The Obituary at last: Joy Colby: A woman of critical influence, who covered art for The Detroit News for 60 years. by Michael H. Hodges Detroit News Fine Arts Writer Members of Detroit’s art community are remembering longtime Detroit News art critic Joy Hakanson Colby as a reporter of uncommon influence, probing but fair, and a passionate advocate for Michigan artists. Colby, who covered Detroit’s art scene for 60 years, died July 2 in St. Louis after a brief illness. She was 88. “She was really great until a few months ago,” says her daughter Sarah. Colby, born in Detroit on Aug. 26, 1925, joined The News right out of college in 1946 and retired in 2006. Named art critic in 1947, Colby reported on decades of artistic ferment played out against the backdrop of Detroit’s sagging fortunes. “She did so much — oh my God, so much — for this community,” said painter and College for Creative Studies professor Gilda Snowden. “She put all of us on the map.” Admirers say Colby was quick to recognize the significance of the late-’60s Cass Corridor movement, covered black artists at a time when that was rare and was an early supporter of the Heidelberg Project. Colby earned an master of fine arts degree from Wayne State University, but quickly decided, she often said, that she lacked the stuff to be an artist. She did have the stuff to be a critic, however, and left a lasting and indelible mark. Famously unflappable, Colby’s mild persona masked the steel beneath. “When I first met her, she seemed like such a teetotaler,” said artist Niagara. “I thought, ‘My paintings are never going to fly with her.’ But she was so hip inside. She was, like, in a disguise.” Niagara laughs. “She was so hard core.” Marty Fischhoff, a former Detroit News assistant managing editor, recalls a “diminutive, soft-spoken woman, but one who could really hold her own in an argument. She was ferocious in defending her beat. You didn’t want to go up against Joy as an editor, that’s for sure.” Her knowledge, Fischhoff added, was rich and deep. “She really understood the art world and was rooted in art history. Nobody knew the local art scene as well as Joy did.” Colby was on the scene in 1971 when earthworks artist Michael Heizer, at the behest of Detroit Institute of Arts curator Sam Wagstaff, dragged a 35-ton granite slab across the DIA’s north lawn, cutting a jagged channel through the manicured grass. When a livid Arts Commission voted to junk the work, Colby wondered, “Has a neat lawn become more important than aesthetics at the DIA?” Colby also chronicled the emergence of black artists into the art-world mainstream, writing at length about Charles McGee’s Gallery 7, one of the first venues in the country devoted to African-American art. And it was her great good luck to be at the museum the morning Mayor Coleman A. Young sent city guards to seize the DIA’s account books, part of a 1984 investigation into allegations of lavish spending by then-director Fred Cummings. Fifteen years later, Colby would aggressively cover the tempest that blew up when Graham Beal, the DIA’s newly arrived director, padlocked a show by local artist Jef Bourgeau, “Art Until Now,” three days into its run. Beal cited its potential to offend both religious and racial sensitivities, though many in the community called it censorship. One of the 12 installations, “Bathtub Jesus,” featured a naked doll wearing a bank tellers finger protector for a penis. Another employed a racial epithet in its title. But covering the story became a challenge in itself. “Bourgeau’s show has become such a hot-button issue,” Colby wrote, “that institute director Graham W.J. Beal barred a Detroit News reporter and photographer from the museum on Monday when Bourgeau arrived to take it down... Beal did the same thing,” she pointedly noted, “the day he closed the exhibit. DIA Chief Operating Officer Annmarie Erickson handled museum public relations at the time and says of the flap, “My recollection is Joy gave all of us a little heck — Graham, myself, and the curator who organized the show. She was very pointed in her questions. She was rigorous, witty and entirely devoted to the museum.” Still, Colby kept her sense of humor, later writing, “Talk about a rough entry. Apollo 13 had it easier than Graham Beal,” referring to the disaster-plagued space mission. “In five months, Detroit heaped five years of grief on Beal’s head.” Colby won numerous awards in her long career, capped by an invitation to sign one of the Scarab Club’s ceiling beams, where she now rubs elbows, figuratively speaking, with Diego Rivera and Margaret Bourke-White. Colby is survived by daughters Sarah and Lisa, both of St. Louis, and Katy, of Brooklyn, New York, as well as grandchildren Celeste Gardner and Lucia Soraci. Colby’s husband, Raymond, died in 2008. Colby did not want a memorial. If anyone wants to honor her memory, the family asks that they contribute to the DIA.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 06:20:42 +0000
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