RIP Marcia Tucker

“Act first, think later – that way, you have something to think about.”Marcia Tucker

A flyer from 2005Marcia Tucker

John Walsh, then director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, Calif., described Ms. Tucker in especially apt terms in a 1993 article in The New York Times: “There’s always been a social conscience in Marcia that’s impatient and results in a kind of alertness you can just read across her forehead like a Jenny Holzer sign.” (via NYtimes)

She took enormous risks, and was vilified for this during her tenure at the Whitney Museum. Finally, after a poorly received and reviewed Richard Tuttle Exhibition, she resigned. Besides being highly controversial in the art world, Marcia Tucker was a feminist, and it was rumored that she was one of the Guerilla Girls.

I knew Marcia Tucker. I was an undergrad at SVA and had the great fortune of attending one of her seminars in contemporary issues. She had a keen sense of the absurd, and one of her assigned class projects is certainly deeply embedded in anyone’s memory who was present. We were to all meet at Grand Central Station, but in disguise. I came as a hooker. No one recognized me, and I could have made some good money. Marcia came as a Hasidic old man with a cane, fur hat, tallis, the whole thing. She was brilliant and completely unrecognizable. (Saint Marcia via Anonymous Female Artist)

Marcia as Ms Mannerist the stand up schtick. (Kept typing standard instead of stand up, could Marcia be up there watching us and interfering?)