Art historian Robert Storr bequeathed the majority of his massive personal archive to Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies. The giveaway, described by CCS Bard executive director Tom Eccles as “game-changing,” includes more than 25,000 volumes. Among them are books on art history, criticism, theory and literature of the 20th century, as well as artist monographs, rare periodicals and out-of-print exhibition catalogs from major international museums and galleries. . Also included are Storr’s personal papers, works by major artists from his own collection, and a number of studies given to him during his career by various artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Yto Barrada, Leon Golub , Jenny Holzer, Gerhard Richter and Rachel Whiteread.
“My goal in imparting these materials is to provide students with pieces of the puzzle that they are unlikely to find in standard modern and contemporary art texts or online,” Storr said. “I hope to connect them physically and conceptually to the multiplicity of artistic tendencies, discourses, situations and scenes that they will need to know and be comfortable with when making decisions about the vital cosmopolitan reality and controversy they will be responsible for. Libraries are worlds but never worlds in themselves. They only have meaning if they are used as starting points for new explorations.
Storr was curator at the Museum of Modern Art from 1990 to 2002. In 2007, he became the first American to curate the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. He served as Dean of the Yale University School of Art from 2006 to 2016. His donation to CCS Bard is intended to honor his longstanding relationship with the school, which began in the 1980s when he was a professor of painting Milton Avery at Bard College. Store was a faculty member from 1999 to 2008 and over the years has served as thesis supervisor and member of the CCS Bard Graduate Committee.
“[Storr’s gift] expands the historical periods represented in our collections to include the early 20th century, creating a broader context for the research and innovation generated by the CCS Bard graduate program,” said Eccles, who is also the founding director from the Hessel Museum of Art. “We thank Robert for his generosity in donating his collection, so that it may serve as a living resource for current and future generations of conservative leaders.”
