New position will oversee SLAM curatorial, collection and exhibitions staff
ST. LOUIS, Nov. 10, 2023—Emily Rauh Pulitzer has made a financial commitment to the Saint Louis Art Museum that will establish and endow a senior leadership position overseeing curatorial departments and other areas related to the museum’s collection and exhibition program.
The new position, which will be called the Emily Rauh Pulitzer Deputy Director and Chief Curator, includes many of the responsibilities that Pulitzer held when she joined the museum in 1964 as its sole curator. The museum is conducting an international search with the goal of filling the position in 2024.
“With this generous commitment, Emmy continues her legacy of support for the museum,” said Min Jung Kim, the Barbara B. Taylor Director of the Saint Louis Art Museum. “The Emily Rauh Pulitzer Deputy Director and Chief Curator will play a pivotal role in shaping the museum’s future, ensuring that our collections and exhibitions continue to inspire and educate for generations to come.”
The announcement comes two years after Pulitzer pledged to give the museum 22 works that would transform a collection elevated over time by prior gifts of art from Pulitzer; her late husband, Joseph Pulitzer Jr.; and his first wife, Louise Vauclain Pulitzer—more than 140 works in total.
Comprised primarily of paintings and sculpture by 20th-century European and American artists, the promised gift of art includes major works by 17 artists, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Constantin Brancusi, Ellsworth Kelly, Joan Miró, Philip Guston, Andy Warhol and others. Two of the promised works by Kelly are currently on view in an exhibition celebrating the centennial of the American artist’s birth.
Pulitzer said that what motivated the promised art gift also motivated her to fund the leadership position.
“The Saint Louis Art Museum collection has been an essential part of my life for nearly 60 years, and it meant a great deal to Joe for many years before we met,” Pulitzer said. “It is reassuring to know that this gift ensures the continued stewardship and growth of the museum’s prestigious collection by a deputy director and chief curator who is a leader in the field.”
A legacy in the arts
Originally from Cincinnati, Pulitzer received a bachelor’s degree in the history of art from Bryn Mawr College. She attended the École du Louvre, Paris and received a master’s degree from Harvard University. She served as assistant curator of drawings at the Fogg Art Museum—part of the Harvard Art Museums—before moving to St. Louis in 1964 to work as the curator of the Saint Louis Art Museum (then known as the City Art Museum).
Under Pulitzer’s curatorial leadership, assistant and associate curators were hired and specialized areas within the division were established. During this time, the museum embraced contemporary art and began strategically collecting and exhibiting works by living artists. A highlight of Pulitzer’s curatorship was the influential sculpture exhibition “7 for 67, works by Contemporary American Sculptors” (1967), which introduced museum visitors to a generation of artists, including Christo, Mark di Suvero, Donald Judd, Claes Oldenburg, Lucas Samaras, George Segal and Ernest Trova.
One work acquired from that show—di Suvero’s “Praise for Elohim Adonai”—will be installed next year in front of the museum’s East Building. The monumental sculpture recently underwent an extensive conservation treatment; it has not been on view in more than 30 years.
In 1973, Pulitzer married editor, publisher and art collector Joseph Pulitzer Jr., a longtime patron of the museum. The couple continued that support through the gifts of 49 works of art, including major works by Roy Lichtenstein, Barnett Newman and Vincent van Gogh, among others.
After Joseph Pulitzer’s death, in 1993, Emily Pulitzer continued to support the museum, including through gifts of art such as the 2001 partial and promised gift of Jackson Pollock’s “Number 3, 1950.” She helped to fund significant art acquisitions, including the 2002 purchase of a collection of 382 Max Beckmann prints and the 2006 acquisition of Julie Mehretu’s “Grey Space (distractor).” Pulitzer also made a significant leadership gift to the Campaign for the Saint Louis Art Museum, which funded the construction of the museum’s David Chipperfield-designed East Building. She was a member of the museum’s board of commissioners from 1981 to 1988, and she continues to serve as an honorary trustee and a member of the museum’s collections committee.
In 2001, Pulitzer founded the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in a building she commissioned from Tadao Ando, the first public building in the United States designed by him. In 2006, she co-founded the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and continues to serve as the president of its board of directors.
Starting in 2010, she oversaw the extensive renovation of her childhood home in Cincinnati, earning the Residential Design Award of Excellence from Docomomo International in 2016. More recently, she became the developer for a new architecturally significant residential neighborhood in St. Louis’ Grand Center, which broke ground in 2019.
Pulitzer has served on the boards of numerous arts, education and civic organizations. She currently serves on the boards of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, Grand Center Arts & Entertainment District, Museum of Modern Art and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, among others. In 2011, President Barack Obama honored her with the National Medal of Arts.
New leadership position
The Emily Rauh Pulitzer Deputy Director and Chief Curator will lead efforts to strengthen the collection; to oversee the development of major exhibitions; and to identify opportunities to use the museum’s collections and exhibition program to broaden the museum’s local, national and international audience.
The new deputy director will oversee eight curatorial departments, as well as the art preparation and installation, conservation, registration and exhibitions departments—leading a team of more than 60 professionals in total.
Additionally, the new deputy director will lead a cross-departmental team charged with developing and implementing a master plan for the collection that speaks to a new generation of Saint Louis Art Museum visitors.
Charles Lowenhaupt, president of the Saint Louis Art Museum’s board of commissioners, said the Pulitzer family’s generosity “sets a powerful reminder of the transformational role that private gifts have played and can continue to play in building the Museum’s extraordinary collections and programs.”
He continued, “Our museum, resting on the foundation of the support of the taxpayers of St. Louis City and County, towers through the support of families like the Pulitzers and the dedication over many years of our fine staff, of which Mrs. Pulitzer herself was one. Our community is fortunate to have this great museum and we hope that others will continue this tradition of private generosity.”
CONTACT: Molly Morris, 314.655.5250, molly.morris@slam.org
