KALLIR, Jane K(atherine) 1954-

PERSONAL: Born July 30, 1954, in New York, NY; daughter of John Otto (an advertising executive) and Joyce (a school principal; maiden name, Ruben) Kallir. Education: Brown University, B.A., 1976. Politics: Democrat.

ADDRESSES: Office—Galerie St. Etienne, 24 West 57th St., New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Lefebre Gallery, New York, NY, assistant to director, 1977; Galerie St. Etienne, New York, NY, assistant to director, 1977-78; co-director, 1979—. Guest curator at New York State Museum, Albany, 1983, International Exhibitions Foundation, Washington, DC, 1984-85, Museum of City of Vienna, 1986, Austrian National Gallery, 1990, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1994, and Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1994; guest lecturer at Museum of American Folk Art, New York, NY, 1982-85, National Gallery of Art, 1994, Fort Lauderdale Museum Art, 1996, Museum of Modern Art, 1997, International Foundation for Art Research, 1998, and Wexner Center, Columbus, OH, 1999.

MEMBER: Art Dealers Association of America (member of board of directors, 1994—).

AWARDS, HONORS: Award from Art Library Society of New York, 1981, for The Folk Art Tradition; Elie Faure Award; Beaux-Arts Prix des Lecteurs.

WRITINGS:

Gustav Klimt/Egon Schiele, Crown (New York, NY), 1980.

Austria's Expressionism, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1981.

The Folk Art Tradition, Viking (New York, NY), 1981.

Grandma Moses, C. N. Potter (New York, NY), 1982.

Arnold Schoenberg's Vienna, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1984.

Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstätte, Braziller (New York, NY), 1986.

Gustav Klimt: Twenty-five Masterworks, Harry N. Abrams (New York, NY), 1989.

Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, including a Biography and a Catalogue Raisonne, Harry N. Abrams (New York, NY), 1990.

Egon Schiele, Art Services International (Alexandria, VA), 1994.

Egon Schiele: Twenty-seven Masterworks, Harry N. Abrams (New York, NY), 1996.

Grandma Moses: Twenty-five Masterworks, Harry N. Abrams (New York, NY), 1997.

Grandma Moses, Wonderland Press (Alexandria, VA), 2001.

Grandma Moses in the Twenty-first Century, Art Services International (Alexandria, VA), 2001.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Women and Expressionism.

SIDELIGHTS: Jane K. Kallir once told CA: "My writing career began as an adjunct to my work in gallery management—books complemented exhibitions as a way of making art accessible to the public. Inevitably, however, certain themes began to recur in my writing. In particular, I am interested in the discrepancies that exist between artists' perceptions of art, public taste, and the critical judgments of the art historians. Folk art—literally the art of the people—has always held a special appeal for me because it has generally existed beyond the confines of the European academic tradition. Grandma Moses, especially, personifies the conflict between folk and 'high' culture, between popular and elitist taste. Austrian Expressionism, my second area of expertise, on the other hand, poses an entirely different sort of challenge. My Schiele catalogue raisonne involved documenting a massive output—some 3,000 works—as well as compiling a comprehensive new biography from first-hand sources."

Kallir's 1990 work Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, including a Biography and a Catalogue Raisonne is regarded as one of the most important studies of the artist. A contributor to Publishers Weekly called it a "penetrating, magnificently illustrated biography." The 700-page volume is both a biography and a catalogue of the artist's work.

In 2001 Kallir confirmed her status as the foremost authority on American folk artist Grandma Moses with the publication of Grandma Moses in the Twenty-first Century. The author selected eighty-seven of Moses' most representative works and joined forces with other experts to include scholarly essays about the famous primitives painter. The coffee-table book was the catalogue for an exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 2001-2002. "This is the most extensive book on Moses currently available," commented Judith Yankielun Lind in Library Journal.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 1, 1997, Ray Olson, review of Grandma Moses: Twenty-five Masterworks, p. 445.

Choice, November, 2001, B. Waterman-Peters, review of Grandma Moses in the Twenty-first Century, p. 498

Library Journal, August, 2001, Judith Yankielun Lind, review of Grandma Moses in the Twenty-first Century, p. 99.

Publishers Weekly, September 14, 1990, review of Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, including a Biography and a Catalogue Raisonne, p. 117.

Spectator, December 12, 1998, review of EgonSchiele: Complete Works, p. 44.

Washington Times, March 17, 2001, Joanna Shaw-Eagle, review of Grandma Moses in the Twentyfirst Century, p. 5.

Women's Review of Books, February, 2002, review of Grandma Moses in the Twenty-first Century, p. 21.*