Dorothy Adlow | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | June 7, 1901 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | January 11, 1964 (aged 62) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Education | Radcliffe College |
| Occupation | Art critic |
| Spouse | Nicolas Slonimsky |
| Children | Electra Slonimsky Yourke |
Dorothy Adlow (1901-1964) was a nationally known art critic and lecturer from Boston. [1]
She was born in Boston on June 7, 1901, to Jewish immigrant parents. Her father, Nathan Adlow, emigrated as a youth from Kazarez, Poland, and opened a furniture store in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. Her mother, Bessie (Bravman) Adlow, was born in Dauge, Lithuania. [2] Her brother, Elijah Adlow, eventually became chief justice of the Boston Municipal Court. [1]
Dorothy grew up in Roxbury and attended Girls' Latin School. At her mother's urging, and despite her father's warnings that "if she gets too educated, she'll never marry," she went on to earn a bachelor's and a master's degree from Radcliffe College, graduating in 1923. [2]
After college, Adlow worked briefly for the Boston Evening Transcript before beginning a 41-year career as an art critic for The Christian Science Monitor . She was the only member of the staff who was not a Christian Scientist. [2] By her mid-twenties, she had achieved a remarkable level of independence and professional success for a young woman of her time. [2]
To supplement her income, Adlow traveled widely, lecturing at colleges and museums and serving as an art juror. In 1930 she lectured at the Carnegie International exhibit series in Pittsburgh, the first woman to do so. She also appeared frequently on television programs produced by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, [3] and taught at the Katharine Gibbs School. [1]
Adlow was Boston's leading art critic during the 1940s, when the city's art scene changed dramatically. She regularly attended exhibitions at the Museum School and discussed the students' work with Karl Zerbe. [4] Jean Gibran, wife of the artist Kahlil Gibran, names Adlow in her memoir as one of those who contributed to the "flowering" of Boston Expressionism. [5]
In 1931, at the age of 30, Adlow married composer-conductor Nicolas Slonimsky. She kept her maiden name and continued working, providing a small, but steady income for the household while her husband's fortunes fluctuated. [2] Her daughter, Electra, was born in 1933. [3]
Adlow corresponded frequently with her husband, who traveled a great deal. She carefully saved his letters, but her letters to him have been lost. Her daughter published a posthumous collection of Slonimsky's letters titled Dear Dorothy: Letters from Nicolas Slonimsky to Dorothy Adlow (University of Rochester Press, 2012). [2]
She died of a heart attack on January 11, 1964, at her home on Beacon Street in Boston, aged 62. [1]
A room is named in her honor at Hilles Library, Radcliffe College. [3]
Nicolas Slonimsky, born Nikolai Leonidovich Slonimskiy, was a Russian-born American conductor, author, pianist, composer and lexicographer. Best known for his writing and musical reference work, he wrote the Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns and the Lexicon of Musical Invective, and edited Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians.
Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and held the popular reputation of having a particularly intellectual, literary, and independent-minded female student body.
Nikolai Minsky and Nikolai Maksimovich Minsky are pseudonyms of Nikolai Maksimovich Vilenkin, a mystical writer and poet of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.
Philinda Parsons Rand Anglemyer (1876–1972) was an American English-language teacher in the Philippines. She was among the pioneering five hundred Thomasites who landed on the shores of the Philippines in August 1901 on board the United States Army Transport Thomas.
Melnea Agnes Cass was an American community and civil rights activist. She was deeply involved in many community projects and volunteer groups in the South End and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston and helped found the Boston local of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. She was active in the fight to desegregate Boston public schools, as a board member and as president of the Boston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As a young woman, Cass also assisted women with voter registration after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. She was affectionately known as the "First Lady of Roxbury."
The New England Hospital for Women and Children was founded by Marie Zakrzewska on July 1, 1862. The Hospitals goal was to provide patients with competent female physicians, educate women in the study of medicine and train nurses to care for the sick. Until 1951 the hospital remained dedicated to women, it was then renamed to New England Hospital to include male patients. The hospital was renamed again to The Dimock Community Health Center in 1969. At present The Dimock Community Health Center provides a range of healthcare services including Adult & Pediatric Primary Care, Women's Healthcare and HIV/AIDS Specialty Care.
Kahlil G. Gibran, sometimes known as "Kahlil George Gibran", was a Lebanese American painter and sculptor from Boston, Massachusetts. A student of the painter Karl Zerbe at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gibran first received acclaim as a magic realist painter in the late 1940s when he exhibited with other emerging artists later known as the "Boston Expressionists". Called a "master of materials", as both artist and restorer, Gibran turned to sculpture in the mid-fifties. In 1972, in an effort to separate his identity from his famous relative and namesake, the author of The Prophet, Gibran Kahlil Gibran, who was cousin both to his father Nicholas Gibran and his mother Rose Gibran, the sculptor co-authored with his wife Jean a biography of the poet entitled Kahlil Gibran His Life And World. Gibran is known for multiple skills, including painting; wood, wax, and stone carving; welding; and instrument making.
Sarah de St. Prix Wyman Whitman (1842–1904) was an American stained glass artist, painter, and book cover designer. Successful at a time when few women had professional art careers, she founded her own firm, Lily Glass Works. Her stained glass windows are found in churches and colleges throughout the northeastern United States. As a member of the board of the Harvard University "Annex," she helped to found Radcliffe College.
Muriel Sutherland Snowden was the founder and co-director of Freedom House, a community improvement center in Roxbury, Massachusetts. She is, together with her husband Otto P. Snowden, a major figure in Boston history and activism.
Linda S. Wilson is an American academic administrator.
Dorothy McCullough Lee was an American politician and attorney in the U.S. state of Oregon. She was the first female mayor of Portland, Oregon; she also served in the Oregon Legislative Assembly, on the Multnomah County Commission, and on the United States Parole Commission.
Boston Expressionism is an arts movement marked by emotional directness, dark humor, social and spiritual themes, and a tendency toward figuration strong enough that Boston Figurative Expressionism is sometimes used as an alternate term to distinguish it from abstract expressionism, with which it overlapped.
Lucy Miller Mitchell was an early childhood education specialist and community activist from Boston who was instrumental in getting the state to regulate day care centers. She is credited with modernizing the day care system in Massachusetts.
Denison House was a woman-run settlement house in Boston's old South Cove neighborhood. Founded in 1892 by the College Settlements Association, it provided a variety of social and educational services to neighborhood residents, most of whom were immigrants. Several notable women worked there, including Nobel Prize winner Emily Greene Balch, labor organizer Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, and pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart. The original site at 93 Tyler Street is a stop on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
Ellen Swepson Jackson was an American educator and activist. She is best known for founding Operation Exodus, a program that bused students from overcrowded, predominantly black Boston schools to less crowded, predominantly white schools in the 1960s. The program paved the way for the desegregation of Boston's public schools.
Yulia Slonimskaya Sazonova was a Russian-born writer, theater critic and historian, actress, and puppeteer. Fleeing Russia after the October Revolution, she moved to France and continued her craft. She wrote and performed marionette shows in Europe and was one of the most prolific women dance and theater critics of the first half of the twentieth century. When World War II broke out, she moved to Portugal and later the United States, before returning to Paris.
Elijah Adlow was an American lawyer, politician, jurist, author and the Chief Justice of the Municipal Court of the City of Boston, now known as the Boston Municipal Court Department, serving in that capacity from 1954 to 1973. Prior to that he was a Special Justice and Associate Justice of the court, starting in 1928.
Hannah Sabbagh Shakir (1895-1990) was a Lebanese-American businesswoman who co-founded the Lebanese-Syrian Ladies' Aid Society of Boston with 13 other Syrian women, including; Adele Ashook, Adelle Shayab, Rose Handy, Sady Besharra and others. The first President was Sadie Abdelnour. The Society's fundraising events made it a center of social life for Boston's Arabic-speaking community for many years. Shakir was also an entrepreneur who went from working in a factory to owning a successful clothing factory. She is remembered on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
Georgia Shuset Litwack was born in January 27 in Pennslyvania. She was an American photographer and photojournalist, best known for her portraits of notable women in the arts, science and technology.
Zinaida Vengerova was a Russian literary critic and translator. She is considered one of the few women who were highly educated during her time, having studied in universities in Russia, France, and England. For her works, she had been described as "a literary ambassador between East and West". She also influenced the first generation of Russian symbolists through her writings about French symbolism.
