Magazine and book designer Erwin Glusker has had a long career, including establishing the lavish look for American Heritage, a bimonthly publication about America’s mass-market success during the heyday of magazine publishing in the mid-20th century. died at home on August 30th. Located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. he was 98 years old.
The death was confirmed by daughter Anne Glasker.
Beginning in 1954, American Heritage, whose visual identity Mr. Glusker defines as art director, has become a regular in dens nationwide, using the tone of a vibrant history buff news magazine to create a kind of documentary. became its predecessor. A series currently being produced regularly for public television by filmmaker Ken Burns.
It started as a magazine that grew into a company publishing books on subjects such as the Civil War and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A second magazine, Horizon, dedicated to arts and culture, was also packaged and marketed to appeal to public tastes. A rare dictionary with many illustrations.
It was all led by Glusker, a confident man with a commanding voice and a sharp sense of humor who was described as generous, enthusiastic and encouraging by those who worked with him. It was Mr.
Walter Barnard, who joined American Heritage in 1962, designed a book on the history of World War I, and has since done design and art direction for many famous magazines, said, “The good old art director. ‘ said. and newspapers.
Barnard said in a telephone interview that American Heritage staff working with United Press International read Kennedy’s book, “Four Days,” published in January 1964, less than two months after the assassination. I remembered how I raced under a tight deadline to produce.
“Irwin was the driving force,” Barnard said.
Most of Glusker’s work had nothing to do with news. He filled the pages of American Heritage with prints, lithographs, and full-color reproductions of paintings, creating a magazine worth continuing to read. The subscription fee is 6 issues a year and he is $10 (over $100 in 2022).
“It was largely due to him that it was so successful,” said author Richard F. Snow, longtime editor of American Heritage.
Erwin Glusker was born in Brooklyn on June 8, 1924. His father, Hyman Gruska, worked in a shoe factory. His mother, Ida (Schmitt) Glusker, was a homemaker and tailor who supported her family on a piecemeal basis.
After graduating from Boys’ High School in Brooklyn, Mr. Glusker attended Cooper Union, but his studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the Army shortly after turning 18. In 1944, in Wisconsin, he held his soldier’s art show at Truax Field, The Capital Times of Madison reported.
After completing his military service, Mr. Glusker returned to New York and graduated from the Cooper Union in 1948.
In a 1986 memo, he described his career as working “in various San Francisco and New York design dungeons.”
A chance encounter completely changed his professional trajectory. As Mr. Glasker was telling the story to his daughter, he ran into one of three Time Inc. veterans while having dinner with his former boss. The American State and Local Historical Society plans to transform what was once a dry historical journal into a mainstream one.
New owners James Parton, Oliver Jensen and Joseph J. Thorndike Jr. needed a designer. Glasker’s former boss suggested it.
“My whole career,” Ms. Ann Glusker said, “had hinged on someone meeting someone at a restaurant,” her father told her.
Glusker initially kept the job he had and worked on American Heritage on the side. His first job was designing direct his mailing material used to attract subscribers.
The revamped magazine, whose first editor was Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bruce Catton, and whose first issue included a Union general falsely accused of treason and an East Coast steamship line An article was published about Time to oversee every aspect of its design. Within 10 years, it had 300,000 subscribers.
“It was an opportunity to play the game I love with the players I love,” Glasker told American Heritage. 2004 article commemorating the magazine’s 50th anniversary.
The company’s books included the 1961 Special Group Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War.” Mr. Glusker was his director of art for the book.
He remained with American Heritage until 1969, when American Heritage was sold to McGraw-Hill. (Later acquired by Forbes, which discontinued his print edition in 2007 and sold a majority stake to a group that included Edwin S. Grosvenor, current editor-in-chief. American Heritage website has an archive of older issues and also publishes new articles. )
With the sale to McGraw-Hill, Mr. Glusker left to become the Art Director of Life magazine. According to Ann Glasker, the switch from the leisurely pace of American Heritage to the scramble of news cycles prompted him to start smoking again.
Life as a weekly magazine was coming to an end, but Glusker’s time had no shortage of serious topics, including one of the Vietnam War’s most notorious atrocities. A note from 1986.
“I dealt with Woodstock,” he continued. There are also the shootings in Kent, the first moon landing, and Norman his mailer “eight billion words” on that subject, he added, cramming them around oddly shaped ads. .
After Life’s first iteration went out of print in 1972, Mr. Glusker launched a design business, producing books in collaboration with Nancy Sinatra, Charles Krato, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and others.
In the 1980s, he returned to magazine work as a gourmet art director. The job was a perfect fit, allowing his Mr. Glusker, a die-hard foodie, to test his kitchen pests and act as a mentor to young people like famed food photographer Romulo Yanes.
In addition to his daughter, Gluskar has a son, Peter, and four grandchildren. His wife, Lillian (Goldman) Glusker, whom he met while he was a copy editor for American Heritage, died on July 30.
Although the print work Mr. Glusker worked on has disappeared, his art lives on in physical form in at least two works outside the realm of publication.
One is “The Rowers,” a bronze sculpture that has stood outside the Rove Boathouse in Central Park since 1968.
Another is a black-and-white, poster-style calendar depicting the phases of the moon commissioned by the New York Museum of Modern Art design store, calling it a “beloved classic.” The 2023 edition has arrived.
Alain Delaquérière contributed to the research.