Oral Histories

Interview of Agnes Mongan

Director of Fogg Art Museum.
Subtitle:
Museum Curator
Series:
Art History - Oral Documentation Project
Topic:
Art
Biographical Note:
Director of Fogg Art Museum.
Interviewer:
Smith, Richard Candida and De Noriega, Taina Rikala
Interviewee:
Mongan, Agnes
Persons Present:
Tapes I-V: Mongan and Rikala, Tape VI: Mongan and Smith.
Place Conducted:
Mongan's apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Supporting Documents:
Records relating to the interview are located in the office of the UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research.
Interviewer Background and Preparation:
The interview was conducted by Taina Rikala de Noriega; B.A., Art History and Environmental Studies, UC Santa Cruz; M.Sc., Architecture, University College, London; Ph.D., Urban Planning, UCLA. The interview was conducted by Richard Cándida Smith, Associate Director/Principal Editor, UCLA Oral History Program; B.A., Theater Arts, UCLA; M.A., Ph.D., United States History, UCLA.
Processing of Interview:
Rebecca Stone, editorial assistant, edited the interview. She checked the verbatim transcript of the interview against the original tape recordings, edited for punctuation, paragraphing, and spelling, and verified proper names. Words and phrases inserted by the editor have been bracketed. Mongan reviewed the transcript. She verified proper names and made a number of corrections and additions. Teresa Barnett, principal editor, prepared the table of contents, biographical summary, and interview history. Stone compiled the index.
Length:
6.70 hrs.
Language:
English
Copyright:
Regents of the University of California, UCLA Library.
Series Statement:
The interviews in the series Art History - Oral Documentation Project are part of a cooperative venture between the Oral History Program and the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, documents a generation of scholars who developed and elaborated paradigms of art history established in the late nineteenth century to forge a twentieth-century discipline.
Abstract:
Attends Bryn Mawr College; studies Renaissance art in Europe with Clarence Kennedy; Mongan begins her career at the Fogg Art Museum; Bernard Berenson; experiences sex discrimination at Harvard University; Paul J. Sachs; Fogg's attempt to acquire the Albertina Graphic Art Collection's drawings; Alfred H. Barr Jr.'s appointment as director of the Museum of Modern Art; travels in China and Mexico; Jakob Rosenberg; teaching; John Coolidge; Edward M. M. Warburg; prepares catalog of the Frick Collection; visiting positions at the Timken Art Gallery in San Diego and the American Academy in Rome; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Institute of Contemporary Art; the status of women in the museum profession; left-handed artists; Harvard; Andrew Wyeth exhibit; judging the quality of vibrance in art; Georgiana Goddard King; A. Everett Austin Jr.; Gertrude Stein; museum training program at Harvard; judgments of quality in art and other fields.