Juliana Force (December 25, 1876 – August 28, 1948) was the founding director of the Whitney Museum of Art in the United States. During the Great Depression she was the administrator of Region 2 (New York City and State) of the New Deal-era Public Works of Art Project.
Formative years Force was born to Maxmillian Rieser and Juliana Schmutz in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, on December 25, 1876. Her parents were immigrants from Baden, Germany.
She attended the Northfield Mount Hermon School in 1896 for three semesters, then left to teach English and secretarial courses at a business school in Hoboken.
Career and marriage After directing a secretarial school in New York City, she became secretary to Helen Hay Whitney, wife of a prominent financier. In 1912 she married Willard Force. Two years later, when Helen Whitney’s sister-in-law, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, established the Whitney Studio to show the work of young modernist artists, Juliana Force was asked to assist in managing the studio. After the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1929 rejected Gertrude's personal collection of contemporary works of art, the Whitney Museum of American Art was born in 1930, with Force as director. She remained director of the Whitney Museum until her death."Local Artist Exhibits Work in Phila. Show." Allentown, Pennsylvania: The Morning Call, March 31, 1940, p. 24 (subscription required)."Ask President to Return Art Moved from Germany." Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania: Times Leader, May 13, 1946, front page (subscruption required).
Death She died from cancer in Doctors Hospital in Manhattan on August 28, 1948; she was 71.
References Edward James (1971). Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, volume 1, A–F. Harvard University Press. .
Further reading
Barbara Goldsmith (2011). Little Gloria. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. . Anna Indych-López (2009). Muralism Without Walls: Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros in the United States, 1927–1940. University of Pittsburgh. . Phyllis J. Read, Bernard L. Witlieb (1992). The Book of Women's Firsts: Breakthrough Achievements of Almost 1,000 American Women. Random House Information Group. . Gerard C. Wertkin (2013). Encyclopedia of American Folk Art. Routledge. . Lindsay Pollock (2007). The Girl with the Gallery: Edith Gregor Halpert and the Making of the Modern Art Market. New York: PublicAffairs. , page 130.