Richard D. Marshall. Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
New York-based curator, art consultant and art historian Richard D. Marshall died unexpectedly on Aug. 8 at his home in La Jolla, Calif. He was 67. The cause of his death has not yet been determined. Since 2003, Marshall was curator of The Lever House Art Collection, New York.
Born in Los Angeles, Marshall attended the University of California, Irvine, and the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. From 1974 to 1993, Marshall was a curator at the Whitney. In addition to organizing many iterations of the museum’s biennial, he curated numerous exhibitions, including solo shows of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alex Katz, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist and Ed Ruscha. His landmark 1978 exhibition “New Image Painting,” at the Whitney, coined the term that would be applied to the work of contemporary Neo-Expressionist painters like Susan Rothenberg, Robert Moskowitz and Jennifer Bartlett, who adopted a figurative style in opposition to abstraction and conceptual art.
During his tenure at the museum, Marshall worked as art editor of the Paris Review (1975-90). He also organized exhibitions at other institutions of work by Louise Bourgeois (Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Monterrey, Mexico, and Contemporary Art Museum, Seville, Spain); Alexander Calder (Japan Art and Culture Association, Tokyo); and Robert Mapplethorpe (Mitsukoshi Museum, Tokyo), among others. His most recent books include monographs on Ruscha, Jack Pierson, Georgia O’Keeffe and Kenny Scharf.
Donations may be made in his honor to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
