Riva Castleman of MoMA passes away at 84

The New York Times announced today that Riva Castleman died last week in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She was the influential curator of prints for many years at MoMA. Although she was a very nice person and did a great deal to bring prints and printmaking forward as a respectable and collectible medium in the art world, she was curiously ignorant about artists' books. Her expertise was for the grand old chestnuts of livres d'artistes and other blue-chip artist-illustrated books from people like Jasper Johns et al. Her major 1994 show called "A Century of Artists Books" (along with a big coffee table book of the same name) was a huge disappointment, and revealed her ignorance of contemporary bookwork and how much things had changed since the days of livres d'artistes. She did present some wonderful work in that show like Matisse's Jazz but that seems to be all she understood or was interested in –or at the very least all she seemed to be aware of. Many of us felt that the show, and the huge amount of publicity it got, was a sadly squandered opportunity to raise the general consciousness about contemporary artists' books in the public eye. That show still to this day makes me pissed off. Thank god that Clive Philpott was there at the MoMA Library at the same time: he took care to collect all of the work that she seemed to dismiss. or did not care to address. Anyway, RIP Riva Castleman.