Edward Leffingwell dies at 72; former director of the L.A. Municipal Art Gallery

Edward Leffingwell, a former director of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery as well as a critic and curator known for his support of avant garde artists, has died in a New York City hospital after a lengthy illness. He was 72.

His Aug. 5 death was confirmed by his brother, Tom Leffingwell.

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FOR THE RECORD
Aug. 18, 2 p.m.: The headline on an earlier version of this obituary incorrectly said Edward Leffingwell was the former director of the L.A. County Municipal Art Gallery. He was the former director of the L.A. Municipal Art Gallery.
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From 1988 to 1992, Leffingwell headed the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Art Park and was director of visual arts for the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs department. When city officials, citing a tight budget, eliminated his job, he declined their offer to head the city’s public art program.

“I turned 50 in December,” he told The Times, “and I’m not interested in cutting off part of my anatomy so that I can be a civil servant and have a comfortable pension.”

Elegant and acerbic, Leffingwell had been chief curator and program director at PS1 a former elementary school in Queens, N.Y., that was turned into an exhibition space for contemporary art. It is now affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art.

Alanna Heiss, PS1’s founding director, described Leffingwell as “a champion of artists who had very extreme visions and who, through his understanding … could form convincing and tantalizing exhibitions.”

Over the years, Leffingwell curated exhibitions on alternative filmmaker Jack Smith, painter Michael Tracy and minimalist sculptor John McCracken.

He also wrote extensively. From 1989 to 2009, more than 400 of Leffingwell’s reviews and critical essays appeared in the influential magazine Art in America.

“He was very much part of the art world,” said Elizabeth C. Baker, the magazine’s former editor. “He wrote about the very well known and the equally obscure, all with equal enthusiasm.”

Leffingwell also wrote and contributed to books, including volumes on photographer Joe Deal and conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner.

Born in Sharon, Pa., on Dec. 3, 1941, Leffingwell attended American University in Washington, D.C., and received a master’s degree in art history from the University of Cincinnati.

He immersed himself in the art community of Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. The last show he curated at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery was a tribute to George Herms, an assemblage artist he had known for nearly 30 years. As Herms’ long-ago neighbor in Topanga Canyon, Leffingwell had helped the artist winnow through years’ worth of junk he’d collected as raw material for his pieces.

In 1992, he also organized “LAX: The Los Angeles Exhibition,” a mega-show involving seven museums and galleries that was intended to kick off an ongoing series of collaborations.

After leaving Los Angeles, Leffingwell returned to New York, although he spent enough time in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to be listed by Art in America as the magazine’s Brazil correspondent.

He is survived by his brother Tom.

Twitter: @schawkins