Private Passion, Civic Spirit: Robert Gore Rifkind and German Expressionism

Private Passion, Civic Spirit: Robert Gore Rifkind and German Expressionism. Edited by Stephanie Barron and Timothy O Benson, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2021.

This volume includes numerous remembrances of the late Robert Gore Rifkind and his collection of German Expressionist prints and library from the scholars, colleagues, and dealers involved with the collection during its formation in the 1970s and 80s. Unlike many of the émigrés who founded German Expressionist collections in America, Rifkind – a Los Angeles native and successful lawyer—had little familiarity with German culture when he was drawn to the visually intense graphic art socially engaged modernist movement. To build the world-class collection and library, which is now his legacy, Rifkind sought out leading dealers, curators, and scholars in the field for advice, developing along the way an admiration for the scholarship that led him to invite many experts to Los Angeles. Thus was begun the Scholars-in-Residence Program funded by the Rifkind Foundation that now thrives at the Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art founded through his philanthropy in 1983. Fittingly this volume includes three longer essays by Alessandra Comini, Megan R. Luke, and Christian Weikop, which explore Expressionism and its echoes into the Post-Cold-War era.

Softbound, 95 pages: illustrations (chiefly color), portraits; 24 cm.