Phillips History on View: Marjorie

Marjorie 1961

Marjorie Phillips in 1969

One of my favorite photographs in the archives is of Marjorie Phillips in 1969 when she was Director of the museum installing a Hundertwasser exhibition alongside Jim McLaughlin, the museum’s curator. She stands in a room, framed by doorway, giving the viewer a glimpse into the workings of installing exhibitions and putting her front and center, instrumental to the process. As Marjorie looks pensively at the unhung pieces, her image is reflected in the glass of one of the works. The hints of color expose the transition between Duncan and Marjorie’s directorship, with his death preceding the Hundertwasser exhibition by three years.

Marjorie was responsible for many milestones in The Phillips Collection’s history. She opened the museum’s first show of outdoor sculpture after putting together a landmark show, “Birds in Contemporary Art” in 1966. In the catalog for it she writes “in no half century has there been such a diversity of concepts, of materials used, degrees of abstraction or realism experimented with!” Marjorie was a confident director with an artist’s eye who was formative for the museum.

Maya Simkin, Library Intern

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