Susan Landauer

Susan Landauer (1958–2020) was an American art historian, author, and curator of modern and contemporary art based in California. She worked for three decades, both independently and as chief curator of the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA) and co-founder of the San Francisco Center for the Book. Landauer was known for championing movements and idioms of California art, overlooked artists of the past, women artists, and artists of color. "Visual Politics: The Art of Engagement" (SJMA, 2006), and retrospectives of Elmer Bischoff, Roy De Forest (both at the Oakland Museum of California, 2001 and 2017, respectively), and Franklin Williams (2017, Museum of Sonoma County). Her work was recognized with awards and grants from the International Association of Art Critics, National Endowment for the Arts and Henry Luce Foundation, among others. Critics, including Roberta Smith and Christopher Knight, praised her scholarship on San Francisco Abstract Expressionism, De Forest, Richard Diebenkorn, and Bernice Bing, among others, as pioneering. In 2021, Art in America editor and curator Michael Duncan said that "no other scholar has contributed as much to the study of California art". As a child, she was bused to Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in the first year of court-ordered desegregation, attended Berkeley High School, and later graduated from University of California, Berkeley with an art history degree with an emphasis on Chinese and Japanese art in 1982. They married in 1986 and moved to Oakland in 1991. In 1999 she was named chief curator at the San Jose Museum of Art, where she remained until 2009. Her exhibitions and writing often juxtaposed famous and lesser-known artists, establishing dialogues, interrelationships, and insights that served as correctives to dominant art historical narratives that left out significant figures, social groups, and regions. Early exhibitions included "Edward Corbett: A Retrospective" (Richmond Art Center, Laguna Art Museum, 1991), which reintroduced audiences to a onetime Bay Area Abstract Expressionist luminary, and "Paper Trails: San Francisco Abstract Expressionist Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors," the inaugural exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. In 1995, she co-curated "Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890–1945" at the Autry Museum, contributing an essay on women artists of Northern California to the show's companion book.

She gained widespread attention for "The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism" (Laguna Art Museum, SFMOMA; 1996), which was based on her Yale dissertation and won a regional museum show award from the International Art Critics Association. Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight called the exhibition catalogue a "little bombshell" that "demolished for good the old canard that Abstract Expressionism began in New York and radiated outward across the country". Artforum'''s Peter Plagens described the show as beautiful and concise, while noting as "discoveries" artists such as Walter Kuhlman, Frank Lobdell, and Charles Strong.

In the latter 1990s, Landauer organized shows at the intersection of fine arts and book arts for the San Francisco Center for the Book. These included "The Pages of Sin: Beat-Era Book Arts, Ephemera, and Portraits by Harry Redl" (1996), "Flashback: A Psychedelic Exhibition" (1997) and "Breaking Type: The Art of Karl Kasten" (1999). "Pages of Sin" highlighted the work of the lesser-known Venice Beach scene artists, as well as others, such as William Everson, Bern Porter, and Kenneth Patchen; "Flashback" centered on book art, posters, paintings, and ephemera (e.g., printed LSD blotter paper) inspired by rock music and hallucinatory drugs in conjunction with the 30th anniversary of the Summer of Love and included work by Bay Area-based designers Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, and Wes Wilson.

San Jose Museum of Art (1999-2009) As the Katie and Drew Gibson Chief Curator at the relatively young San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA), Landauer was given license to organize creative exhibitions, including "random encounters" with interspersed emerging-artist work, as well as historical and themed shows. She continued to champion California work, while widening her scope to include underrepresented groups, idioms, and riskier sociopolitical themes, which in part reflected the community's entrepreneurial spirit, independent thought, and openness.

Her inaugural exhibition, "The Lighter Side of Bay Area Figuration" (2000, co-presented by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art), explored humor in post-World War II, Northern-California art. It featured works from Funk artists Robert Arneson and William T. Wiley and satirists Robert Colescott and M. Louise Stanley, among others, highlighting the region's freedom from New York critical orthodoxy.

Landauer organized several shows exploring Latinx themes and artists, such as "Contemporary Devotion" (2001), which paired well-known and emerging artists working in a magic realist vein influenced by the Mexican retablo tradition (e.g., Manuel Ocampo, Elizabeth Gomez, Tino Rodríguez); it was presented in conjunction with a traveling show of retablos from the New Mexico State University collection. She also curated Rodríguez's first solo exhibition (2003) and one for Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo (2003).

Two exhibitions (and accompanying catalogues) focused on the edgy, contemporary work of Los Angeles's underground Lowbrow art movement, which combines pop-culture iconography, surrealism, and social commentary: "Tragic Kingdom: The Art of Camille Rose Garcia" (2007) and "Todd Schorr: American Surreal" (2009). Two themed group exhibitions were more overtly political: "Disarming Parables" featured works commenting on war on the eve of the U.S. Gulf War, while "Visual Politics: The Art of Engagement" (2006) offered a wide-ranging survey of West Coast art that Landauer described as "breathing new life into the iconography of protest." The latter show was accompanied by a book by Peter Selz to which Landauer contributed the essay, "Countering Cultures: The California Context."

Independent curating and writing (2002–21) Much of Landauer's later writing focused on under-appreciated women artists, including catalogue essays for the exhibitions "The Dual Worlds of Bernice Bing" (Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, 2019) and "Women of Abstract Expressionism" (Denver Art Museum, 2016), and the catalogue, Her View: The Bay Area Figuration of Gail Chadell Nanao (2018, Sonoma Valley Museum of Art). She also contributed essays to catalogues on Richard Diebenkorn, Guy Diehl, and John Paul Jones, among others.

Her major curated exhibitions after leaving SJMA include the retrospective "Of Dogs and Other People: The Art of Roy De Forest" (OCMA, 2017), "Eye Fruit: The Art of Franklin Williams" (Art Museum of Sonoma County, 2017), and "Painting the Face of Infinity: Matthew Barnes and the World of Night" (Oceanside Museum of Art, Monterey Museum of Art, 2019). The De Forest show took on an under-recognized contrarian from the funk milieu of the late 1950s who Landauer appreciated since childhood and set out to vindicate. Roberta Smith described its catalogue as a "vivid, informed account" detailing his sophistication and wide-ranging knowledge of art history and native cultures. Eye Fruit: The Art of Franklin Williams, Santa Rosa, CA: Art Museum of Sonoma County, 2017. (with Petra Giloy-Hirtz and Paul J. Karlstrom). Hassel Smith: Paintings, 1937-1997, Munich/New York: Prestel Verlag/Random House, 2011. (with Sarah Bancroft and Peter Levitt). Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series, Munich/Newport Beach, CA: Prestel Verlag/Orange County Museum of Art, 2011. (with Mike McGee). John Paul Jones: The Pursuit of Beauty's Perfect Proof, Fullerton, CA: California State University Fullerton, 2009. Elmer Bischoff: The Ethics of Paint, Berkeley/Oakland, CA: University of California Press/Oakland Museum, 2001. The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism, Berkeley/Laguna Beach, CA: University of California Press/Laguna Art Museum, 1996. Edward Corbett: A Retrospective, Richmond, CA: Richmond Art Center, 1990.

Essays "The Dual Worlds of Bernice Bing," in Bingo: The Life and Art of Bernice Bing, by Jennifer Banta, Linda Keaton and Susan Landauer, Sonoma, CA: Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, 2019. "The Advantages of Obscurity: Women Abstract Expressionists in San Francisco," in Women of Abstract Expressionism, Joan Marter (ed.), New Haven, CT/Denver, CO: Yale University Press/Denver Art Museum, 2016. (with Carl Landauer). "Open Eye, Open Palette: The Art of Lawrence Ferlinghetti," Confrontation, Spring 2015. "Countering Cultures: The California Context," in Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond, Peter Selz (ed.), Berkeley/San Jose, CA: University of California Press/San Jose Museum of Art, 2005. "Clyfford Still and Abstract Expressionism in San Francisco," in Clyfford Still: The Buffalo and San Francisco Collections'', Thomas Kellein (ed.), Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1992.