Welcome to the online version of the SKETCHBOOKS OF REE MORTON!

Franklin Furnace is pleased to make available “The Sketchbooks of Ree Morton” as an online research resource. The collection consists of 22 sketchbooks, 16 notebooks, and 1 folder. Each page of every sketchbook has been photographed and is available for viewing. The sketchbooks contain drawings and notes for important works of art as well as the artist’s thoughts and research. Because of the ephemeral nature of her work, these books often contain the only evidence of many important pieces. This resource provides an unprecedented level of access to the ideas of this seminal visual artist.

History

The partnership of the Ree Morton collection and the Franklin Furnace Archive spans over twenty years. The estate of Ree Morton donated these materials in January of 1988, a time when Franklin Furnace housed the largest public collection of Artists’ Books in the United States (this collection was later transferred to the Museum of Modern Art in June 2011). Although none of the Ree Morton sketchbooks were Artists’ Books in the technical sense, Franklin Furnace foresaw their historical importance and agreed to undertake the time and expense of integrating them into an existing archival system of physical preservation and intellectual access. For the next twenty years Franklin Furnace actively participated in the promotion and exhibition of the sketchbooks.

Provenance

The first exhibition, The Sketchbooks of Ree Morton, was curated by Cynthia Carlson and Allan Schwartzman. It was exhibited at Franklin Furnace from July 7 to August 27, 1988. After the exhibit closed, Franklin Furnace cataloged all the sketchbooks, built custom archival enclosures to protect them, and loaned them to several institutions. In 1990, The Whitney Museum borrowed seven of the sketchbooks for A New Acquisition: Signs of Love. The University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum created: Sketchbooks of Ree Morton, a traveling exhibition organized in 1999-2000 by Barbara Zucker. A catalog for this exhibit titled The Mating Habits of Lines was published in 2000. This exhibit traveled for several years. In 2008, selected sketchbooks were exhibited with Morton’s painting and sculpture by the Generali Foundation in Vienna for The Deities Must be Made to Laugh. Generali also published a 207 page catalog titled Ree Morton: Works 1971-1977 for that exhibition. Most recently, the Drawing Center borrowed ten sketchbooks for an exhibition in 2009 titled Ree Morton: At the Still Point of the Turning World.

Bio

“Ree Morton (1936-1977) is an artist who, like many others, came out of the kitchen and into the studio during the sixties. After studying nursing, marrying a naval officer, and having three children, she abandoned conventional life in search of something more. When Morton returned to school in 1966 to study art, her exceptional drive, dedication, and brilliant ability to synthesize were immediately apparent to her teachers, including Robert Rohm, Marcia Tucker, Rafael Ferrer, and Italo Scanga. She tackled such subjects as Pre-Columbian influences in Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture and the myth of Prometheus in post-Renaissance art with intensity and seriousness—qualities that would fuel her own art through the next decade. Though Morton came to art late in life, she went into creative high gear in the seventies, producing some groundbreaking and influential work that reflected many of the aesthetic currents of that decade. Tragically, Morton’s career was abruptly cut short by a fatal car accident in 1977, less than ten years after it had begun”. – Quote: Lisa Phillips, 1990, from the Whitney exhibition A New Acquisition: Signs of Love.

Acknowledgements

Franklin Furnace is grateful to the Estate of Ree Morton for donating her sketchbooks to us in 1988. In keeping with our mission and educational mandate, Franklin Furnace has digitized and published the materials here on its website. As a result, Franklin Furnace can continue to make these fragile and invaluable materials accessible worldwide to artists, scholars, students, curators and other members of the interested public. The digitization of the sketchbooks of Ree Morton was made possible by the generous support of Agnes Gund, Eric Laufer, Sarah Peter, and Jane Wesman.