An Article by Mikhail Horowitz
Over the course of nearly 20 years — 1980 to 1998, Mikkail Horowitz worked for two
Hudson Valley newspapers, the Daily Freeman (Kingston) and Woodstock
Times, as an editorial assistant with the former and as arts editor (“Cultural
Czar”) with the latter. He relates that when he " started at the Freeman, the paper
had no arts coverage to speak of; I was the first staffer to write regular reviews of
area exhibitions and profiles of area artists. The Woodstock Times, on the other
hand, took seriously (but not solemnly) its relationship to one of America’s most
famous arts colonies and had no dearth of writers writing about the arts. It was
my great good fortune to add my voice to theirs, and to meet and chronicle the
plethora of fine painters, printmakers, sculptors, photographers, and video
artists who passed through Woodstock or made the place their home."
From time to time Learning Woodstock Art Colony will highlight Mikhail's important
writing on the Woodstock art scene. Here follows a profile of the late African American painter Ernest Frazier that was published in the Daily Freeman on August 24, 1984. Later this week I'll publish a piece celebrating the work of Norma Morgan, who along with Frazier, was one of the few African American artists active in the colony.
When we opened the Kleinert/James Ats Center in Woodstock in 1996, I chose an Earnest Frazier show for the walls and a Peter Serkin concert on the piano. Both friends; both gone; both giants in their field...and both missed greatly.
-Doug James