Seeing curation as a form of activism, it highlights iconoclastic and socially conscious work by lesser-known artists as well as maverick luminaries like Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik. James Haritas, director and founder of the celebrated museum that dedicated It was 90.
His death was confirmed by his sister, Paula Yankopoulos.
Aspiring to be a painter in his youth, Mr. Harrisas worked as an artist in the late 1960s as director of the Corcoran Galleries of Art in Washington before moving to the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. Houston Museum of Contemporary Art.
Never afraid to push the boundaries or ruffle his feathers, he fought to open up the museum experience to artists and patrons outside the closed institutional art scene.
“He thought he should have the opportunity to look outside the art world and its hierarchy and present his work in public forums,” said Paul Schimmel, former chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. We looked to a wider pool of artists.” in a telephone interview. “What really set him apart was his commitment to social justice, political change and representation of minority artists.”
While at Everson in the early 1970s, Mr. Harisas (pronounced HAIR-i-thas) developed a workshop for inmates at the nearby Auburn Correctional Institution. Their work was eventually shown in his 1973 exhibition called “From Within” in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Collection of Fine Arts, and was also featured in a popular game show. “To tell the truth“
Around the same time, Mr. Harisas helped organize an art exhibition in Nicaragua created by left-wing Sandinista rebels.Decades later he held an exhibition of his work Palestinian artist From Gaza and the West Bank Ekimae Museum of Contemporary Art According to the website, he and wife Anne Harrisas founded the Houston-based “Activist Agency” in 2001.
“The museum fashion and economy Harrisus said in a 2008 interview with art publication The Brooklyn Rail. “But I have to say I’m more interested in artists than museums. I think museums didn’t reach most people. We need a new kind of museum.”
He spent more than half a century trying to keep his word.
Menelaus James Haritas was born on December 1, 1932, in Lewiston, Maine, to three people: Nikolaus Haritas, a Greek immigrant who became a lawyer and judge, and Terpsichore (Seferlis) Haritas, an amateur painter and musician. Born as the oldest child.
Young James lived for several years in occupied Germany after World War II, where his father worked in the U.S. Army. He eventually returned to the United States and attended the University of Maine in Orono.
When he visited Germany in 1953 to see his parents, he had an epiphany at an abstract expressionist show in Frankfurt. “Oh my god, there was pure spirit here. So specific, yet so mysterious,” Harrisas told Brooklyn Rail. “Within a month, I quit school and hitchhiked to New York.”
His stint in New York lasted only a year and consisted mainly of occasional work and afternoons at the city’s museums. He then returned to Maine to complete his degree, earning a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1962, I met a curator who invited me to organize an exhibition of young American artists in Finland. It started his career as a curator. Decorobas Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts and later at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona.
He joined Corcoran in 1965 and was promoted to director three years later. Sitting at his August museum, Mr. Harrisas was a witness and participant in the anti-Vietnam War protests that were taking place nearby, including the 1967 Pentagon march.
That same year, the museum hosted a much-hyped “scale as content” show featuring a sculpture called “Broken Obelisk” by Mr. Harrisas’ friend Barnett Newman. Wobble over the pyramid.
Mr. Neumann denied the political message behind the work. Still, the placement of the giant iron sculpture outside Corcoran, a short walk from the Washington Monument, surprised many as a clear commentary on the ideals of a shattered America.
Mr. Harrisas resigned from Corcoran in 1969 after a dispute with the Museum Board over autonomy of creative decisions. He landed at Everson two years after him.
There he exhibited works by artists he considered underrated, such as Joan Mitchell, Norman Bloom, and Mr. Ono. In 1971, Mr. Ono held his first solo exhibition at a museum at the Everson Museum of Art. “This is not here” It brought her avant-garde work to audiences who had barely known her only as the wife of John Lennon.
Everson, a pioneer in video art, under Mr. Harrisas, held Mr. Pike’s first museum exhibition in 1972, titled “Video and Video.”
Mr. Harrisas moved to Houston in 1974 and began a four-year stewardship at the Museum of Contemporary Art. There he held exhibitions by Texas artists such as James Searles and Lynn Randolph, and the first solo exhibition by Brooklyn-born Julian Schnabel, a Texas transplant.
Haritas gets married Anne O’connor WilliamsIn 1978, the couple, artists and collectors of a prominent ranching and oil family, spent the following decades in Houston, transforming the burly oil town into an arts capital.
In addition to the station museum, in 1998 the couple opened the station museum. art car museum As Harrisas explained, it’s a working-class museum in Houston devoted to automotive-based art. (In 2016, Harithas also Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art To celebrate the cultural diversity of South Texas with local artists in nearby Victoria, Texas.)
By the end of his life, Mr. Harrisas was “arguably the most influential figure in the Houston art scene in the last 50 years.” Local curator and art historian Pete Gershon describes him as follows: houston chronicle.
Along with his sister, Mr. Harisas is survived by daughters Jeanie Harrisas, Talia Harisas, and Leah Bryce. Four stepchildren, Madeleine Merrill, Molly Kemp, Stephanie Leffler and Will Robinson. and two grandchildren. Anne Harrisas dies 2021 years.
Early in his career, Harithas realized that museums had the power to change people’s minds and perhaps even change society. “I knew museums were a political force,” he once said. It is what he thought could have a powerful social agenda, free from institutional conventions.
As he puts it, “I felt that museums had to be free-form.”
