Danilowitz, Brenda

PERSONAL: Born in Kimberley, South Africa; daughter of Jack Frank (an attorney and professional cricket player) and Hannah Bergman; married Sorrel Danilowitz; children: Guy, Gideon.

ADDRESSES: Home—Orange, CT. Office—Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, 88 Beacon Rd., Bethany, CT 06524.

CAREER: Curator and art historian. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, faculty member, 1980–86; Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, CT, curator, 1990–.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, and author of introduction) Anni Albers: Selected Writings on Design, University Press of New England (Hanover, NH), 2000.

The Prints of Josef Albers: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1915–1976, Hudson Hills Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Contributor to Between Union and Liberation: Women Artists in South Africa 1910–1994, Ashgate Publishers (Burlington, VT), 2005. Contributor to periodicals, including African Arts, and to Web sites, including Reece Galleries.

SIDELIGHTS: Brenda Danilowitz works as an art historian and curator specializing in the study of African art. She has also taught art history at a number of universities, including the University of the Witwatersrand, Yale University, and the University of Connecticut. Since 1990, she has also served as chief curator at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes and preserves the art of German artists Josef and Anni Albers. Danilowitz was the editor of the 2000 book Anni Albers: Selected Writings on Design. The next year, she also wrote The Prints of Josef Albers: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1915–1976. This book features a selection of works by Josef Albers, who studied and taught at the famed Bauhaus. Danilowitz accompanies Albers's works with a detailed biographical essay about his life and career.

Critics responded positively to The Prints of Josef Albers. Many appreciated the book's thorough coverage of Albers's career. "This is the first work to fully catalog and examine his graphic contributions and is thus essential to complete any collection on Albers," wrote Library Journal contributor Kraig Binkowski. Other reviewers appreciated the quality of Danilowitz's biography of the artist. One Publishers Weekly contributor concluded that Danilowitz has "written a lucid introductory essay on the evolution of Albers's oeuvre."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, December, 2001, M. Tulokas, review of Anni Albers: Selected Writings on Design, p. 671.

Library Journal, April 1, 2002, Kraig Binkowski, review of The Prints of Josef Albers: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1915–1976, p. 99.

Publishers Weekly, January 28, 2002, review of The Prints of Josef Albers, p. 284.