Collection Information

Size: 3 sound files (2 hrs., 50 min.) digital, wav

Transcript: 112 p.

Summary: An interview with Rhona Hoffman, conducted 2015 June 18-22, by Lanny Silverman, for the Archives of American Art's Chicago's Art-Related Archival Materials: A Terra Foundation Resource, at Hoffman's home in Chicago, Illinois.

Hoffman speaks of growing up in New York City; training as an artist; opening and running the store at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA); the role of the MCA and its opening; marrying, working with, and divorcing Donald Young; opening the Young Hoffman Gallery; changes in the Chicago art gallery scene; her relationships with artists and collectors; feminist art and artists; Chicago arts writers; the relationship between international art fairs and changes in the art market; Hoffman's opinions on contemporary political art; art and irony; and public art. Hoffman also recalls Sol LeWitt, Vito Acconci Michael Rakowitz, Jenny Holzer, Natalie Frank, Helyn Goldenberg, Grace Hokin, Donald Young, Marianne Deson, Kehinde Wiley, Raymond Pettibon, Ian Wilson, and others.

Biographical/Historical Note

Interviewee Rhona Hoffman (1934- ) is a art dealer in Chicago, Illinois. Interviewer Lanny Silverman (1947- ) is a curator at the Chicago Cultural Center in Chicago, Illinois.

Provenance

This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.

Funding

Funding for this interview was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

For information on how to access this interview contact Reference Services.

Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Rhona Hoffman, 2015 June 18-22. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.