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American multi-ethnic arts organization based in New York’s Chinatown. The Asian American Arts Centre (AAAC) and its predecessors, the Asian American Dance Theatre (1974–93) and the Asian Arts Institute (1981–8), emerged from the milieu of the Basement Workshop, the first working group of the Asian American Movement on the East Coast, whose mouthpiece was the journal Bridge (1970–81). After the closing of the Basement Workshop in 1987, the Dance Theatre and the Asian Arts Institute were consolidated as the AAAC.

Directed by Eleanor S. Yung, the Dance Theatre was at the core of the organization’s activities from the 1970s through the early 1990s, performing traditional dances from several Asian cultures alongside modern and postmodern forms. In the early 1980s, the Asian Arts Institute began to hold exhibitions and collect slides of artists’ work and documentation of their activities, working primarily with artists involved in the downtown art scene. Early programs included open studio events for artists working in Chinatown and exhibitions of the work of Arlan Huang (...

[Coquelin Cadet]

(b Boulogne-sur-Mer, Pas-de-Calais, 1848; d Suresnes, Hauts-de-Seine, 1909).

French actor and collector. He was the son of a well-known baker in Boulogne-sur-Mer and from an early age a friend of the painter Jean-Charles Cazin, who painted a view of the Coquelin bakery (1879; Samer, Mus. Cazin). Ernest and his brother Constant Coquelin went to Paris and established careers as actors. From 1878 to 1909 Ernest was a member of the Comédie-Française and was known for his delivery of drawing-room monologues. He was a frequent visitor to the home of the wealthy socialite Nina de Callias (1844–84), whose portrait (c. 1874; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay) was painted by Manet. Coquelin met Manet and Cézanne at her salon, which was frequented by poets and painters. During the 1870s he began to collect Impressionist paintings and in 1879 loaned one of Degas’s paintings of laundresses (England, priv. col.) to the fourth Impressionist exhibition. His friendship with Cazin must have encouraged his interest in painting, and probably formed his taste, and 20 landscapes by ...

(b Chatou, nr Paris, June 17, 1880; d Garches, Sept 8, 1954).

French painter, sculptor, illustrator, stage designer and collector. He was a leading exponent of Fauvism. In early 1908 he destroyed most of his work to concentrate on tightly constructed landscape paintings, which were a subtle investigation of the work of Cézanne. After World War I his work became more classical, influenced by the work of such artists as Camille Corot. In his sculpture he drew upon his knowledge and collection of non-Western art.

Derain abandoned his engineering studies in 1898 to become a painter and attended the Académie Carrière. He also sketched in the Musée du Louvre and painted on the banks of the Seine. On a visit to the Louvre in 1899 he met the painter Georges Florentin Linaret (1878–1905), who had been his companion at school, and who was copying Uccello in an extraordinary manner; he was studying under Gustave Moreau and later introduced Derain to a fellow pupil, Henri Matisse. Derain’s painting was already influenced by the work of Cézanne, and in ...

(b Buffalo, NY, July 8, 1896; d New York, Nov 23, 1989).

American dealer, collector, and writer. He first worked as a professional ballroom dancer, aeronautical mechanic, and businessman. During business trips to New York he began visiting museums and art galleries in the 57th Street area. He moved to New York in 1924, married Harriet Grossman (1898–1963) in 1925 and in 1926 founded the M’Lord Shirt Company. He began collecting art in 1926, acquiring one of the finest collections of the Ecole de Paris in the USA. On successive trips to Europe, he met Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, and other major European artists. After acquiring The Dream by Henri Rousseau (New York, MOMA) he became interested in American naive painters, including Grandma Moses and Morris Hirshfield, on whom he published a study in 1942.

Having dissolved his business in 1939 to devote himself full-time to writing and lecturing on art, in 1949 Janis opened the ...

(b Akkerman, Bessarabia [now Belgorod Dnestrovskiy, Ukraine], 1893; d Newport, RI, Dec 20, 1963).

American singer and collector. Trained as a tenor and actor in Odessa, he immigrated to America in 1922. In 1928 he married Martha Codman (d 1948) of Boston, heiress of Elias Hasket Derby (1739–99), the Salem merchant and patron of the architect and wood-carver Samuel McIntire. Following a tradition begun by Mrs Karolik in 1923 of giving family treasures to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mr and Mrs Karolik formed a collection, of great artistic quality, of American portraits, furniture, and decorative art of the late 18th century, which they presented to the Museum in 1939. Included were eight portraits and nineteen drawings by John Singleton Copley and documented furniture by Edmund Towsend of Newport, RI, Benjamin Randolph of Philadelphia, and the Derby furniture by McIntire and John and Thomas Seymour of Boston.

The Karoliks’ enthusiasm for American art led them to form a second collection of American painting dating from ...

(b Rochester, NY, May 4, 1907; d New York, Jan 5, 1996).

American patron and writer. Best known for bringing the dancer and choreographer George Balanchine to the USA in 1933 and founding the School of the American Ballet and the New York City Ballet, he was also a poet and novelist and devoted his life to fostering dance, literature, and the visual arts. He grew up in Boston with wealthy parents whose fortune came from successful department stores. He spent summers abroad and among the experiences that influenced him was his attendance at a performance of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. As an undergraduate at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, he co-founded and co-edited the influential avant-garde literary journal Hound and Horn (1927–34) and participated in the founding of the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, a precursor of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1942 he founded Dance Index Magazine, which he edited until 1948; he brought to it the same artistic ideals that governed his work at the New York City Ballet. His attraction to the grace and vitality of the human body in dance was extended to his admiration for the figurative sculpture of Elie Nadelman and Gaston Lachaise, which he expressed by writing eloquent books and essays on their work, for example ...

(Vasil’yevich)

(b Nizhny Novgorod, 1861; d Leningrad [now St Petersburg], Oct 14, 1934).

Russian painter, patron, musician, writer and publisher. He pursued a highly original line of artistic thought and practice and developed an organic perception of the world, deriving his inspiration from nature rather than machines, unlike many of his Russian Constructivist contemporaries.

Matyushin trained initially as a musician at the Moscow Conservatory (1878–81) and played the violin in the Court orchestra in St Petersburg from 1881 to 1913. In 1889 he began to attend the School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in St Petersburg, where he studied painting with Yan Tsionglinsky (d 1914). In Tsionglinsky’s studio he met the artist and writer Yelena Guro, whom he married. Later (1906–8) he studied with the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) painters Léon Bakst and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky at the Zvantseva School of Art in St Petersburg.

In 1909 Matyushin briefly joined the circle around Nikolay Kul’bin and the following year he founded the ...

[MoMA](New York)

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was founded in 1929 by patrons Lillie P(lummer) Bliss, Cornelius J. Sullivan and Rockefeller, John D(avison), jr. to establish an institution devoted to modern art. Over the next ten years the Museum moved three times and in 1939 settled in the Early Modern style building (1938–9) designed by Philip S. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone that it still occupies at 11 West 53 Street. Subsequent renovations and expansions occurred in the 1950s and 1960s by Philip Johnson, in 1984 by Cesar Pelli and in 2002–4 by Yoshirō Taniguchi (b 1937). MoMA QNS, the temporary headquarters during this project, was subsequently used to provide art storage. In 2000, MoMA and the contemporary art space, P.S.1, Long Island City, Queens, announced their affiliation. Recent projects are shown at P.S.1 in Queens in a renovated public school building.

According to founding director, Alfred H(amilton) Barr...

[Goldenberg, Emanuel]

(b Bucharest, Romania, Dec 12, 1893; d Los Angeles, CA, Jan 26, 1973).

American actor and collector of Romanian birth. He began collecting in the 1920s but could afford only etchings and lithographs, and occasionally paintings by American artists such as John Twachtman and Ralph Albert Blakelock. In the 1930s, as a result of a vastly improved financial situation, he bought French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, including works by Bonnard, Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Rouault, Utrillo and Vuillard.

Although Robinson did acquire some American paintings and Pre-Columbian and African objects, he excluded from his collection any avant-garde or abstract works. Still-lifes and portraits dominated the collection. By 1940 it was so large that he commissioned Samuel A. Marx to remodel his home in Los Angeles to include a gallery (completed Nov 1941), which was open to the public on specific days. Through generous loans to local exhibitions, and his participation in various organizations, he confirmed his commitment, expressed through numerous interviews and articles, to the public display and promotion of modern art....