Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to the generous donors, artists, and galleries who have gifted artwork to the San José Museum of Art (SJMA) over the last fifty years. The Board of Trustees, currently under the leadership of Co-Presidents Cheryl Kiddoo and Tad Freese, have been stalwart champions of SJMA’s ambitious exhibitions and acquisitions, along with the Acquisitions Committee, Council of 100, Docent Council, and many devoted donors. We especially acknowledge Trustee Peter Lipman and the Lipman Family Foundation, who established a dedicated endowment for acquisitions and provided visionary support for collections.

This publication is made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS grant #MA-10-16-0002-16). We thank our generous sponsors the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Lipman Family Foundation, the Richard A. Karp Charitable Foundation, Cheryl and Bruce Kiddoo, Yvonne and Mike Nevens, Peggy and Yogen Dalal, Evelyn and Rick Neely, Rita and Kent Norton, Elizabeth and Byron Ryono, Marge and Ken Nissly, Elaine Cardinale, George Crow in honor of Susan Crow, Toby and Barry Fernald, Tad Freese and Brook Hartzell, Elena Lebedeva and Alvin Smith, Roselyne C. Swig, Marsha and Jon Witkin, and the SJMA Docent Council Alumni. Programs at the San José Museum of Art are made possible by generous support from a Cultural Affairs Grant from the City of San José.

I also want to thank the talented staff of the Museum, who whole-heartedly embraced this publication with unflagging passion and tremendous care and dedication. Karen Rapp, assistant director, strategic initiatives, co-authored with me the original proposal to the IMLS, which provided critical early investment as well as funding support for project staff: Laura Eliasieh, initial project research curator, and Amanda Helton, manager of digital strategy. Together with Anamarie Alongi, registrar, and Richard J. Karson, director of design and operations, this extraordinary team coordinated collection database upgrades, archival photography, and innumerable other tasks. Lauren Schell Dickens, senior curator, and Rory Padeken, curator, were both critical participants in the selection of photographic assets and honing narrative directions for each artist in the publication. Kathryn Wade, assistant curator, picked up the project research curator mantle, and we are grateful for her insightful writing as the principal author of the publication. Holly Shen, deputy director, joined the project in late 2018 and has provided exemplary management oversight.

Our Advisory Committee, formed in 2015–16, made significant contributions to the success of this publication. We extend appreciation to Jill Sterrett, interim director of the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, and former San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) assistant director for collections, for initial ideation on a publication that focused on the story of artists. We also thank Peter Samis, SFMOMA associate curator of interpretation, for generously organizing sessions with our team on collections-focused publications. Maja Thomas led a discussion on the future of storytelling with our staff, from her perspective as chief innovation officer and a digital publishing pioneer at Hachette Livre. Discussions with collection artists, their dealers, and artist estate representatives informed our team on the complexity of artist legacies, and we are grateful for these insightful conversations.

We asked three additional members of our SJMA community to contribute introductions to this publication: Trustee Peter Lipman, artist Hung Liu, and art historian Letha Ch’ien. Their personal observations give voice to the disparate meanings collecting institutions represent and how they change lives. We are grateful for their words and contributions to the San José Museum of Art.

Susan Sayre Batton, Oshman Executive Director