Deborah Solomon

Deborah Solomon (born August 9, 1957, New York City) is an American art critic, journalist and biographer. Her weekly column, "Questions For" ran in The New York Times Magazine from 2003 to 2011. She is currently the art critic for WNYC Public Radio, the New York City affiliate of NPR.

Early life and education

Solomon was born in New York City and grew up in New Rochelle, New York. Her parents, Jerry and Sally Solomon, owned an art gallery. In an interview with Francis Ford Coppola, Solomon disclosed that her father was born in Romania and fled as a child in 1938. She was educated at Cornell University, where she majored in art history and served as the associate editor of The Cornell Daily Sun. She earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1979. The following year, she received a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Solomon was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001 in the category of biography.

Career

Journalism

Solomon began her career writing about art for various publications, including The New Criterion. For most of the 1990s, she served as the chief art critic of The Wall Street Journal. She has written extensively about American painting, and is the author of several biographies of American artists, including Jackson Pollock, Joseph Cornell, and Norman Rockwell.

On November 29, 2010, at the 92nd Street Y in New York, Solomon was scheduled to interview actor Steve Martin regarding his new novel, An Object of Beauty. Midway through the conversation, a Y representative handed Ms. Solomon a note asking her to talk more about Mr. Martin’s movie career. The next day, the Y issued an apology to audiences, along with an offer of gift certificates to future Y events to the 900 people who had attended. In an op-ed piece in The New York Times, Martin praised Solomon as an "art scholar" and said he would have rather "died onstage with art talk" than with the movie trivia questions the Y had chosen for him.

According to Kat Stoeffel in an opinion piece for The New York Observer, Solomon's weekly "Questions For" column "has been a slow-burning controversy since Ms. Solomon’s debut in 2003. Ms. Solomon’s editing practices (despite the weekly disclaimer) led some of her subjects–including Tim Russert, Ira Glass, and Amy Dickinson–to cry foul. But then some weeks’ interviews–Das Racist comes to mind–seemed to redeem the whole practice."

On February 4, 2011, Solomon stepped down from writing her weekly column to write in house and continue her biography of Norman Rockwell. She was "encouraged by the paper’s top brass to continue writing for the paper" and has stated she will continue "asking as many impertinent questions as possible.” In 2010, Solomon was ranked by the Daily Beast as one of "The Left's Top 25 Journalists."

Norman Rockwell Controversy

Solomon's book "American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell" was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the fall of 2013. The book received glowing reviews in the national media, but was criticized publicly by two members of the Rockwell family.

Typically, the Wall Street Journal opened its admiring review of the book by asserting: "In anticipation of Thanksgiving, every American who cherishes the traditions that make this country great should acquire a copy of "American Mirror," Deborah Solomon's brilliantly insightful chronicle of the life of illustrator Norman Rockwell." http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304200804579165980988272564

And USA Today praised the book for its: "elegance, irony and straightforward storytelling" despite the family's insinuations: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2013/11/30/american-mirror-norman-rockwell-review/3469923/T

Yet one of Rockwell's three grown sons publicly rejected Solomon's portrait of the artist. Thomas Rockwell, the artist's middle son, told The Boston Globe that "The biography is so poor and so inflammatory, we just had to respond." He said "It’s being presented as the definitive biography and it’s so wrong, we just felt we had to correct the record." Eighty year old Thomas Rockwell concluded by saying "This is our last word. We are no longer going to participate in the drama Solomon has created"

Solomon responded to the criticism by saying that Thomas Rockwell, who had co-operated fully in the creation of her book and released his father's psychiatric records to her, had misunderstood her book. He claimed that her book was filled with homosexual innuendoes about his father, although Ms. Solomon told the New York Times, on December 2, 2013, that Norman Rockwell's' sexuality is "a tiny part" of the book. “I feel like this is really the first book that convincingly makes the case for Rockwell’s artistic importance, and I would hope to keep the discussion on that subject.” Thomas Rockwell has also attacked Laurie Norton Moffatt, the well-regarded, longtime director of the Rockwell Museum, for supporting Solomon's book. Moffatt, who read the book before publication, endorsed it wholly and wrote a blurb for the book jacket that states: "America Mirror is a masterpiece -- vivid, forthright, and insightful. Through superb research and keen interpretation, Deborah Solomon tells the story of an artist so many thought they knew well, and perhaps did no know at all. An epic achievement."The board of the Rockwell Museum has voted to retain Moffatt as director despite efforts by Thomas Rockwell to have her dismissed.

Personal life

Solomon is married to Kent Sepkowitz, an infectious-disease specialist and the Deputy Physician-in-Chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and frequent contributor to various publications. They have two sons.

Bibliography

• Jackson Pollock: A Biography, Simon & Schuster, 1987, ISBN 978-0-8154-1182-6
• Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997, ISBN 0-374-18012-1
• American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013, ISBN 978-0-374-11309-4

Awards and Honors

• 1998 New York Public Library Books to Remember Award, for Utopia Parkway
• 2001 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in the field of biography
• 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Award, finalist, for American Mirror
• 2014 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, shortlisted for American Mirror

External links

• Interviews by Deborah Solomon for the New York Times
• Article on Deborah Solomon in Good Magazine, February 14, 2007
• Arthur Danto's review of Solomon's Utopia Parkway, Slate, March 26, 1997
• Interview with Deborah Solomon in the New York Times Book Review, June 13, 2010
• Deborah Solomon talking about art criticism on WNYC radio
• Deborah Solomon page at Farrar, Straus & Giroux
• John Wilmerding's review of Solomon's "American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell," New York Times, October 31, 2013
• In-depth interview with Deborah Solomon in Guernica Magazine, January 15, 2014.
• Deborah Solomon's television appearance on "The Colbert Report," on January 14, 2014