At the time of her death in 1948, Juliana Force held the eminent title of founding director of the Whitney Museum of Art. Nowadays, mention of her name is likely to elicit a blank stare or, from the more knowing, a flip remark about Gertrude Whitneyβs βglorified secretary.β While other champions of twentieth-century art (Alfred Stieglitz, Alfred Barr, Betty Parsons, etc.) have by now ascended to mythic heights, Force and her legacy have crumbled into dust. The reason is hardly a mystery. Unlike Stieglitz, she didnβt have a discerning eye. Unlike Barr, she lacked a coherent vision. And she didnβt have Parsonsβs instinct for adventure. Yet for all her obvious deficiencies, Force did possess genuine enthusiasm for American art, or rather for American artists, and she helped them win official recognition in an age when society still believed that good art, like good perfume, could only come out of Europe.
How large, exactly, was her influence? Tremendous, according to Avis Berman, the author of Rebels on Eighth Street: Juliana Force and the Whitney Museum of American Art. The book, the first biography of Force, is essentially a revisionist history of the Whitney: it sets out to show that, while Gertrude Whitney paid the bills, it was Juliana Force who organized the shows, selected the purchases, and defined the direction of the museum in its first two decades. The author, a journalist, is a zealous researcher, and some readers may grow impatient with her detailed discussions of even
