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| Peter Selz | |
|---|---|
| Name | Peter Selz |
| Birth date | July 21, 1919 |
| Birth place | Mannheim, Germany |
| Death date | February 2, 2019 |
| Death place | Berkeley, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Curator, historian, writer, professor |
| Known for | Curatorship at Museum of Modern Art, University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive |
Peter Selz was a German-born American curator, historian, critic, and educator who shaped postwar modern and contemporary art in the United States. He directed influential exhibitions and built collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Jewish Museum, the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and assisted in major retrospectives of European and American artists. Selz's scholarship and curatorial practice linked figures across Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, and Arte Povera while fostering ties to institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Gallery, and Centre Pompidou.
Selz was born in Mannheim in the German state of Baden-Württemberg and emigrated to the United States in the 1930s to escape Nazi persecution, joining a diaspora that included figures associated with Exile literature and the European émigré art world in New York City and San Francisco. He studied at the University of Chicago and later undertook postgraduate work connected to research communities at institutions like the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and archival holdings comparable to those at the Library of Congress and the Getty Research Institute. His early contacts included émigré collectors and curators linked to the networks of Alfred H. Barr Jr., James Sweeney, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, and fellow émigrés at the Alfred Stieglitz circle.
Selz began a museum career shaped by positions at leading American institutions, collaborating with curators at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art before becoming director at the Jewish Museum in New York City and later at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). His tenure at BAMPFA linked the museum to academic departments such as the University of California, Berkeley Department of History of Art and to regional collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. He organized loan programs with European collections at the Stedelijk Museum, Kunsthalle Basel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, and the Museum Ludwig. Selz forged institutional relationships with foundations like the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation while advising private collections including those of Peggy Guggenheim, Lawrence Weiner, and S. I. Newhouse.
A practitioner of critical writing, Selz published essays and catalogues in dialogue with critics and scholars such as Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, Rosalind Krauss, and Michael Fried. He authored monographs and exhibition catalogues on artists associated with Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, and later generations including John Chamberlain, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Joseph Beuys, Brice Marden, and Richard Diebenkorn. His critical voice engaged with art historical themes present in writings by Erwin Panofsky, T. J. Clark, and Linda Nochlin, and his essays appeared in catalogues produced for venues like the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
Selz curated groundbreaking exhibitions that brought European movements into conversation with American artists, mounting shows featuring Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and contemporaries such as David Smith and Alexander Calder. At BAMPFA he organized retrospectives and survey exhibitions that included works by Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Edvard Munch, Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, and Eva Hesse. He negotiated acquisitions and gifts that expanded museum holdings with works by Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Agnes Martin, Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, and Helen Frankenthaler, collaborating with donors associated with the Djerassi Foundation, Dia Art Foundation, and university benefactors such as Phoebe A. Hearst's legacy organizations. His loan exhibitions coordinated with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Walker Art Center, New Museum, and Seattle Art Museum.
Selz received recognition from professional bodies including the College Art Association, the American Alliance of Museums, and honors akin to awards given by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Fellowship program. His career was acknowledged through lifetime achievement acknowledgments from academic institutions such as the University of California system, honorary degrees linked to universities like the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and curated tributes staged at venues including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Berkeley Art Museum.
In retirement, Selz continued to write, lecture, and mentor scholars and curators connected to the networks of the Getty Conservation Institute, the Smithsonian Institution, and university museum programs across the University of California campuses and beyond. His archives, correspondence, and curatorial files were consulted by researchers at repositories comparable to the Baldwin Library, the Archives of American Art, and university special collections, influencing scholarship on twentieth-century art, museum studies, and exhibition history. Institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art preserve the traces of his influence through catalogues, acquisition histories, and the careers of curators who trained under him, ensuring his role in shaping postwar and contemporary art discourse remains part of the institutional record.
Category:Curators Category:German emigrants to the United States Category:American art historians