Discipline: Literature

Emily Genauer

Discipline: Literature
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1981

Emily Genauer (1911-2002) was an American art critic for the New York World, the New York Herald Tribune, and Newsday. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1974.

She was born on Staten Island to a delicatessen-owning father who was an amateur sculptor. After studying at Hunter College and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, she went to work as a writer for the New York World, eventually becoming a critic in the 1930s. After she married Frederick Gash, she retained her maiden name as her byline.

She was instrumental in introducing modern artist to her readers, championing Marc Chagall, Diego Rivera and Pablo Picasso. She quit the newspaper (which had become the New York World-Telegram after a merger) in 1949, during the Cold War, when World-Telegram president Roy W. Howard complained that she was promoting left-wing artists. Genauer joined the New York Herald Tribune, where she was the art critic through 1967. She then went to work for Newsday, which syndicated her work.

Genauer also wrote books and served on the National Council on the Humanities from 1966 to 1970.

Studios

Mansfield

Emily Genauer worked in the Mansfield studio.

The Helen Coolidge Mansfield Studio was donated by graduates of the Mansfield War Service Classes for Reconstruction Aides. Helen Mansfield helped found the New York MacDowell Club. The small, shingled frame structure with stone foundation was originally fronted on the west side by a neat white picket fence and gate, a garden, and a stone pathway…

Learn more