Proposed Art Center Curator Dies in Boston

John Lloyd (Jack) Taylor, who had been named curator of the San Diego Art Center proposed for downtown’s Balboa Theatre, was found dead in a Boston hotel room on Friday. He was 49.

According to the Suffolk County medical examiner’s office, the cause of Taylor’s death is yet to be determined. There was no evidence of foul play. An associate of Taylor’s told The Times that Taylor had a history of pancreas and liver ailments.

Taylor reportedly had checked into Boston’s Copley Plaza Hotel, where his body was found, en route to a holiday in Toronto. According to Sebastian (Lefty) Adler, the former La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art director who now heads the San Diego Art Center, Taylor had been on the East Coast researching the Art Center’s second scheduled exhibition, to follow its 1986 opening. The show is to be an anniversary re-creation of New York’s post-World War II “9th Street” show, in which such American artists as Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg came to the attention of the art world.

“It’s an immense loss--not only of a friend but a colleague,” said Adler, who had known Taylor for 20 years. “This sets us back on the 9th Street show, certainly, but I’m in no hurry to name (Taylor’s) replacement. I’ll get by with guest curators, and I’ll be looking internationally for a permanent curator.”

In September, Taylor left his position as director of the Fine Arts Galleries at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee to help Adler plan the San Diego Art Center. While Adler’s specialty is constructivist art, design and architecture, Taylor’s was abstract expressionism (the New York school) with a sub-speciality in painter Arshile Gorky.

Curatorial Strengths

In an interview last year, Taylor described his curatorial strengths as “very post-World War II, almost exclusively American. Lefty can address issues of architecture and design in areas I cannot, and my strengths lay more in the (aesthetic) area of man’s inhumanity to man and the urban environment.”

Prior to heading the University of Wisconsin Fine Art Galleries, Taylor was curator of the Sidney Kohl Collection of Milwaukee and Palm Beach; director of the Art History Galleries at the University of Wisconsin; director of exhibitions and collections at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and director of the Art Center in Madison, Wis.

At the Milwaukee museum, he organized a major 1970 show on Alberto Giacommetti (“The Complete Graphics”); a 1969 show called “A Plastic Presence,” which was among the first U.S. exhibitions of plastic art, and in 1968 “Options,” one of the first museum shows to deal with participatory art.

Taylor also organized the first unified exhibit of sculptor George Segal’s pastel drawings, fragments and sculptures (“The Private World of George Segal,” 1973, Art History Galleries) and he presented a key exhibit of photographer William Wegman’s work (“A Retrospective Exhibition,” 1979, Fine Arts Galleries).

Survivors include Taylor’s mother, Grace Taylor, and a sister, Patricia Finn, both of Lansing, Kan.