Russell Lynes

Russell Lynes (Joseph Russell Lynes, Jr.; December 2, 1910 – September 14, 1991) was an American art historian, photographer, author and managing editor of Harper's Magazine.

Early life

Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Lynes was the younger son of Adelaide Sparkman and Joseph Russell Lynes.''Russell Lynes, 80, an Editor and Arbiter of Taste'' by Richard Severo, September 16, 1991, New York Timesbr>online
retrieved February 18, 2008 obituary His older brother was George Platt Lynes (1907-1955), the photographer. In 1932, he graduated from Yale University.

Career

Lynes started as a clerk at Harper & Brothers, the publishing house, from 1932 to 1936 and was director of publications at Vassar in 1936 and 1937. He then took a job at the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, where he was assistant principal from 1937 to 1940, then principal until 1944. He then joined Harper's Magazine as an assistant editor and became managing editor in 1947, a position he would hold for the next twenty years. Lynes was interested in historic preservation, notably and influentially writing about the threat to Olana, the home of Frederic Church in upstate New York, in ''The Tastemakers'' and in the February 1965 issue of ''Harper's.''

Bibliography

*''Life in the Slow Lane'' (1991)
*''The Lively Audience: A Social History of the Visual and Performing Arts inAmerica, 1890-1950.'' (1985)
*''The Art Makers: An Informal History of Painting, Sculpture & Architecture in Nineteenth Century America '' (1983)
*''More than meets the eye: The history and collections of Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Design'' (1981)
*''Good Old Modern; an intimate portrait of the Museum of Modern Art'' (1973)
*''The Art-Makers of Nineteenth Century America'' (1970)
*''Confessions of a Dilettante'' (1966)
*''The Domesticated Americans'' (1963)
*''Cadwallader: A Diversion'' (1959)
*''A Surfeit of Honey'' (1957)"WE ADORE self-appointed scolds who tell us what shallow characters we are. Here is Mr. Lynes casting us as History's Spoiled Children. We have it too good, he says.
Commentary Magazine
/ref>
*''The Tastemakers'' (1954)
*''Guests'' (1951)
*''Snobs'' (1950)
*''Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow'' (1949)

Personal life

In 1934, he married Mildred Akin (died 1999), who was a Vassar graduate, the step-daughter of artist Henry Ives Cobb, Jr. (1883–1974) and a granddaughter of George W. Wickersham (1858–1936), U.S. Attorney General under William Howard Taft. Together, they had two children:
*George Platt Lynes II (died 2015), who married Jane Lynes.
*Elizabeth R. Lynes (1939–2015), who married Sidney Hollander in 1962. They divorced and in 1997, she married Carl Kaestle (born 1940).

He died on September 14, 1991 in New York City at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

References

External links

Harper's Magazine (Index of Writings)Portrait of Russell Lynes"Highbrow, Lowbrows, Middlebrow, Now: An Interview With Russell Lynes by John Brooks", ''American Heritage'', 1983
* Russell Lynes Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
*The Mr. and Mrs. William R. Wilkins papers at the University of Maryland Libraries contain correspondence with Russell Lynes.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lynes, Russell
1910 births
1991 deaths
People from Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Yale University alumni
Vassar College staff
American art historians
20th-century American historians
American male non-fiction writers
Historians from Massachusetts
20th-century American male writers