Marcia Tucker 1977: An Interview

Marcia Tucker (1940 - 2006) was a curator, writer and art historian, known for founding the New Museum of Contemporary Art after her dismissal from her curatorial post at the Whitney Museum of American Art due to creative disagreements. Tucker served as the visionary director of the New Museum from 1977 to 1999, during which time she organized major exhibitions like The Time of Our Lives (1999), A Labor of Love (1996), and Bad Girls (1994), and edited the series Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art. As a curator,Tucker championed social engagement, exploration and artistic process. She considered the museum a “laboratory” organization where both art and the practices of the institution itself were always in question. After leaving the New Museum, and until her death in 2006, Tucker worked as a freelance art critic, writer, and lecturer.

In this interview with Kate Horsfield, Tucker talks about the organization of the New Museum in New York City, a few months prior to the opening. "What artists don’t like about the museums is that the museums don’t like artists. They don’t like artists because they can’t be controlled, preserved, categorized or tucked away. Also, museum people say that artists are egocentric. Of course they are, think of the nature of the enterprise! They have to both make it and support it themselves," 

A historical interview originally recorded in 1977 and re-edited in 2006 with support from the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund.