2026-04-09
Kynaston McShine, one of the greatest curators of all time has died on 8th January 2018. Kynaston McShine had a career that spanned more than 50 years.
McShine was born in 1935 in Trinidad and received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Dartmouth College in 1958. After that he decided to undertake graduate studies at the University of Michigan and, at the same time, he joined MoMA’s department of circulating exhibitions. In 1965, he joined the group of curators of the Jewish Museum where he became curator of painting and sculpture and organized an exhibition called ‘’Primary Structures” which is known as the first major presentation of Minimalism movement in the USA (the show featured works made by over 40 artists, e.g. Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Donald Judd). Three years later he organized a huge Yves Klein’s retrospective and not long after that MoMA hired him back as associate curator of painting and sculpture; he later was promoted and worked as a chief curator and retired in 2008.
McShine, during his fifty-year career, organized many exhibitions showing international artists who experimented in different ways and tried to find new ways of understanding art. As Andrew Russeth said: "His death at the age of 82 brings to a close one of the great, essential curatorial careers of the postwar era.”