Primary Structures in 1966 defined minimalism and was covered first as fashion news

Evidence

Primary Structures, the defining show of the minimal-systematic-ABC art tendency, opened to widespread excitement at the Jewish Museum in April 1966. The corrective to The Responsive Eye, organized by thirty-one-year-old Trinidadian curator Kynaston McShine with the assistance of twenty-nine-year-old critic Lucy Lippard, Primary Structures was so Now that the first New York Times review was provided by fashion reporter Charlotte Curtis. The exhibition was expected to be trendsetting, Curtis wrote. Sources considered it “unquestionably the zowiest (the with-it set’s ultimate accolade).” The Times’s new art critic, thirty-eight-year-old Hilton Kramer, more soberly deemed Primary Structures “historic” and “the first comprehensive glimpse of a style that promises—or perhaps one should say threatens—to become our period style.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1018

Categorization

• CANDY: A defining art show got its first Times review from the fashion reporter because it was ‘the zowiest’ — fun cocktail fact.