A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Liza Lou (Editor)
Key Phrases: New Museum, New York, Marcia Tucker (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this insightful and well-crafted memoir, long-time contemporary art curator Tucker (1945-2006) gives readers a backstage account of forty years on the New York and national art scene. A passionate art student, Tucker's career began when she put down the paint brush and dedicated herself to tracking down contemporary art; before long, she would become the first woman curator of The Whitney Museum, before founding and directing The New Museum. Her curatorial history is both humble and sophisticated ("it's one thing to want to create something, another to spend your life interpreting what someone else has made"), as well as vivid, charming and honest, revealing in direct language her reasons for exhibiting Bill Bollinger's giant boulder, pulled whole from the WTC excavation site, or storming out of a class-and her PhD program-after a professor referred to Nancy Graves's realistic, life-size camel sculptures as "novelty art." Aside from meeting some of the most famous artists of our time, from Marcel Duchamp to Bob Dylan, Tucker's personal story involves a tragic family life and years as a starving artist, related poignantly but without pandering. Deftly edited by close friend and artist Lou, this is an arresting tour of a life devoted to new art, with a perfectly charming guide.
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Review

"Offers some much-needed inspiration [and] ample evidence of Tucker's take-no-prisoners attitude and passion for "difficult" art."--New York Times Book Review

"Tucker's book is conventional, accessible, even chatty. But this modest volume, in concert with the shiny playful building on the Bowery, denotes a remarkable legacy."--Village Voice

"A good book about a good person."--Art + Auction

"A remarkable piece of writing. . . . like a sustained comic monologue. . . . A wise book. . . . She has composed a literary monument to her heroic life in art, as moving as it is entertaining."--Artforum

"A candid, entertaining, and illuminating account of the 1960s art world.  . . A perfect antidote to this bloated, spectacle-heavy moment."--Bookforum

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (October 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520257006
• ISBN-13: 978-0520257009
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #26,824 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marcia Tucker's Short Life of Trouble. , November 30, 2008

By	G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

After being fired from the Whitney Museum of American Art, Marcia Tucker (1940-2006) founded the New Museum of Contemporary Art, where she was the director from 1977 to 1999. She was also a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Art in America, Art Forum, and ARTnews, among other publications. Tucker was known as an artistic rebel. In the 1980's it was rumored that she belonged to the gorilla-masked Guerrilla Girls, a feminist watchdog group of the art world. No stranger to artistic controversy, she organized major exhibitions including The Time of Our Lives (1999), A Labor of Love (1996), and Bad Girls (1994), and exhibited a boulder from the World Trade Center site. In her engaging memoir, A Short Life of Trouble, Tucker describes a vibrant period in the New York art scene from the mid-1960s to 2000, including her friendships and encounters with famous artists like Bob Dylan, Marcel Duchamp, James Rosenquist, Lee Krasner, Andy Warhol, Joan Mitchell, and Bruce Nau. Tucker's memoir is candid, witty, saucy, spirited, and insightful. Recommended.

G. Merritt

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A life in/as art, December 9, 2008

By	Dinah (Hoboken, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

Brilliant. Philosophical and personal, touching, funny, sexy, eye-opening, compelling. Anyone interested in women, or in art, or in women in art will find a treasure here. If you didn't know Marcia, you will after reading this extraordinary memoir. If you did, as I did, you'll be reminded once again how much you miss her.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A woman who couldn't be stopped...thank goodness!, May 15, 2009

By	las cosas (Ajijic-San Francisco) - See all my reviews

I stayed up most of the night reading this book the day it arrived at our house, and the next day my partner did the same. If you are a woman professional in your 60s interested in the arts, I bet you will have the same response. I assume just about everyone else will enjoy this book also.

With none of the proper credentials in a time when a woman, even with those credentials, could expect little from the patrician New York art world, Tucker simply forged ahead, determined to follow her own interests and with a flair for developing friends and mentors with the money and power to enable her to realize her vision. As John Baldessari quips, only Marcia when fired by one major museum [the Whitney] would respond by starting her own museum.

To thine own self be true has become a hackneyed phrase. Marcia in this always amusing memoir reminds us that this need not be true. A passion for a subject and a determination to pursue that passion despite not knowing where it will lead provides the basis for the memoir and her life. The book ends as she dies of cancer at a relatively young age, but even this ending is not particularly sad. She led a full and challenging life right to the end. How many of us can really say that?