Starr, Sandra Leonard

Art historian and curator Sandra Leonard Starr was the longtime director of the James Corcoran Gallery in Santa Monica, California. She has written extensively on Joseph Cornell, among other topics, and in 1988 she mounted a three-part exhibition on California assemblage art titled, Lost and Found in California: Four Decades of Assemblage Art. The exhibition featured assemblage works by artists active in California from 1940 to 1987, and was held concurrently in three Santa Monica venues from July 16 to December 7, 1988. The exhibition was presented chronologically, beginning with "The First Generation, 1940-1962" at the Corcoran Gallery. The later years were divided into "The Second Generation: The Narrative, 1957-1987" at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, and "The Second Generation: Form and Idea, 1960-1987" at Pence Gallery. The exhibition catalog, considered a significant contribution to scholarship on the history of California art, and assemblage art in particular, was edited by Starr and includes two essays by her: "Assemblage Art: A Pocket History" and "Assemblage Art in California: A Collective Memoir 1940-1969."