Background
Van Deren Coke was born in 1921 in Lexington, Kentucky, United States.
Photographer Photohistorian museum director teacher
Van Deren Coke was born in 1921 in Lexington, Kentucky, United States.
He received his BA from the University of Kentucky in 1956 and his MFA from Indiana University in 1958. He also undertook postgraduate studies at Harvard University in 1957-58.
The director of the Department of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Coke was director of the Art Museum and professor of art at the University of New Mexico from 1962 to 1966 and 1973 to 1979. From 1963 to 1970 he also chaired the university's Department of Art. Coke was deputy director (1970-71) and director (1971-72) of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y. In 1961-62 he was an associate professor at Arizona State University.
He received awards in the following competitions: Photography International, 1955, 1956, 1957; Modern Photography, 1956; U.S. Camera, 1957, 1958, I960; and Art in America “New Talent USA," 1960.
Coke's photography is "in the surreal mode."
PUBLICATIONS Books: Photography in New Mexico: From the Daguerreotype to the Present, 1979, One Hundred Years of Photographic History, ed., 1975, The Painter and the Photograph: From Delacroix to Warhol, 1974, Light and Substance, 1974 (Univ. of N. Mex. Press; Albuquerque). Catalogs: Fabricated to be Photographed, 1980 (San Francisco Museum of Modem Art); Photographs, Photographically Illustrated Books and Albums in University of New Mexico Libraries 1843-1933, 1977, Nineteenth Century Photographs from the Collection, 1976, Young Photographers, 1968 (Univ. of N. Mex. Art Mus.: Albuquerque). Anthology: The Photograph Collector’s Guide, Lee D. Witkin & Barbara London, 1979.
A member of CAA and SPE, Coke was on the board of directors of the former from 1975 to 1978 and of the latter from 1963 to 1965.
