Susan Landauer

Susan Landauer (1958–2020) was an American art historian, author, and curator of modern and contemporary art based in California.Schuster, Clayton. "Remembering Susan Landauer, a Curator Who Championed California Art," Hyperallergic, January 11, 2021. Retrieved February 23, 2021. She worked for three decades, both independently and as chief curator of the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA) and co-founder of the San Francisco Center for the Book.Hamlin, Jesse. "San Jose Museum's Curator Champions California Art," San Francisco Chronicle, September 4, 2000. Retrieved February 22, 2021.Whiting, Sam. "Susan Landauer, Oakland art historian and museum curator, dead at 62," San Francisco Chronicle, December 21, 2020. Retrieved February 22, 2021. Landauer was known for championing movements and idioms of California art, overlooked artists of the past, women artists, and artists of color.Knight, Christopher. "An Enlightening Show of Abstract Expressionism," Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1996. Retrieved February 22, 2021.Benson, Heidi. "San Jose Museum's Landauer Loves 'the Hunt,'" San Francisco Chronicle, April 15, 2001. Retrieved February 25, 2021. She organized exhibitions that gained national attention; among the best known are: "The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism" (Laguna Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1996),Plagens, Peter. "The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism," Artforum, November 1996. Retrieved February 22, 2021. "Visual Politics: The Art of Engagement" (SJMA, 2006),Heffley, Lynne. "Protest politics on canvas," Los Angeles Times, January 8, 2006. Retrieved February 25, 2021. and retrospectives of Elmer Bischoff,Littlejohn, David. "A Tale of Two Artists," The Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2001. Retrieved February 25, 2021. Roy De Forest (both at the Oakland Museum of California, 2001 and 2017, respectively),Yau, John. "Roy De Forest's Search for Paradise Did Not Always Go Well," Hyperallergic, June 4, 2017. Retrieved February 23, 2021. and Franklin Williams (2017, Museum of Sonoma County).Schuster, Clayton. "The Intimate Abstractions of Franklin Williams, an Unsung Master from the '60s," Hyperallergic, August 30, 2017. Retrieved February 22, 2021. Her work was recognized with awards and grants from the International Association of Art Critics, National Endowment for the Arts and Henry Luce Foundation, among others.Snow, Shauna. "Arts and entertainment reports from The Times," Los Angeles Times, December 18, 1996. Retrieved February 25, 2021.Landauer, Susan. The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism, Berkeley/Laguna Beach, CA: University of California Press/Laguna Art Museum, 1996. Retrieved February 26, 2021.Landauer, Susan. Elmer Bischoff: The Ethics of Paint, Berkeley/Oakland, CA: University of California Press/Oakland Museum, 2001. Retrieved February 26, 2021.University of California Press. Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond, Book. Retrieved February 26, 2021. Critics, including Roberta Smith and Christopher Knight, praised her scholarship on San Francisco Abstract Expressionism, De Forest, Richard Diebenkorn, and Bernice Bing, among others, as pioneering.Smith, Roberta. "Roy De Forest's Greatness Shines Even in a Virtual Display," The New York Times, April 9, 2020, p. C10. Retrieved February 22, 2021.Knight, Christopher. "All for One," Artforum, September 1996. Retrieved February 22, 2021.Curtis, Cathy. "Vision, Reach and Grasp," Los Angeles Times, August 19, 1997. Retrieved February 25, 2021.Desmarais, Charles. "What if Bernice Bing's art had been celebrated and supported?", San Francisco Chronicle, October 3, 2019. Retrieved February 25, 2021. In 2021, Art in America editor and curator Michael Duncan said that "no other scholar has contributed as much to the study of California art". Landauer died of lung cancer at age 62 in Oakland on December 19, 2020.

Early life and career Landauer was born Susan Elise Klein in 1958 in Oakland, California. She grew up in Berkeley, four blocks from the University of California, Berkeley campus, where her mother, Barbara, studied art in preparation to becoming an interior designer. Her mother's friends and acquaintances included bohemians and Beat-era artists such as poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, affiliations that Landauer would herself cultivate throughout her life.Hamlin, Jesse. "De Forest, once too wild for the snobs, now showcased in Oakland," San Francisco Chronicle, April 5, 2017. Retrieved February 23, 2021.California Beat Era. Timeline. Retrieved February 26, 2021. As a child, she was bused to Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in the first year of court-ordered desegregation, attended Berkeley High School, and later graduated from University of California, Berkeley with an art history degree with an emphasis on Chinese and Japanese art in 1982.

She enrolled in graduate studies at Yale University (MA, 1984; PhD, 1992), shifting focus to American art. Her dissertation centered on mid-century San Francisco abstract expressionism, a topic that was initially controversial in her department, which questioned whether it merited rigorous investigation; after successfully defending her subject, she would convert the dissertation into her first book, The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism (1996). While at Yale, she met her husband, Carl Landauer, who was also studying for a PhD.San Francisco Chronicle. "San Jose Museum of Art picks curator," April 26, 1999. Retrieved February 25, 2021. They married in 1986 and moved to Oakland in 1991.

During the 1990s, Landauer independently organized exhibitions in Los Angeles and Bay Area institutions including the Richmond Art Center, McPherson Center for Art and History, Autry Museum of the American West, and Laguna Art Museum.Curtis, Cathy. "Efforts of a Minor Player Are on Display at Laguna Museum: Edward Corbett took a back seat to the bolder, more strikingly novel approaches of his famous colleagues," Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1991. Retrieved February 25, 2021.Kittredge, William. "Paradise West," Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1996. Retrieved February 25, 2021. In 1996, she was hired as an assistant curator of American Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and became a co-founder at the San Francisco Center for the Book, serving in that capacity until 1999.San Francisco Center for the Book. "Remembering Susan Landauer," Retrieved February 25, 2021. In 1999 she was named chief curator at the San Jose Museum of Art, where she remained until 2009.

Work Landauer's scholarship and curatorial work was fueled by a strong connection to California and, especially, Bay Area movements (Abstract Expressionism, Beat art, the eccentric Funk Art scene) and a passion for championing "underdog" or overlooked artists.Muchnic, Suzanne. "Finally Giving California a Fair Shake," Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1996. Retrieved February 25, 2021.Yau, John. "Four Bay Area Iconoclasts and Eccentrics," December 10, 2017. Hyperallergic, Retrieved February 23, 2021. Her exhibitions and writing often juxtaposed famous and lesser-known artists, establishing dialogues, interrelationships, and insights that served as correctives to dominant art historical narratives that left out significant figures, social groups, and regions.Cheng, Scarlet. "California Grrrls," Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2002. Retrieved February 25, 2021.

Independent curating and scholarship (1990–2001) In her first decade, Landauer's curating and writing focused on diverse, under-recognized California artists and movements, from early and mid-century modernism to psychedelia to contemporary work.Landauer, Susan. California Impressionists, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press/Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, 1996. Retrieved February 26, 2021.Landauer, Susan. "Painting Under the Shadow: California Modernism and the Second World War," On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art,1900-1950, Paul Karlstrom (ed.), Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996. Early exhibitions included "Edward Corbett: A Retrospective" (Richmond Art Center, Laguna Art Museum, 1991), which reintroduced audiences to a onetime Bay Area Abstract Expressionist luminary,Baker, Kenneth. "Richmond Art Center's 75th anniversary show," San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 2011. Retrieved February 25, 2021. and "Paper Trails: San Francisco Abstract Expressionist Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors," the inaugural exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (1993).Landauer, Susan. Paper Trails: San Francisco Abstract Expressionist Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors, Santa Cruz, CA: Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, 1993. Retrieved February 26, 2021. In 1995, she co-curated "Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890–1945" at the Autry Museum, contributing an essay on women artists of Northern California to the show's companion book.Landauer, Susan. "Lone Star Spirits," Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, Patricia Trenton (ed.), Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press/Autry Museum of the American West, 1995. Retrieved February 26, 2021.Landauer, Susan. "Searching for Self-hood: Women Artists of Northern California," Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, Patricia Trenton (ed.), Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press/Autry Museum of the American West, 1995. Retrieved February 26, 2021.

She gained widespread attention for "The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism" (Laguna Art Museum, SFMOMA; 1996), which was based on her Yale dissertation and won a regional museum show award from the International Art Critics Association.Dubin, Zan. "Laguna Art Museum Gets $100,000 Grant," Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1992. Retrieved February 25, 2021.Littlejohn, David. "The New York School's Cross-Country Rival," The Wall Street Journal, September 10, 1996. Retrieved February 25, 2021. Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight called the exhibition catalogue a "little bombshell" that "demolished for good the old canard that Abstract Expressionism began in New York and radiated outward across the country". The first comprehensive museum survey of Bay Area Abstract Expressionism, it assembled paintings by Ronald Bladen, Corbett, Jay DeFeo, Diebenkorn, Sam Francis, Sonia Gechtoff, Hassel Smith, Clyfford Still, and others, arguing that artists centered at the old California School of Fine Arts (renamed the San Francisco Art Institute) were hybridizing abstraction, Surrealism, and Expressionism simultaneously with others all across the country rather than responding to developments in the artistic center.Knight, Christopher. "Francis, Home at Last," Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1999. Retrieved February 22, 2021. Artforum'''s Peter Plagens described the show as beautiful and concise, while noting as "discoveries" artists such as Walter Kuhlman, Frank Lobdell, and Charles Strong.