Allan Frumkin (1927–2002) was an American art dealer with galleries in Chicago and New York City in the second half of the 20th century.[1]
Frumkin was born in Chicago in 1927.[2] He attended public schools[3] and graduated from the University of Chicago.[4] He studied the sociology of architecture briefly at Cornell University and The New School for Social Research in New York City.[3]
Frumkin opened the Allan Frumkin Gallery in Chicago in 1952 and a gallery with the same name in New York City in 1959.[2] In 1979 he joined forces with William Struve and the Chicago gallery was renamed Frumkin-Struve, before closing in 1980.[2][4][5] The New York gallery was renamed Frumkin/Adams in 1988.[5] Frumkin retired and closed the New York gallery in 1995[5] but continued to work as a private art dealer for most of the rest of his life.[4]
"In the early 1950s, his Chicago gallery was instrumental in introducing the European Surrealists."[2] He promoted the work of Henri Matisse, Max Beckmann, Robert Arneson and Richard Diebenkorn, among others.[2][4] Beginning in 1976 and lasting for 31 issues, Frumkin published a newsletter with profiles of gallery artists in their studios.[5]
He was also an art collector—382 of his Beckmann prints were donated to the Saint Louis Art Museum in December 2002.[2][4]
Frumkin was married to Jean Martin Frumkin, who died in 2019.[6][7]
The Allan Frumkin Gallery records are housed at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.[5]
A professorship "to provide high-level interdisciplinary scholarship on the connections between visual arts and society" was established at the University of Chicago in 2005, through a $3 million gift from Frumkin's family. The faculty chair is named the Allan and Jean Frumkin Professorship in the Visual Arts in the Committee on Social Thought.[3]