Background
She was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a twin, and one of the nine children of Maximilian Rieser and Julie Ann (Schmutz) Rieser, both natives of Baden, Germany. Her father owned a haberdashery store.
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(American Artists Series, Whitney Museum Of American Art.)
American Artists Series, Whitney Museum Of American Art.
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She was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a twin, and one of the nine children of Maximilian Rieser and Julie Ann (Schmutz) Rieser, both natives of Baden, Germany. Her father owned a haberdashery store.
After being educated in local schools, Juliana supported herself, first by secretarial work and later as head of a secretarial school in New York, which she left to work as a secretary for Helen Hay (Mrs. Payne) Whitney.
Early in the 1900's Mrs. Whitney's sister-in-law, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney), sculptor and art patron, had begun giving informal and unpublicized exhibitions for young and unknown American artists in her studio on Macdougal Alley.
In 1914 she decided to enlarge these activities and engaged Juliana Force as her assistant. Through this collaboration developed one of the most vital and germinating influences in the history of American art.
The next year, Mrs. Whitney formed the Friends of the Young Artists and made Mrs. Force its director. Though lacking a formal background in art, Mrs. Force had other essential requirements --an instinct for quality, an innate good taste, and the ability to assimilate new ideas.
It was from her association with these artists, and not through academic study, that Juliana Force acquired her knowledge of American art. Out of the Friends of the Young Artists grew, in 1918, the Whitney Studio Club, with Mrs. Force as director, and, when it was seen that the club needed its own galleries, an old house on West 4th Street was purchased and remodeled.
This was a place where the young and unrecognized artists, as well as the liberal leaders, could meet and exhibit their work. Among the artists of the rising generation of the 1920's to hold their first exhibitions at the Whitney Studio Club were Edward Hopper, Reginald Marsh, Henry Schnackenburg, and Stuart Davis. Mrs. Force took an active part in the club, not only as director, but as hostess and friend.
By 1923, the club had outgrown the 4th Street house and it was moved to 10 West 8th Street. Two years later, when the membership mounted to 400, plus a large waiting list, Mrs. Whitney and Mrs. Force felt that the club had achieved its purpose of liberating American art and so it was disbanded.
Its place was taken by the Whitney Studio Galleries at 8 West 8th Street, the primary purpose of which was to show the work of young and progressive artists.
Exhibitions with a central theme were featured, among them the Circus Exhibition of paintings and sculptures related to the circus and Henry Schnackenburg's pioneering presentation of American folk art, which was to have so wide an influence on American taste. Such exhibitions were the forerunners of the many Whitney Museum discoveries of forgotten artists and forgotten periods of American art and design.
Mrs. Force was delegated to offer the collection to Dr. Edward Robinson, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and to convey Mrs. Whitney's willingness to build and endow a wing to house it. The latter offer was never made, as Dr. Robinson flatly refused to accept the collection.
As a result, Mrs. Whitney and Mrs. Force, with the advice of Forbes Watson, decided to establish a new museum. Mrs. Whitney insisted that Juliana Force should be the director and in 1930 the Whitney Museum of American Art was created in four houses on West 8th Street, remodeled for that purpose. The building followed no stereotyped museum architecture, and the interior reflected Mrs. Force's preference for informality and beauty of color and materials. An extensive program was launched centering on annual exhibitions of contemporary painting and sculpture.
The winners received monetary awards drawn from a fund of $10, 000 that was set aside every year to purchase paintings and sculpture. Two important aspects of the museum's educational program were traveling exhibitions and publications.
Exhibitions were sent to museums and universities throughout the United States and this activity was extended to Europe in 1935, when Mrs. Force was invited to send an exhibition of contemporary American art to the American Pavilion of the Biennial Exhibition in Venice.
The Whitney Museum also pioneered, in 1931, in publishing a series of monographs and books on living American artists, including two full-length biographies, by Lloyd Goodrich, of Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer. With the opening of the Whitney Museum, Juliana Force's gifts as a hostess were given wider scope.
A series of morning and evening lectures by eminent art historians, critics, artists, and museum directors were held in the museum galleries. The morning lectures were followed by buffet luncheons and the evening ones often ended in informal parties in her apartment above the museum.
The Whitney Museum's steadily growing reputation was due in no small part to Mrs. Force's personality and activities.
More than any of her contemporaries in the museum field, she knew the artists who produced the works in which she dealt.
And as the prestige of the Whitney Museum grew, so did Juliana Force's influence as a museum director.
Inevitably, she assumed other responsibilities in the field of American art.
Soon after Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's death in 1942, a merger with the Metropolitan Museum was again discussed and a tentative agreement was reached by the trustees of both museums. But when it became evident that differences of opinion, especially on the more advanced trend in contemporary painting, made it doubtful that the Whitney Museum's policies would be maintained, the trustees of the Whitney Museum decided against the coalition.
Juliana Force had viewed the proposed coalition with considerable misgiving.
Since 1943 she had been serving as unofficial advisor for the Metropolitan Museum's purchases of American art under the Hearn Fund and her misgivings were augmented when the Metropolitan rejected the selection of paintings she recommended.
The trustees' decision to continue the Whitney Museum as an independent museum was a great comfort to her in the last months of her life.
In July 1948 she was taken to Doctors Hospital in New York, where she died of cancer at the age of seventy-one. She was buried in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
By 1928 uptown galleries were beginning to show the work of artists from the Whitney Studio Galleries, and the purpose for which it had been founded was achieved. The next year Mrs. Whitney decided to offer to the Metropolitan Museum her collection of more than 600 paintings and sculptures acquired through the years from the exhibitions of the Studio Club and the Studio Galleries. She was chairman of Region No. 2 of the Public Works of Art Project (1933 - 1934), which employed over 900 artists. She was also chairman of the committee for a New York State Art Program and a trustee and officer of the American Federation of Arts and the American Association of Museum Directors, the first woman to hold such posts. Force brought about the first display of American folk art in a gallery in the United States, the "Early American Art" collection. She set up starting on February 9 of 1924 a presentation of folk art, in a Whitney gallery that she administered, intending to bring folk art attractiveness closer to the level of contemporary art. Because of her passion for folk art, this initial display led to the first official public exhibition of folk art in a public showing presentation.
(American Artists Series, Whitney Museum Of American Art.)
She was extremely gregarious and loved to entertain.
She was a brilliant conversationalist, an inimitable mimic with a sharp-edged sense of humor and impatient with any show of pomposity or pretense.
Her vitality, her zest for life, and her warmhearted interest in the artists gave the club a quality of informality and friendliness.
Quotes from others about the person
John Sloan summed up her contribution: "The Whitney Museum of American Art is really a memorial to the distinctive genius of Juliana Force but her memory is held dear in the hearts and minds of two generations of American artists. "
In 1912 she married Dr. Willard Burdette Force. They had no children.
mother Julie Ann (Schmutz) Rieser
Among Gertrude Whitney's friends were the foremost protagonists of the liberal movement in art--Robert Henri, John Sloan, Arthur B. Davies, William Glackens, Guy Pene duBois, and Forbes Watson, the art critic for The World and a leading champion of modern art and native artists.
