about the author
Michael McCue lived in Tryon, North Carolina from 1983 through 1993, spending his first six months
in the cottage of author and artist Margaret Morley (1858-1923). He has been active
in the non-profit Upstairs Gallery where he curated shows on calligraphy and on
industrial design. He also helped initiate the Carolinas Photography Biennial and
served as first co-juror. McCue was proprietor of PhotoGraphia, a commercial art
gallery in the early '90s which focused on contemporary photography by North
Carolina and out-of-state artists. Presently he has written eight articles for the
New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture published by University of North Carolina
Press.
He has served as citizen panelist for National Endowment for the Arts in Washington. He is a board member of American Historical Print Collectors Society, has written articles for their publication about 19th century artists and printmakers, and served as chair of that organization's jury for the annual Ewell L. Newman Book Prize. He is currently doing research on Louis K. Harlow (1850-1913) preparatory to publishing on that Boston artist as well. Mr. McCue studied art history at Harvard College, and has presented a number of lectures on art and design.
In 2000 he authored the exhibition catalog for a survey of the oeuvre of Tryon modernist Homer Ellertson at Tryon Fine Arts Center, the first monograph on that artist. McCue in 2001 was guest curator at Asheville Art Museum for Lawrence Mazzanovich: Impressionist Paintings of Tryon which brought 16 landscapes from private collections, galleries, and museums for the first retrospective at that institution of a Tryon painter. His publication for that exhibition (available from Asheville Art Museum) is the only monograph about Lawrence Mazzanovich (1871-1959) as well.
He was the historical researcher and a co-curator of the 2001 exhibition "Tryon Artists 1892-1942: The First Fifty Years" at The Upstairs Gallery in Tryon, NC. In 2002 he curated "Paris & Tryon: The Art of George C. Aid (1872-1938)" at The Tryon Fine Arts Center. In 2004 he co-chaired the center's show "The Tryon Toy Makers and Wood Carvers."
Mr. McCue has served as trustee for North Carolina Humanities Council. He resides in Asheville and there has served as chair of its library board.