandler, Arnold Scaasi, Louis Shenker, Dido Smith, Leon Polk Smith, Helena Simkhovitch, Anna Walinska and June Wayne.
The many people who were involved with Nevelson in her work on the Chapel of the Good Shepherd at Saint Peter’s Church in New York City are in a special category. They include Pastor Ralph Peterson and Pastor Amandus Derr; architect Easley Hamner; and congregant Barbara Murphy. Similarly, I thank the people who worked with Nevelson on her designs for Orfeo at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and offered many anecdotes about the event: the director Richard Gaddes and the artistic administrator Mark Tiarks.
My many discerning students in the Graduate Art Therapy Program at New York University and at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education affiliated with the New York University Medical Center also deserve my thanks. As is usual I may have learned more from them than I taught when I lectured about Louise Nevelson.
Two fact checkers and copy editors protected me from making grave errors: Nana Asfour and Neil Mann. Five other important behind-the-scenes helpers to whom I shall ever be grateful are Andrea Monfried, Jacques de Spoelberch, Victoria Meyer, Harry Burton, and Tuomas Hiltunen. But greatest thanks go to my two sterling editors. The first is Kitty Ross, both a friend and a superb freelance editor who has been on the case from the time I began think about writing this biography. The second is Elizabeth Keene at Thames & Hudson, whose astute observations and extraordinary efforts have made this manuscript into a beautiful book that is both reliable and clear.
Not least among the many to whom I owe a debt of gratitude are the archivists who preserve historical materials and make them available to scholars. Jon Mason at Pace Gallery stands supreme in his unfailing helpfulness. I also thank Marisa Burgoin and Elizabeth Botten at the Archives of American Art; Amy Mobley at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Anita Duquette at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Michael Komanecky, Lora Urbanelli, and Bethany Engstrom and Angela Waldron at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, provided invaluable assistance, as did Sandra H. Olsen at the University of Buffalo Art Galleries.
To the list of supporters over the long haul I want to add Cathy Hardman and the best of all possible husbands, Fredi Strasser, who nodded sagely when I first told him that I could finish this book in six months. I am forever in his debt for his patience, support and wise observations over the many years this endeavor has predictably taken.