Trusted Eye

📖 The Scoop

"Trusted Eye is a biography including first-hand accounts from letters, diaries and photojournalism by Milwaukee-born Virginia Hammersmith Fontaine (1915-1991). There are chapters of excerpts of the letters of her years at Yale Art School including documents surrounding her not finishing after four years, and of her years working in a factory and a museum while her husband, artist Paul Fontaine (1913-1996), was at war. The letters and photographs of her years in Germany address her travels with gallerist Hanna Bekker vom Rath, her run-in with the Monuments Men, her translation work on Hans Hartung for Ottomar Domnick, and her travels with gallerist Chichio Haller. She wrote about witnessing Senator McCarthy's reach into Germany, and her attempts at finding official paid work. The letters show her efforts to exonerate the modern dancer Mary Wigman, her curatorial work for Gordon Gilkey, and her relationship with the General's wife, saving her marriage. The final section summarises her more quiet years in Mexico. The book also includes a chapter by the Museum of Wisconsin Art curator, Graeme Reid, "Wisconsin Art of the 1930s," describing the art milieu of Milwaukee in the 1930s, which provided a strong foundation for Virginia's life with the arts; as well as a chapter in German and English by Kunsthaus Dahlem Berlin museum director, Dorothea Schöne describing the art culture of early postwar Germany and Virginia's impact. Also included are photographs of some of the surviving German artists Virginia knew, an addendum of several letters in their original form describing the early travels finding the artists, and an index of prominent people she either photographed or wrote about in her letters, diaries, or who visited and had entries in the guestbooks"--

Genre: Art / General (fancy, right?)