In Memoriam: Robert C. Morgan, international art critic, dies at 81

 Late critic and artist Robert C. Morgan
 

By RICHARD VINE October 27, 2024

Robert C. Morgan, internationally noted art critic, artist, curator, and art historian, died at age 81 on October 23, 2024, after a long battle with amyloidosis.

The author of countless reviews, essays, and artist monographs, Morgan was best known for his modern art lectures and a score of intellectually passionate books, including his admonitory The End of the Art World (1998). He was an unflinching advocate for art as a unique category of human endeavor, distinct from its secondary entanglements in culture, politics, psychology, and commerce.

Born in Boston and raised by his single mother and grandparents, primarily in Southern California, Morgan graduated from the University of Redlands, completed an MFA at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and moved to New York City in 1975. Painter Robert Motherwell advised the academically inclined young artist, who was then doing performances, schematic motion studies, and experimental films, to avoid teaching studio art for a livelihood. Morgan instead earned a PhD in art education from New York University in 1978. His dissertation was the first in the U.S. to examine Conceptual Art. He interviewed the movement’s key figures, several of whom remained longtime friends, especially Allan Kaprow, Lawrence Weiner, and Robert Barry.

Over the years, Morgan taught modern art history and theory at Wichita State University, the University of Rochester, Barnard College, the Rochester Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Pratt Institute, and the School of Visual Arts. His scholarly awards included grants from the NEH and the Edward F. Albee Foundation, membership in the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and a Senior Fulbright Scholarship to the Republic of Korea. In 2016 Wayne State University acquired his personal archive of letters and other materials related to the Conceptual Art movement. 

In the late 1960s, Morgan studied with Japanese ink master Kongo Abe and produced “Living Smoke and Clearwater Drawings” (1969), a series of fluidly stylized representational ink renderings. He later switched to making mid-sized geometric abstractions in acrylic on canvas, shown in such venues as Proyectos Monclova in Mexico City, Shilla Gallery in Seoul, and David Richard Gallery and Sean Scully’s nonprofit 447 Space, both in New York. Combining rectilinear forms in reflective and light-absorptive pigments, the works create a “third space” for the viewer’s contemplation.

Morgan also worked briefly as director of the Nahan Contemporary Gallery and independently curated exhibitions at the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, and the Chelsea Art Museum, the Heidi Neuhoff Gallery, the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, Van Doren Waxter Gallery, Holly Solomon Gallery, Thread Waxing Space, and China Square Gallery, all in New York. In addition, he consulted with the Art Omi residency program, the Venice Biennale (1999), and the Lodz Biennale (2010). Among the artists exhibited in these shows were John McLaughlin, Bill Jensen, Cy Twombly, Franz Kline, Frank Stella, Enrique Chagoya, Gu Wenda, Dorothea Tanning, Antoni Muntadas, Yoko Ono, Komar & Melamid, Carolee Schneemann, and Vito Acconci.

An adamant globalist, Morgan wrote early and often on artists from Korea, Indonesia, China, Brazil, Iran, and other locales once considered “peripheral” to the contemporary art scene. He traveled continually, speaking to audiences worldwide, at venues ranging from alternative spaces to major universities and museums to, in 2002, the British House of Commons. He often participated in panels with international figures such as Ingrid Sischy, Dan Cameron, Donald Kuspit, Arthur Danto, and Pierre Restany. He also served as New York editor for Asian Art News and World Sculpture News, both headquartered in Hong Kong. His very last book was a study of contemporary Chinese ink painters.

Morgan wrote steadily for periodicals like Brooklyn Rail, Art News, Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic, Whitehot, Art Press, and International Art Criticism. He edited and introduced the later writings of Clement Greenberg, whom he counted as a friend, and authored monographic volumes on Bruce Nauman, Bernar Venet, Victor Vasarely, Gary Hill, and others. His theoretical books—especially After the Deluge: Essays for Art in the Nineties (1993), Art into Ideas: Essays on Conceptual Art (1996), and The End of the Art World —argued passionately for art-making and art appreciation as self-sufficient aesthetic experiences.

Morgan is survived by his wife, curator and university adjunct Soojung Hyun, his children Sarah Kahlon and Charles Morgan, and two granddaughters. A memorial service will be held in New York in the near future. WM