Calvin Tomkins

Calvin Tomkins II (December 17, 1925 – March 20, 2026) was an American author and art critic for The New Yorker magazine.

Life and career Calvin Tomkins II was born in Orange, New Jersey, on December 17, 1925. His father, Frederick, served in World War I as an instructor in the Army Air Service and then ran the family's Newark Plaster Company. His mother, Laura (née Graves), was a homemaker who raised Calvin and his older brother Fred in West Orange's Llewellyn Park, which according to him was "considered the first gated community in America".

After graduating from Berkshire School, Tomkins attended Princeton University, graduating in 1948. He then became a journalist and worked for Radio Free Europe from 1953 to 1957 and for Newsweek from 1957 to 1961.

His first published contribution to The New Yorker was a fictional piece that appeared in 1958. In 1960, he joined the magazine as a staff writer. His earliest writing for the magazine consisted largely of short humor pieces. His first piece of nonfiction for the magazine was a profile of Jean Tinguely that appeared in 1962.

On the eve of his 100th birthday, Tomkins published diary entries from the preceding year in The New Yorker, in which he revealed that his grandfather was John Temple Graves, William Randolph Hearst's running mate in his 1908 campaign for president as the Independence Party nominee. Tomkins wrote that he had learned from W. J. Cash's book The Mind of the South that Graves, who died before Tomkins was born, "had been an outspoken racist and was largely responsible for inciting the great Atlanta race riot of 1906". and died at his home in Middletown, Rhode Island, after a stroke, on March 20, 2026.