Description

The Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS – newly renamed the Center for Brooklyn History after merging with the Brooklyn Public Library – BPL) seeks funding to process, study, and create resources related to a collection of artworks by the Hungarian American artist Miklos Suba (1880-1944). BHS first received a group of Suba’s barber pole models and drawings in 2008, and in 2015 received a more substantial collection of approximately 100 paintings and 300 drawings from the artist’s estate.
Suba was born in Hungary, trained as an architect in Budapest and Vienna, and established an architectural practice in Budapest. He emigrated to the United States in 1924 and settled in Brooklyn Heights, where he resided until his death. Unable to support himself as an architect in New York, Suba turned to painting and quickly gained a reputation for cityscapes rendered in the increasingly popular style which came to be known as Precisionism. His work drew the attention of several major museums in New York and beyond; from 1926 his paintings were included in group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA, the Whitney, and the Art Institute of Chicago. With its focus on the architectural subjects around him, Suba’s production in aggregate stands as a record of Brooklyn’s pre-war-era streetscapes.
In order to preserve, document and share the collection more effectively, BHS now seeks funding to fully catalogue, condition report, photograph and research the collection, and additionally to produce an online publication. Works on paper will be rehoused, as necessary. Diana Linden, who has written extensively on American painting of this period, will be the lead scholar on the project, working in tandem with the project staff that will carry review, documentation, and photography.  BHS anticipates that the collection will be featured in exhibitions at the BPL, and that online digital access to the objects will lead to increased inquiries from scholars and requests by museums to borrow the previously unpublished works. BHS also expects that, as a result of the project, some portion of the collection will be deemed redundant and deaccessioned for sale or for transfer to other museums.
The Suba collection is a noteworthy one for the BHS in its new iteration as the Center for Brooklyn History at the Brooklyn Public Library, as an addition to its art collection and to holdings that document Brooklyn history. The proposed project will be foundational to the collection’s public accessibility and in turn to it expanded use by the general public, scholars and museums. The refinement of the collection will make the retained core of the collection more sustainable for the long-term. BHS has proposed a feasible project, with the proposed grant funds slated to support in-house and consulting project staff, photography, and object housing supplies. Diana Linden is particularly qualified to place Suba’s work into a rich cultural context, and curator Gail Stavitsky is an appropriate person to vet the project team’s recommendations.