Amei Wallach

Amei Wallach is an American film director, producer, art critic journalist, and author from New York. Her documentaries profiling artists include: Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and the Tangerine, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here (2013), and Taking Venice (release date May 17, 2024) . Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, and Art in America, and numerous publications. From 2000 to 2005, Wallach served as president of the U.S. Section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA/USA).

Early life and education Amei Wallach was raised in Goshen, Connecticut by German-Jewish immigrants.

Family Her mother Gerda Wilhelmina Lewenz (April 7, 1915 – October 12, 2000) was born in Berlin, Germany in the middle of World War I. Both sides of Gerda's family were "prominent" Jewish bankers. He later took a position as health officer and as clinician based in Chattanooga, Tennessee for the Georgia-Tennessee Health Authority serving Appalachia Gerda also continued her work as a nurse.

Career Wallach worked as Chief Art Critic for Newsday and New York Newsday from 1984 to 1995, and was an on-air arts essayist for the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, later renamed PBS NewsHour, from 1987 to 1995. As an art critic, Wallach's articles have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Art in America, ARTnews, Aperture, Parkett and The Brooklyn Rail.

Wallach has interviewed and profiled artists ranging from Salvador Dalí to Willem de Kooning and Jeff Koons. She profiled Anselm Kiefer in 1988, David Hammons in 1991, and in October 2001, weeks after the World Trade Center Bombings, Wallach's essay on the Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat was featured on the cover of Art in America.

From 2000 to 2005, Wallach was president of AICA/USA, the U.S. Section of the International Association of Art Critics, or Association Internationale des Critiques d'Art, and as of 2020, continues on its board. She also serves on the board of CEC ArtsLink, and was a founding member of ArtTable, an association of leading women in the arts. Wallach is the founding director of The Art Writing Workshop; a partnership between the International Art Critics Association (AICA/USA) and the Creative Capital Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program.

Film work In 2008 Wallach co-directed and co-produced Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine with Marion Cajori. Filmed over 14 years (from 1993 to 2007), the work is a documentary portrait of the sculptor Louise Bourgeois and her career, which spanned the 20th and early 21st century. The New York Times called the film a "Superb documentary portrait", and it originally garnered a 92% in positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

In 2013 Wallach directed Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here, which debuted at the New York Film Forum, and had its Canadian premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival. The film explores the history of the artist, born in Ukraine under Joseph Stalin, and his years as an outsider artist forbidden to exhibit in Moscow. It culminates in 2008 with the artists’ first public exhibition in Moscow, in venues throughout the city, including the Pushkin Museum.

Her latest documentary film, Taking Venice, will have its theatrical premiere on May 17, 2024, at the IFC Theater in New York City, having shown at international film festivals in Rome, Italy; São Paulo, Brazil; New York, Boulder, and Palm Beach. Taking Venice uncovers the story behind rumors that the U.S. Government and a team of high-placed insiders rigged the 1964 Venice Biennale, so their chosen artist Robert Rauschenberg could win the Grand Prize.

Personal life In September 1989 Wallach wed William P. Edwards, former Museum of Modern Art Deputy Director of Auxiliary Activities, chief executive officer of the Museum Store Company, a gift store chain, and former Southold Town Board Member. This is a second marriage for both parties.

Wendell Wallach, her brother, is a lecturer at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, and chair of the technology and ethics study group.

Works Books Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away Reflections of Nature: Paintings by Joseph Raffael' Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt Louise Bourgeois

Films Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine with Marion Cajori. Taking Venice, world premiere at the Rome International Film Festival in 2023.

In 2006, Wallach won a "Best Show in a Temporary or Alternative Space" award for her exhibition Neo-Sincerity: The Difference Between the Comic and the Cosmic Is a Single Letter, from the International Art Critics Association/USA.