Kenworth William Moffett

Background

Kenworth Moffett was born on November 26, 1934 in Newark, New Jersey, United States.

Education

Kenworth Moffett received a Bachelor of Arts with honors at Columbia University in 1958. In 1962 Moffett got a Master of Arts at Harvard University. Finally, he earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Arts History at that same university in 1968.

Career

Kenworth Moffett turned his doctoral dissertation, Meirer-Graefe as Art Critic, into a book, revising it during his years as a member of the junior faculty at Wellesley College, and publishing it in 1973. Moffett stayed on at Wellesley, where he was promoted to associate professor, but he cut back on his duties there in 1971 in order to head the contemporary art division of Boston’s Museum of Fine Art. During his years at the museum, Moffett curated shows by many notable twentieth-century artists, including Horatio Torres, Michael Steiner, Friedel Dzubas, and Morris Louis. He also authored exhibition catalogs on these and other shows at the Museum of Fine Arts and elsewhere. Moffett left Wellesley in 1979 to direct all of his attention toward his work at the museum.

During his tenure at the Museum of Fine Arts, Moffett published several works of art criticism focusing on single artists. In 1977 he came out with a study of abstract painter Kenneth Noland, an artist whose work was then the subject of controversy in the art world after decades of nothing but praise. In Kenneth Noland Moffett traces the work of the artist, best known for his shaped canvases, from the 1940s through the next three decades, elucidating his paintings from a formalist perspective. While reviewers found the study a solid piece of scholarship, for the most part they expressed disappointment that Moffett did not offer more of a fresh approach to a revered artist.

Moffett published Jules Olitski in 1981. In that book he addressed the painting and sculpture of the abstract artist, best known for his color-field techniques, from the formal perspective that was Moffett’s forte. The study additionally offers a biographical context through interviews with the artist, as well as situating Olitski’s style in terms of transitions in modern art from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. Critics were divided on the study, with assessments tending to follow the reviewer’s opinion of the artist who is its subject.

In his next work of criticism, Moffett presented a less reverent view of realist Fairfield Porter, the artist who was his subject. Though Porter embraced many of the most important concepts of modernism, including incorporating a strong influence from modern poets such as Wallace Stevens, he avoided the abstraction that was then current and which Moffett spent most of his career studying. Moffett left the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1984 in order to start a magazine, Moffett's Artletter. In 1989 he accepted a position in Florida as director of Fort Lauderdale’s Museum of Art. He also penned catalogue essays and published Moffett's artletter 2.0.

Achievements

• Kenworth Moffett was greatly famous as the author of several works of art criticism, as well as of the exhibition catalogs for many of the shows for which he served as curator.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Irene Neal 2002
  • Physical Color - Jerald Webster Paintings 2004
  • Abstract Art in New England 1983
  • The new generation: A curator's choice 1980
  • Morris Louis in the Museum of Fine Arts 1979
  • New New Painting 1992
  • Larry Poons Paintings, 1971-1981 1981
  • Jules Olitski 1973
  • Kenneth Noland 1977
  • Fairfield Porter: Realist Painter in an Age of Abstraction 1982

Membership

• International Association of Art Critics

• American Association of Museums

• Association of Art Museum Directors

• Florida Art Museum Directors Association

Interests

• Artists

  Jackson Pollock, Bram Bogart, Eduardo da Rosa

Connections

Kenworth Moffett was married to Ingeborge Hoestery but unfortunately the marriage broke up. They had a daghter Kathryn. After that he married a woman named Cynthia.

Spouse:

Cynthia Moffett

ex-spouse:

Ingeborge Hoestery

Daughter:

Kathryn Moffett

tutor:

Meyer Schapiro

colleague:

Clement Greenberg