As Director of Exhibitions and Publications at the Museum of Modern Art from 1939 to 1967, Monroe Wheeler heavily influenced typography, book design, and the development of the museum exhibition catalogue. During his tenure at MoMA, Wheeler developed close relationships with many of the artists he exhibited and published. Season’s Greetings is a volume of over fifty handmade art objects and limited printings that were sent to Wheeler from artists, many of whom he knew intimately, including never-before-seen work by such luminaries as Jean Cocteau, Ben Shahn, Miguel Covarrubias, Rufino Tamayo, Robert Parker, Roberto Montenegro, Herbert Bayer, and Max Weber.
Essays by Allen Ellenzweig, Joseph Scott IV and Vincent Cianni establish the importance of this vast archive of art, letters, and ephemera, and highlight Wheeler’s wide influence within his field. Season’s Greetings is a fitting tribute to a man whose life’s work centered on and celebrated fine art publications.
Vincent Cianni is a documentary photographer and archivist for the Estate of Anatole Pohorilenko and the Monroe Wheeler Archive. He teaches at Parsons, The New School for Design in New York City, and has authored two books, including Gays in the Military, published by Daylight Books in 2014.
Joseph Scott IV, Philadelphia, PA, became caretaker of the Manhattan apartment of Monroe Wheeler in 1990 to assist with organizing and preserving this important archive. His work continues today, as executor for Anatole Pohorienko, to help finish cataloging the remaining material for Mr. Wheeler, Glenway Wescott and George Platt Lynes.
Allen Ellenzweig, New york, NY, is an arts critic and cultural commentator currently preparing a biography of twentieth-century photographer George Platt Lynes for Oxford University Press. He is a contributing writer to the Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide and has published in Art in America, PASSION: the Magazine of Paris, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and the online magazine Tablet. He has also published works of short fiction. His landmark 1992 illustrated history, The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images from Durieu/Delacroix to Mapplethorpe, was reissued in paperback by Columbia University Press in 2012. He teaches in the Writing Program at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. He is a founding board member of The Robert Giard Foundation which offers an annual fellowship to photographers, videographers, or filmmakers.
