Not many museum directors have the opportunity Dean Sobel has—which is nothing short of the chance to rewrite a chapter of American art history.
As the first director of the Clyfford Still Museum, set to open in Denver on Nov. 18, Mr. Sobel will be reintroducing a first-generation Abstract Expressionist who abruptly severed his ties to the commercial art world in 1951 and rarely showed or sold his works after that. A few museums own some of his works—massive canvases of ragged swaths of black and a primary color that resemble rawhide—but his last large exhibition was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1979-80. Nearly 95% of Still’s output has been locked away for decades. At the Museum of Modern Art’s Abstract Expressionist exhibition earlier this year, which had roomfuls of works by Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, Still was represented by one painting.
Mr. Sobel, who has spent the past six years studying the hidden trove—825 paintings and 1,575 works on paper—is convinced that Still is not only a giant of Abstract Expressionism, but also the first of the breed. “We are going head to head with Rothko, Pollock, de Kooning and Newman,” he says. “The goal for us is to put Still back in, to show the greatness of him and that he was the great innovator of the movement. He creates Abstract Expressionism before all the others.”
Judith H. Dobrzynski
Wall Street Journal
Slow Painting 
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October 15, 2011 at 1:47 am
Peter Samis
Correction: The article states that “his last large exhibition was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1979-80.” In fact, was a comprehensive Still retrospective, which also traveled to Europe, was co-organized by the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1992. Each museum was bequeathed something on the order of 30 canvases by Still from all periods of his career–iconoclastic gifts born of his antipathy to the New York art world and his sense that these two museums, then located outside the mainstream, would honor his achievement and legacy. One of the conditions of these gifts was that the paintings donated would never be exhibited in the same gallery with the works of any other artist. Still insisted his work must stand alone, on its own terms. The new Denver museum is the ultimate expression of this desire–and demand.