mPARA ePAR@ ` ]TEXT ` OForce, Juliana Rieser1876╨1948museum directorBorn in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, on December 25, 1876, Juliana Reiser (she later changed the name to Rieser) was educated in local schools and at an early age went to work as a secretary. She later headed a secretarial school in New York City and then became secretary to Helen Hay Whitney, wife of a prominent financier. In 1912 she married Dr. Willard B. Force. In 1914 Helen Whitney╒s sister-in-law, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, established the Whitney Studio to show the work of young modernist artists who had difficulty finding exhibition space in conservative galleries. Force was asked to assist in managing the studio. The next year they formed and Force became director of the Friends of the Young Artists, which sponsored exhibitions and made judicious purchases. The informal association of artists and others that developed was organized in 1918 as the Whitney Studio Club with a clubhouse on West 4th Street where Force presided. Her innate taste and receptivity to ideas more than made up for her lack of formal art training, and she soon became a central figure in the art world of New York. To Gertrude Whitney╒s artist friends╤Robert Henri, John Sloan, Arthur B. Davies, William Glackens, and others╤were soon added an even younger generation, including Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, and Reginald Marsh, all of whom had their first exhibitions at the Whitney Studio Club. Moved to larger quarters in 1923, the club was disbanded in 1928 when it appeared it had served its purpose of nurturing a native modern art. During 1928╨1930 a Whitney Studio Gallery exhibited on West 8th Street. On the refusal of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to accept Gertrude Whitney╒s offer in 1929 to donate her personal collection of contemporary works of art, the Whitney Museum of American Art was established in 1930 with Force as director. Opened in November 1931, the Whitney Museum reflected in its informal and warm interior the taste of its director. She inaugurated a pioneering series of monographs on living American artists in 1931; organized morning and evening lecture series by art historians, critics, and others; and staged a variety of exhibitions of contemporary and historical art, folk art, primitives, and other unusual genres. The Whitney Museum came to be a major force in American art, and Juliana Force was central to its influence. In 1933╨1934 she helped organize and then served as a regional director of the federal Public Works of Art Project. In 1942 she became first chairman of the American Art Research Council. She headed the Committee for a New York State Art Program in 1945 and was a trustee and officer of the American Federation of Arts and the American Association of Museum Directors. She remained director of the Whitney Museum until her death in New York City on August 28, 1948. ╓styl `
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