Frank O’Hara and MoMA

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents Frank O'Hara and MoMA by Matthew Holman, read by Jeff Harding

This is the first book to closely examine the curatorial work that the celebrated poet Frank O’Hara (1926-1966) undertook for the Museum of Modern Art in New York and abroad.

Upon his premature death, the New York Times obituary ran with the headline: ‘Frank O’Hara, 40, Museum Curator / Exhibitions Aide at Modern Art Dies – Also a Poet’. However, in the half a century since, O’Hara’s fascinating career as a curator, where he oversaw exhibitions of the likes of Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, David Smith, and Larry Rivers, among others, has been eclipsed by the critical attention given over to his poetry. Drawing on a broad range of unpublished archival material, the book reveals the impact O’Hara’s curatorial work had both on the reception of American modern art abroad and on the curatorial profession itself.

It focuses on his travelling exhibitions for MoMA’s International Program, a vehicle for soft power during the fraught years of the cultural Cold War, exposing him to new art, artists, and cities, while developing important transnational networks far from New York, from Madrid to Venice, Zagreb to Otterlo.

Bringing together close readings of O’Hara’s poems and unpublished letters with a selection of archival illustrations, Holman argues for O’Hara’s sense of exuberant continuity between life as a writer and a curator, an American and a cosmopolitan – revealing that he was so much more besides the quintessential New York poet. It is perfect reading for anyone interested in American art in the mid-20th century, curatorial and museum studies, or simply this lesser known but fascinating aspect of the legendary poet’s career.

Critics Review

Matthew Holman’s exhaustively researched and methodically written book, Frank O’Hara: New York Poet, Global Curator, manages to be a superlative biography, not only of this gifted poet, but also a revealing memoir of the heady times in which he lived, a detailed chronicle of the city he so loved, and a tender portrait of the important Museum of Modern Art that many people, myself included at first, did not realize counted him among its most effective ambassadors of contemporary visual art.
Embodied Meanings: The Brackett Newsletter
An extraordinary achievement. In thrilling prose that moves effortlessly between art history, literary criticism, and biography, Matthew Holman surveys the full scope of Frank O’Hara’s achievement as a curator. This book fills a crucial gap in the scholarship of 20th-century art.
Saul Nelson, author of Never Ending: Modernist Painting Past and Future (2024)
Although Holman writes (to our immediate joy) less like an academic than a good novelist, his conjuring of a formative American cultural moment is assiduously researched. It helps that his subject, Frank O’Hara, had an amphetaminate personality and contagious passions.
Forrest Gander
Holman brilliantly asks new aesthetic, historical and ethical questions about the status of O’Hara’s multifarious curatorial practice. Though written with a scholarly rigour that illuminates junctures between art historical scholarship and literary criticism, Holman’s richly researched and highly enjoyable book will reward any reader interested in interactions between art and poetry in the mid-20th century.
Rebecca Birrell, author of This Dark Country: Women Artists, Still Life and Intimacy in the Early Twentieth Century (2021)
A fascinating account of Cold War diplomacy, seen through the artworks and paperwork crossing the desk of the 20th century’s greatest courtier-poet. Holman adjusts the set for future studies of O’Hara, seeing his influence on the walls of galleries across Europe and South America, as well as Manhattan.
Sam Ladkin, author of Frank O'Hara's New York School and Mid-Century Mannerism (2024)
Matthew Holman is a writer who shares Frank O'Hara's protean talents, delving into the poet's many selves. He reveals how O'Hara used the museum bureaucracy to forge dizzy new vocations: Cold Warrior for American abstract art, and the leading art critic of his generation.
Benita Eisler

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