28 Facts About Barbara Rose

Barbara Ellen Rose was an American art historian, art critic, curator and college professor.

Barbara Rose wrote a widely used textbook, American Art Since 1900: A Critical History.

Barbara Ellen Rose was born on June 11,1936, in a Jewish family in Washington, DC to Lillian Rose and Ben Rose.

Barbara Rose's father owned a liquor store, and her mother was a homemaker.

Barbara Rose graduated from Calvin Coolidge High School in the Takoma neighborhood of Washington DC.

Barbara Rose completed her graduate studies at Columbia University, studying with Meyer Schapiro, Julius S Held, and Rudolf Wittkower, and started work on a PhD, but did not complete it.

Barbara Rose was eventually awarded a PhD in history of art by Columbia in 1984.

Barbara Rose later noted that formalist art historian Michael Fried suggested she begin writing as a critic.

Barbara Rose is credited with popularizing the term Neo-Dada in the early 1960s; Harrison notes that Barbara Rose's 1963 publication describing pop art as "neo-Dada" was her "entry into the field of contemporary American art criticism".

Barbara Rose soon argued that formalist criticism was inadequate to then-contemporary art.

Barbara Rose observed in a 1966 article that formalism, while appropriate for analysis of Cubism, was not as useful as a critical lens on abstract expressionism and other movements of the later 20th century.

Barbara Rose wrote the textbook American Art Since 1900: A Critical History, which became standard in campuses in the 1970s.

Barbara Rose later worked as an instructor at a New York City correctional facility.

Barbara Rose served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Art.

From 1981 until 1985, Barbara Rose was a senior curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she curated shows including Miro in America and Fernand Leger and the Modern Spirit: An Avant-Garde Alternative to Non-Objective Art, both in 1982.

Barbara Rose frequently wrote on Krasner's work, describing her as "one of the seminal forces among the Abstract Expressionists"; in a 1977 article entitled "Lee Krasner and the Origins of Abstract Expressionism", she argued that Krasner had been unjustly overlooked by critics.

Barbara Rose's books include over twenty monographs about artists; many of these were about women, including Helen Frankenthaler, and she wrote on Nancy Graves, Beverly Pepper and Niki de Saint Phalle.

Barbara Rose taught art history at Sarah Lawrence College and was a visiting lecturer at Yale University and Hunter College ; she taught at University of California, Irvine and University of California, San Diego, where she was Regent's Professor.

Barbara Rose wrote North Star: Mark di Suvero, a documentary film about the sculptor Mark di Suvero.

In October 1965, Barbara Rose published the essay "ABC Art" in Art in America, in which she describes the fundamental characteristics of what was later known as minimal art.

Barbara Rose regarded Ad Reinhardt as a progenitor of minimalism, and not a minimalist proper.

In examining the historical roots of minimal art in 1960s America, Barbara Rose drew a distinction between Malevich's "search for the transcendental, universal, absolute" and Duchamp's "blanket denial of the existence of absolute values".

Barbara Rose further argued in "ABC Art" that minimalist sculpture was at its best when it was inhospitable to its audience: "difficult, hostile, awkward and oversize".

Barbara Rose grouped some 1960s artists as closer to Malevich, some as closer to Duchamp, and some as between the two; she argued that the work of some minimalists constituted a "synthesis" of Malevich and Duchamp.

Barbara Rose's conclusion was that minimal art is both transcendental and negative:.

In October 1961 in London, Barbara Rose married the artist Frank Stella; they had two children and divorced in 1969.

Barbara Rose married the lyricist Jerry Leiber in Rome, and the two returned to the US to live in Greenwich Village.

Barbara Rose died from breast cancer on December 25,2020, under hospice care in Concord, New Hampshire.