Mildred Constantine

Mildred Constantine Bettelheim (June 28, 1913 – December 10, 2008) was an American curator who helped bring attention to the posters and other graphic design in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in the 1950s and 1960s

Biography Constantine (she used her maiden name professionally) was born on June 28, 1913 in Brooklyn, New York. She received bachelor's and master's degrees from New York University and attended the graduate school of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Critic Hilton Kramer's review in The Times, described the exhibit as consisting of 300 posters from the period from 1879 to 1967, chosen by Constantine based on their "esthetic merit", though Kramer felt that the exhibit could not explain the late-1960s poster fad whose psychedelic designs he believed were no match for the graphic masterpieces of earlier days.

Constantine died at age 95 on December 10, 2008, of heart failure in her home in Nyack, New York.

Textiles Constantine also curated and wrote about textiles. Along with Jack Lenor Larsen, Constantine curated wall hangings that toured 11 cities from 1968 to 1969 and wrote Beyond Craft: The Art Fabric in 1973.

In 1972, Mildred Constantine reproduced Alice Adams's 1966 Construction in her book Beyond Craft. She wrote the book in conjunction with Jack Lenor Larsen which was the first in-depth look of the emergent fiber art movement. This text spoke about how fiber art evolved, defined its aesthetic intentions, and defended work made of fiber as "fine art".

Following her 1971 departure from the Museum of Modern Art, she produced exhibitions and books on the subjects of caricature, cartoons, decorative arts and photography, and also curated the 1988 Frontiers in Fiber: The Americans, and the 2002 exhibit Small Works in Fiber, both of which drew attention to textile and fiber art

Author

Constantine wrote or co-wrote many books on fiber arts and other subjects:.

1960 Art Nouveau: Art and Design at the Turn of the Century, editor (with Peter Selz) 1969 Word And Image: Posters from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art (with Alan M. Fern) 1973 Beyond Craft: The Art of Fabric (with Jack Lenor Larsen) 1974 Revolutionary Soviet Film Posters 1981 Art Fabric: Mainstream 1983 Tina Modotti: A Fragile Life 1986 The Art Fabric: Mainstream 1997 Whole Cloth 1999 25 for the 25th: Glancing Back, Gazing Ahead (with Lloyd Cotsen, Jack Lenor Larsen and Patricia Mal) 2000 Theo Leffmann (with Mary Jane Jacob, Theo Leffmann and David Mickenberg) 2004 Jack Lenor Larsen: Creator and Collector (with David Revere McFadden)