Reading the Art World: Ruth Fine

Welcome to Reading the Art World. Today we are speaking with curator, scholar, author, and my dear friend Ruth Fine, whose latest book Frank Stewart's Nexus: An American Photographer’s Journey, 1960’s to the Present, was published this month by Rizzoli. This is the first complete monograph and retrospective on Frank Stewart’s sixty-year career as a photographer. Since the 1960’s he’s captured spontaneous and sensitive portrayals of African American culture in many forms, including, art, food, dance and music—especially jazz.

“Jazz plays its role in Frank Stewart’s work even when it’s not about jazz. Issues of rhythm are very important to him, issues of a comprehensive conversation — that call and response. If you look at the photographs clearly, no matter what the subject is, you’ll very often find a call and response, and you’ll find a moment that feels jazz-like even when it’s not jazz-like." — Ruth Fine

Between 1972 and 2012, Ruth Fine served first Curator of Modern Prints and Drawings and later Curator of Special Projects in Modern Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Among other shows at the NGA, Ruth coordinated the exhibitions and projects for Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, John Maron, Georgia O'Keefe, Crown Point Press, Gemini G.E.L Graphic Studio, and the collections of Lessing J. Rosenwald and Dorothy and Herbert Vogel. Additionally, Ruth coordinated the Gallery’s 1994 catalogue raisonné of Roy Lichtenstein's prints (revised 2002) and was co-coordinator of the 1999 Georgia O'Keeffe catalogue raisonné, undertaken with the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation.

Now based in Philadelphia, Ruth is chair of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and working on a print distribution project with the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.

It was through Ruth’s role as curator of Special Projects in the Modern Art department at the National Gallery that Ruth first met Frank Stewart in early 2000. From that point on, they stayed in touch. Ruth shares a wonderfully compilation of stories from their lifelong friendship in our conversation today.

“The thing is — and this is what I tell all my students — you’re not making art for people you don’t like. You’re making art for yourself and the strangers that like it, whatever time or place they’re living in —  now and somebody 50 years from now, in China or Russia, as well as New York or Savannah." — Frank Stewart

The launch of the book accompanies the exhibition of Stewart’s work that will open in June at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. and then travels to The Baker Museum in Naples, Florida and The Telfair Museum in Savannah, GA through 2024. On June 3rd, Gallery Neptune and Brown in Washington, D.C. opens an exhibit of Stewart’s jazz photographs.

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