Oral history interview with Fredericka Hunter, 2015

Biographical Note

Fredericka Hunter was born in Galveston, Texas, and is the owner of Texas Gallery in Houston, Texas, which exhibits contemporary artists primarily working in New York, Los Angeles, and Houston. Hunter is a cofounder of ARTPIX, a nonprofit organization that produces and publishes DVDs of archival performances. Hunter serves on the boards of Trisha Brown Dance Company, Prop Foundation, Houston Cinema Arts Society, and Art Dealers Association of America. She is a past president of the Chinati Foundation, and served on its board from 1995 to 2003. Hunter became a board member of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in 2009

Scope and Contents

Fredericka Hunter describes her education in art history, attending Wellesley College in Massachusetts where she studied with Rosalind Krauss, and visiting galleries in New York City on the weekends. She discusses working with Dominique de Menil in Houston and later, working at the Richard Feigen Gallery in New York. She describes the social scene of the art world in NYC in the late 1960s. She discusses her return to Houston and describes the process by which she came to open Texas Gallery, the gallery scene in Houston in the 1970s, and the relationship between Houston and NYC art scenes. She reflects on the impact of Robert Rauschenberg on her generation, and shares her own epiphany moment of seeing his Dante drawings. She offers some thoughts on the evolution of the art market from the 1960s into and through the 1970s. She discusses her work on the Trisha Brown Company board, through which she got to know Robert Rauschenberg who was also a board member. She talks through the timeline of Robert Rauschenberg shows at Texas Gallery and Hunter's process for developing those shows. Hunter shares her account of the time when Alfred Kren confiscated Robert Rauschenberg's work from the Menil. She reflects on Rauschenberg's work as a philanthropist, and her personal correspondence with him, concluding with a written addendum offering some anecdotes to illustrate Robert Rauschenberg's social inclusiveness

Subjects

• ARTPIX (Firm).
• Art, Modern--20th Century.
• Art--Collectors and collecting.
• Art dealers--Interviews.
• Art galleries, Commercial.
• Edwards, Brent Hayes interviewer.
• Hunter, Fredericka--Interviews.
• Interviews.
• Krauss, Rosalind E.
• Menil, Dominique de.
• Menil Collection (Houston, Tex.)
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Rauschenberg, Robert, 1925-2008.
• Richard Feigen Gallery.
• Texas Gallery.
• Trisha Brown Company.

Access Conditions

Copyright by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, 2016