#david smith

“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
— Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Artwork by David Smith

Happy birthday to Esther Gottlieb, co-founder and first President of the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Esther Gottlieb! Born April 15th, 1907 in Danbury, Connecticut.

Happy birthday to Esther Gottlieb, co-founder and first President of the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation. Esther Gottlieb! Born April 15th, 1907 in Danbury, Connecticut. 

Adolph and Esther were a team in many of their lives’ endeavors. At different times Esther helped in the studio, was the self-taught registrar of Adolph’s art, and organized dinner gatherings at their home for their many friends in the art world such as Barnett and Annalee Newman, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Dorothy Dehner, Milton and Sally Avery. Esther even learned to work a sailboat when Adolph became involved in racing them. 

During the Great Depression, the salary from Esther’s full-time job salary was often loaned or given to several friends in times of need through Adolph. This generosity on the part of both Adolph and Esther was the seed of what later became the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation. 

After Adolph’s death, Esther guided the formation of the Foundation. For twelve years, from the time of its incorporation until her passing in 1988, Esther Gottlieb served as President of the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, leaving a legacy of assisting artists for decades to come.

Learn more about the grant programs Esther Gottlieb helped to establish.

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TONY SMITH: INSIDE

Although Tony Smith’s cast-bronze sculptures were mainly intended for outdoor and/or public sites, they have also been installed in indoor spaces. Smith said his works were “interruptions in an otherwise unbroken flow of space,” a description that, indeed, obtains in both indoor and outdoor settings.

That universality of function having been acknowledged, it is striking how differently the works react to indoor and outdoor settings. Contained in a gallery or museum and photographed under carefully-controlled lighting conditions, the works come across as sleek, monumental, impersonal and reticent–Minimalism construed as decorum and good taste. Outdoors, they are entirely different creatures. Ungainly, even comic, behemoths diverting traffic in urban spaces, the smaller ones approaching humans like pigeons or squirrels. Others graze in a field like middle-aged dinosaurs. In the exhibition space, Smith sculptures are flawless and timeless, a realization of an idea; outside they are like Ford LTDs parked on the street for many years, industrial products that are altered and degraded by use, climate and time.