The Modigliani Initiative was founded to support the artist’s legacy by taking a fact-based approach to documenting the artist’s oeuvre and recapturing the stories of the individuals who inspired his portraits.
Our mission is to become a centralized and publicly accessible resource for information about Modigliani, his work, and his artistic milieu.
The core values that inspire our mission are in-depth research, collaboration, and cultivating continuity of scholarship to ensure Modigliani’s legacy for posterity.
Founders and Board
Leslie Koot, M.A., AAA
Leslie is an art historian and independent provenance researcher, specializing in 20th century European modern art. She is a Certified Member of the Appraisers Association of America, and holds a Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Connoisseurship, and History of the Art Market from Christie's Education. While trained as an art historian, her desire to interact more closely with physical works of art led her to become a Certified Member of the American Association of Appraisers. In this capacity, she has been involved with the appraisal of extensive private art collections and has collaborated on expert reports for major art litigation cases, including those related to the Salander-O'Reilly and Knoedler galleries. In 2016 she embarked on an ongoing research project to reconstitute the records of the New Gallery in New York, which was in operation from 1922 to 1928. While now nearly forgotten, the gallery nevertheless was an important promoter of European modern art, and pivotal in introducing Modigliani’s paintings to America’s most prominent collectors. A research paper, as well as a website dedicated to the New Gallery are in progress. She is a longstanding member of the National Arts Club in New York, and served on its Exhibitions Committee for seven years. In this capacity, she hosted an event about Modigliani in 2017 at the NAC’s historic Grand Gallery, which was attended by over 150 participants.
Julie Martin, M.A.
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Julie Martin graduated from Radcliffe College and received a Masters degree in Russian Studies from Columbia University. She joined the staff of the foundation, Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), in 1967, and over the years worked closely with Billy Klüver on projects, activities, and publications. Currently she is the Director of E.A.T. She is co-author with Billy Klüver of the book Kiki's Paris, a history of the artists’ community in Montparnasse from 1880 to 1930, which appeared in English in 1989, and later in French, German, Swedish, and Spanish editions. She also collaborated with him on the research for his book A Day with Picasso, published in the 1990’s, in six languages. She and Klüver also edited and annotated Kiki's Memoirs, in 1996 and the French edition, Kiki Souvenirs, in 1999.
Advisors
Alessandro De Stefani
Alessandro De Stefani is an independent scholar and art historian whose interests focus on the art movements of early 20th-century Paris. He holds a degree from the University of Bologna. He has published articles on Matisse and Cubism, the strategies of avant-garde criticism, and various aspects of Modigliani's oeuvre.
Julia May Boddewyn, M.A.
Julia has worked in the New York art world since 1987. After managing private art collections for over two decades, she became a full-time researcher, specializing in the provenance research of early 20th century modern art. She contributed an essay on the first U.S. collectors of Giorgio de Chirico to the exhibition catalogue De Chirico and America (Hunter College Art Galleries, 1996); the exhaustive chronology of Pablo Picasso’s artwork exhibited in the U.S. between 1910 and 1957 to the exhibition catalogue Picasso and American Art (Whitney Museum of American Art, 2006); and original research for the exhibition Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014–15). Her essay, “Valentine Dudensing and the Valentine Gallery: Selling America on the School of Paris,” is included in Pioneers of the Global Art Market: Paris-Based Dealer Networks, 1850–1950, Christel H. Force, ed. (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, London and New York, 2020). She maintains a website dedicated to the Valentine Gallery, a center for modern art in New York from 1926 to 1947, about which she is currently writing a book. Since 2019, she has been at the Arshile Gorky Foundation where she helped finalize the comprehensive catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work which was recently published online. She received an M.A. in Art History from Hunter College, New York, in 1997.
Didier Schulmann
Didier Schulmann has been a retired General Curator of French Heritage since 2020. He is the former Director of the Kandinsky Library of the National Museum of Modern Art (MNAM) at the Centre Pompidou, where he curated exhibitions on Marc Chagall, Raoul Dufy, and Albert Marquet, among others. Since 2022, he has been preparing a biography of Arthur Pfannstiel, the author of the first Modigliani catalogue raisonné, which was published in 1929, and an active looter and trafficker of works stolen in Paris during the German occupation, between 1940 and 1944.