Virginia Wageman, 62, renown art editor, critic, author
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
Virginia Wageman, former art critic for The Honolulu Advertiser, author of two guide books to the Hawaiian Islands and a nationally recognized art editor, died Thursday after a long illness.
She was 62.
WAGEMAN
Her family said she died at St. Francis Hospice of brain cancer, the illness that had caused her to relinquish her position at The Advertiser in 2002.
Wanda Adams, who was features editor when Wageman was hired in 1999, said last night that Wageman was among the best hires she had made.
"To find someone in Honolulu who is both qualified to judge art and to write about it was a rarity," she said. "Virginia very quickly established her credentials here and developed an appreciative audience among Hawai'i art lovers."
Wageman was born Virginia Carter Farley in Jersey City, N.J. in 1941. She graduated from Princeton High School and from Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
In the mid-1960s, she moved to Honolulu, worked for the University of Hawai'i Press and married James Wageman. In 1968 they moved to the East Coast.
From 1971 to 1981, she worked as editor of publications at the Princeton University Art Museum. In 1982 she was appointed editor and writer at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. She was awarded a Smithsonian Commendation for exceptional service to the museum.
Later she returned to Princeton, where she did freelance editorial work for university presses, for New York publishers of art history books, and for museums including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
In 1989 she became publications director for the College Art Association, a national association of artists and art historians.
She was founding president of the Association of Art Book Editors and the author of a style guide for art editors, which she wrote for the Smithsonian Institution Press.
In 1996 she and her husband returned to Hawai'i, where she continued her freelance editing work and her writing.
As art critic at The Advertiser, she encouraged the development and appreciation of local artists and craftspeople.
She was working on her third guidebook to Hawai'i when she died.
In addition to her skills as a writer and her appreciation of art and its history, Wageman held a certificate for teaching English as a second language, and had taught at Princeton, in Paris and in Kona.
James Wageman said his wife's many friends will remember her for her wit, her spirited enjoyment of life and her devotion to family.
Those close to her also will remember her for the courage with which she faced her illness, he said.
In addition to her husband, Virginia Wageman is survived by three children, Melissa Alpan of Honolulu, Robinson Wageman of San Francisco and Sarah Yasutake of Portland, Ore.; two sisters, Keven Richardson of Phoenix and Charlotte Cleary-Flood of Doylestown, Pa.; and brother, James Christopher Farley Jr. of Arlington, Va.
A memorial service will be held Saturday at 2:30 p.m. in the Nu'uanu home of Charlotte Walters, 72 Dowsett Ave.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the National Brain Tumor Foundation (www.braintumor.org or 1-800-934-2873) or to the Nature Conservancy of Hawai'i.
