Thomas S. Buechner

Last updated

Thomas Scharman Buechner (pronounced BEAK-ner; September 25, 1926 June 13, 2010) was an artist who turned to working at museums. After working for New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, he became the founding director of the Corning Museum of Glass, and later director of the Brooklyn Museum, where he oversaw a major transformation in its operation and displays, before returning to Corning.

Contents

Early life and education

Buechner was born in Manhattan on September 25, 1926. He was raised in Bronxville, New York and attended the Lawrenceville School in Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey. After completing high school, he was assigned to attend a training program at Princeton University as part of his service in the United States Navy. After completing his military service he spent a year working for the Puerto Rico tourism board so that he could learn the Spanish language. He came back to New York City, working as a night elevator operator at the Plaza Hotel while he studied at the Art Students League of New York. [1] He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and under M.M. van Dantzig in Amsterdam. [2]

Professional career

After studying painting in Europe, Buechner returned to the United States and took a position as an assistant manager at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a way to have a career in art without being an artist. [1]

In 1951, aged 25, he was named as the founding director of the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York which he created as a place where historic and modern glass works were displayed. Many of the exhibits he developed went on tour to other museums around the country. He also established the peer-reviewed Journal of Glass Studies , which covers the history of glassmaking to the mid-20th century, and New Glass Review , "an annual survey of glass in contemporary art, architecture, craft, and design". [1] [3] [4]

He was named as director of the Brooklyn Museum in 1960, making him, at 33, one of the youngest directors of a prominent museum in the country. [1] [5] There he oversaw a program in which the museum's storage and display standards were upgraded, and many of the thousand works that had been languishing in storage were placed on view to the public. A sculpture garden he created displayed such items as capitals from Louis Sullivan's Bayard-Condict Building. He rescued sculptures by Daniel Chester French representing Brooklyn and Manhattan which had sat at the Brooklyn plaza of the Manhattan Bridge and that were removed as part of construction on the bridge's approaches, and placed them at the entrance to the museum. [1] [6] Buechner requested that the city give the sculptures to the museum after they were threatened with destruction as part of a project to connect the bridge to expressways on either side of the East River. [7]

He was hired by Corning Glass in 1971, where he served as president of the firm's Steuben Glass division from 1973 to 1982, and headed the Glass Museum there from 1973 to 1980.

Later life and legacy

He retired from Corning in 1987 and devoted his time to painting, including a portrait of Alice Tully that is on display in the foyer of Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. [1] Lincoln Center had commissioned Buechner to paint the full-length portrait in honor of Tully's 85th birthday. [8]

Buechner died of lymphoma at age 83 on June 13, 2010, in his home in Corning, New York. He was survived by his wife, the former Mary Hawkins, as well as by a daughter, two sons and seven grandchildren. [1]

Buechner was second cousin of the writer William Zinsser. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Chester French</span> American sculptor (1850–1931)

Daniel Chester French was an American sculptor of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, best known for his 1874 sculpture The Minute Man in Concord, Massachusetts, and his 1920 monumental statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brooklyn Museum</span> Art museum in Brooklyn, New York

The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet (52,000 m2), the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Park Slope neighborhoods of Brooklyn, the museum's Beaux-Arts building was designed by McKim, Mead and White.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Stella</span> American painter

Joseph Stella was an Italian-born American Futurist painter best known for his depictions of industrial America, especially his images of the Brooklyn Bridge. He is also associated with the American Precisionist movement of the 1910s–1940s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewish Museum (Manhattan)</span> Art Museum in Manhattan, New York

The Jewish Museum is an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in the former Felix M. Warburg House, along Museum Mile on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The first Jewish museum in the United States, as well as the oldest existing Jewish museum in the world, it contains the largest collection of art and Jewish culture excluding Israeli museums, more than 30,000 objects. While its collection was established in 1904 at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the museum did not open to the public until 1947 when Felix Warburg's widow sold the property to the Seminary. It focuses both on artifacts of Jewish history and on modern and contemporary art. The museum's collection exhibition, Scenes from the Collection, is supplemented by multiple temporary exhibitions each year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kiki Smith</span> German-born American artist

Kiki Smith is a West German-born American artist whose work has addressed the themes of sex, birth and regeneration. Her figurative work of the late 1980s and early 1990s confronted subjects such as AIDS, feminism and gender, while recent works have depicted the human condition in relationship to nature. Smith lives and works in the Lower East Side, New York City, and the Hudson Valley, New York State.

William Knowlton Zinsser was an American writer, editor, literary critic, and teacher. He began his career as a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune, where he worked as a feature writer, drama editor, film critic and editorial writer. He was a longtime contributor to leading magazines.

Frederick Carder was a glassmaker, glass designer, and glass artist who was active in the glass industry in both England and the United States, notably for Stevens & Williams and Steuben, respectively. Known for his experimentation with form and color, Carder's work remains popular among collectors and can be found in numerous museum collections, including The Corning Museum of Glass, which houses the Frederick Carder Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts. He was born in Staffordshire, England, and died in Corning, New York, where he had made his home since 1903.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art</span> Art museum in Bentonville, Arkansas

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a museum of American art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum, founded by Alice Walton and designed by Moshe Safdie, officially opened on 11 November 2011. It offers free public admission.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Tully</span> American opera singer

Alice Bigelow Tully was an American singer of opera and recital, music promoter, patron of the arts and philanthropist from New York. She was a second cousin of the American actress Katharine Hepburn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corning Museum of Glass</span> Glass museum in Corning, New York state, US

The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning, New York in the United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Glass Works and currently has a collection of more than 50,000 glass objects, some over 3,500 years old.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Paley</span> American modernist metal sculptor

Albert Paley is an American modernist metal sculptor. Initially starting out as a jeweler, Paley has become one of the most distinguished and influential metalsmiths in the world. Within each of his works, three foundational elements stay true: the natural environment, the built environment, and the human presence. Paley is the first metal sculptor to have received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Institute of Architects. He lives and works in Rochester, New York with his wife, Frances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová</span> Czech contemporary artists

Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová were contemporary artists. Their works are included in many major modern art collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jose de Creeft</span> Spanish born American sculptor

José Mariano de Creeft was a Spanish-born American artist, sculptor, and teacher known for modern sculpture in stone, metal, and wood, particularly figural works of women. His 16-foot (4.9 m) bronze Alice in Wonderland sculpture climbing sculpture in Central Park is well known to both adults and children in New York City. He was an early adopter, and prominent exponent of the direct carving approach to sculpture. He also developed the technique of lead chasing, and was among the first to create modern sculpture from found objects. He taught at Black Mountain College, the Art Students League of New York, and the New School for Social Research. His works are in the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and many other public and private collections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erwin Eisch</span> German artist (1927–2022)

Erwin Eisch was a German artist who worked with glass. He was also a painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Eisch's work in glass, along with that of his friend and colleague Harvey Littleton, embodies the ideas of the international studio glass movement. Eisch is considered a founder of the studio glass movement in Europe.

Peter Grippe was an American sculptor, printmaker, and painter. As a sculptor, he worked in bronze, terracotta, wire, plaster, and found objects. His "Monument to Hiroshima" series (1963) used found objects cast in bronze sculptures to evoke the chaotic humanity of the Japanese city after its incineration by atomic bomb. Other Grippe Surrealist sculptural works address less warlike themes, including that of city life. However, his expertise extended beyond sculpture to ink drawings, watercolor painting, and printmaking (intaglio). He joined and later directed Atelier 17, the intaglio studio founded in London and moved to New York at the beginning of World War II by its founder, Stanley William Hayter. Today, Grippe's 21 Etchings and Poems, a part of the permanent collection at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, is available as part of the museum's virtual collection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen LaMonte</span> American artist

Karen LaMonte is an American artist known for her life-size sculptures in ceramic, bronze, marble, and cast glass.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rockwell Museum</span> Art museum in New York, USA

The Rockwell Museum is a Smithsonian Affiliate museum of American art located in the Southern Tier region of New York in downtown Corning, New York. Frommer's describes it as "one of the best-designed small museums in the Northeast." In 2015, The Rockwell Museum was named a Smithsonian Affiliate, the first in New York State outside of New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beth Lipman</span> American glass artist

Beth Lipman is a contemporary artist working in glass. She is best known for her glass still-life compositions which reference the work of 16th- and 17th-century European painters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kambui Olujimi</span> Visual artist from Brooklyn

Kambui Olujimi is a New York-based visual artist working across disciplines using installation, photography, performance, tapestry, works on paper, video, large sculptures and painting. His artwork reflects on public discourse, mythology, historical narrative, social practices, exchange, mediated cultures, resilience and autonomy.

John Halpern a.k.a. John DiLeva Halpern is a filmmaker, conceptual artist, and performance artist based in New York City. He is known for cultural activism and documentaries about art, artists, and Tibetan Buddhism.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Grimes, William. "Thomas S. Buechner, Former Director of Brooklyn Museum, Dies at 83", The New York Times , June 17, 2010. Accessed June 19, 2010.
  2. Thomas S. Buechner profile, personal website. Accessed June 19, 2010.
  3. Journal of Glass Studies, Corning Museum of Glass. Accessed June 19, 2010.
  4. New Glass Review, Corning Museum of Glass. Accessed June 19, 2010.
  5. Staff. "New Director Is Named By Brooklyn Museum", The New York Times , April 29, 1960. Accessed June 19, 2010.
  6. Buechner, Thomas S. "Successful Relocation of Important Sculpture" Archived 2011-09-26 at the Wayback Machine , Sculpture Review , Summer 1964. Accessed June 19, 2010.
  7. Staff. "MUSEUM MAKES BID FOR ART AT BRIDGE", The New York Times , June 2, 1961. Accessed June 19, 2010.
  8. Kozinn, Allan. "Alice Tully Is Dead at 91; Lifelong Patron of the Arts", The New York Times , December 11, 1993. Accessed June 19, 2010.
  9. Zinsser, William. "Two Men and a Portrait". Smithsonian Magazine.