Dorothy Adlow | |
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| 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 . 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 musicologist, conductor, pianist, and composer. 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.
Gibran Khalil Gibran, usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist; he was also considered a philosopher, although he himself rejected the title. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages.
Corita Kent, born Frances Elizabeth Kent and also known as Sister Mary Corita Kent, was an American artist, designer and educator, and former religious sister. Key themes in her work included Christianity, and social justice. She was also a teacher at the Immaculate Heart College.
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.
Josephine Preston Peabody was an American poet and dramatist.
Boston Latin Academy (BLA) is a public exam school founded in 1878 in Boston, Massachusetts providing students in grades 7th through 12th a classical preparatory education.
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.
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 on the Oregon Legislative Assembly, on the Multnomah County Commission, and on the United States Parole Commission.
Maud Wood Park was an American suffragist and women's rights activist.
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.
Joyce Reopel (1933–2019) was an American painter, draughtswoman and sculptor who worked in pencil, aquatint, silver- and goldpoint, and an array of old master media. A Boris Mirski Gallery veteran, from 1959 to 1966, she was known for her refined skills and virtuosity. She was also one of very few women in the early group of Boston artists that included fellow artist and husband Mel Zabarsky,, , ], and others who helped overcome Boston's conservative distaste for the avant-garde, occasionally female, and often Jewish artists later classified as Boston expressionists. Unique to New England, Boston Expressionism has had lasting local and national influence, and is now in its third generation.
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.
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