Robert Goldwater

Who was Robert Goldwater?

Robert Goldwater was an art historian, African arts scholar and the first director of the Museum of Primitive Art, New York, from 1957 to 1973. He was married to the French-born American artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois.

Born in New York City, Goldwater received his BA in 1929 from Columbia University, and his MA from Harvard in 1931. Goldwater was one of the early art history students to study modern art at a time when the subject was not considered worthy of serious graduate research. Goldwater was one of the participants of the informal gatherings of art scholars organized by Meyer Schapiro that included Lewis Mumford, Alfred Barr and Erwin Panofsky. He wrote his doctoral dissertation in 1937 at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts under Richard Offner, on "primitivism" and Modern art. This would become the subject of his life's major works. The following year, a revised version of his dissertation appeared as the book Primitivism in Modern Painting, a pioneering work that examines the relationship between tribal arts and 20th-century painting. In 1937, he married the French artist Louise Bourgeois who was to go on to become a world-renowned sculptor.