became the education director for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union Local No. 25, the union that represented some of the Triangle Factory workers. Poyntz helped found the Communist Party of America in 1919, and then became head of the Labor Research Department of the Rand School of Social Science, a school teaching communist and socialist ideals. In addition, she gave speeches and wrote articles for The Nation. Although never elected, Poyntz ran for office on the Communist ticket four times. (In a 1928 bid for attorney general of New York, she had more than 10,000 polling votes.) Having traveled to Russia several times, and even once to China, it was in 1934 that Poyntz apparently began working for the Soviet OGPU (a KGB predecessor), sending back whatever specific information she could about the United States. But on a 1936 trip to Moscow, she witnessed Stalin’s “great purge” of dissenters, which ultimately resulted in the deaths of an estimated 10 million people, including individuals she knew and cared about. Her own loyalty to the party came into question, and by the time she returned to America that loyalty was indeed gone. She told friends she wanted nothing more to do with Communism and revealed that she feared for her own safety. Whittaker Chambers, the TIME magazine editor who testified in 1948 about his years as a Communist, broke with the party around the same time. “For a year I lived in hiding, sleeping by day and watching through the night with gun or revolver within easy reach. That was what underground communism could do to one man in the peaceful United States in the year 1938.” Part of his fear was due to the disappearance of his friend, Poyntz, who in June of 1937 left her room in the American Women’s Association Clubhouse on West 57th Street and never returned, although it took authorities and the media six months to take notice of her disappearance. Eventually, Poyntz’s lawyer came forth with some information: She had been missing for months but he hoped she might turn up. The New York Times continued to follow the story in the coming months. Carlo Tresca, a fellow Communist Party member, revealed he knew Poyntz was with Sancho Epstein, an editor who was her old friend and perhaps lover. Epstein was an “agent 74
provocateur” working with Soviet secret police, Tresca said, who most certainly took her body to Moscow or disposed of it along the way (Tresca himself was murdered in 1943). Poyntz’s body was never found, despite rumors of it being buried in Dutchess County. The Poyntz case remains unsolved, and many of her colleagues went on to renounce Communism and have productive lives and careers. As for Virginia Hall, she passed away in 1982, not a famous war hero, but as an elderly woman who loved to tell stories of her days as a spy. But Hall may still become famous: Her story is currently being developed for a movie.
ART WORLD Continued from Page 33
agents of art. We’re trying to sell it—to promote it for curators and critics. We’re doing that for every artist we work with.” In addition to a robust exhibition program, Goldyne advises those seeking to begin an art collection as well as develop an existing one, “I try to educate them about new ideas and new artists, which artist has a solid market, and whose work is likely to increase in value over time.” Central to her effort is her relationship with the artists she represents—the commitment is long term, intense, and serious. The first step is following the career of an artist. She says, “I had been working in the art world for over 10 years and watched certain careers over time. I had a wish list of people I wanted to work with before I started Altman Siegel. If you are a good gallery, when you represent the artist you allow them to make art while you take care of the business aspects. The gallery handles the nuts-and-bolts of their careers.” After studying and learning about an artist’s work, a director might ask him or her for a studio visit, then decide if the gallery will represent that artist. “The idea is to find people who have potential and promote them,” says Goldyne. She arranges shows in San Francisco, and concurrently might be organizing exhibits for the same artist in another city. To facilitate this, the gallery must be well
connected to museum curators and art dealers around the world. A young gallery often finds younger artists who have a certain amount of experience and can be taken to the next level. A good director recognizes the milestones artists have to reach early in their careers. Goldyne likes to find artists who make past connections, those who reference art history. “It’s not so much about the medium they are working with, but the conceptual ideas. There is a certain rigor in the idea I’m looking for,” what she describes as “…a work that looks good but adds something to academic dialogue, in that it expresses something aesthetically but with an idea that’s new—that it adds to art history in a new way.” Shannon Ebner and Trevor Paglen are two such artists. Ebner, a conceptual artist, sets up staged photographs of words set in landscapes. The viewer reads the word, interprets it, but then is forced to rethink its meaning because of the cues in the landscape surrounding it. Paglen researches and photographs classified military sites and American spy satellites, some of which he captures in blurry form from hundreds of miles away. Comments Goldyne, “The point of his practice is not to give away trade secrets, rather to document distance in all of its permutations: both the distance between his camera and the object he is shooting, and also the distance between what you see and what you know.” There are many reasons why she loves her job, one of which is her relationship with the artists she represents: “You’re relating directly with the artist in a longterm way. It’s an intersection of places where you bring together artists, museums, and collectors. You get to work with artists very closely and see work develop over time. You see the work go from the studio to its final destination … the museum wall or the collector’s wall; you get to see art on its full journey.” See more artwork/images at alum.barnard. edu/magazine
LAST IMAGE: CALL FOR ENTRIES
Do you have an amazing photograph or work of art that you would like to share with fellow alumnae? Please send submissions to David Hopson at dhopson@barnard.edu.