Douglas Turnbaugh

Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, 90, Groundbreaking Dance and Arts Critic, Collector, Author, Producer, dies

Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, an advocate of modern dance and a groundbreaking author who rescued and promoted important gay artwork that would have been discarded, died at home in New York City on March 21, 2025. His death was confirmed by his husband Nelson Blair Lee.

Mr. Turnbaugh, a descendant of James Knox Polk, the 11th President of the United States, became an internationally recognized authority on the Ballets Russes after first studying with Ballets Russes teachers in America and Paris with the hope to become a member of Colonel de Basil's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Judged too tall to become a company member, he gave up. "If I couldn't be in the Ballet Russe, I didn't want to dance."

But he didn't give up dance and the Ballets Russes at all. In 2000, he organized and moderated a reunion of 65 original company members as part of a four-day conference in New Orleans on the Ballets Russes which included appearances by those original dancers, performances, and an exhibition of original drop cloths, costumes, and other important original memorabilia. This triumphant event formed the inspiration for the acclaimed 2005 documentary Ballets Russes which Mr. Turnbaugh conceived of and produced. For his work with the Ballets Russes, he was awarded in 1994 the Vaslav Nijinsky Medal in Poland and the Serge Diaghilev Medal in Russia. He was also awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in America. He was elected as an officer of UNESCO's International Dance Council, Paris (Membre Conseiller, Council International de la Dance/UNESCO) and was appointed Chairman of the Vaslav Nijinsky Medal Committee which continues to be awarded to worthy individuals.

Dance remained one of the prime focuses of his life. He became the first dance critic at New York magazine and wrote articles for The Atlantic which served as a platform to promote and gain support for modern dance in America. His passionate articles were instrumental in saving Martha Hill's innovative Modern Dance School at the Julliard School of Music. Miss Hill had the radical idea to teach classical ballet and modern dance together in the same program, which competed with and challenged the reign of the school of Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine, whose sole mission was to dominate ballet and American dance in general.

Mr. Turnbaugh was a friend and supporter of Alvin Ailey and became Executive Director of the Dance Theatre Foundation Inc. for Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre. He also served as President of The American Institute of Choreology, and became Executive Director of various other organizations including Fine Arts Workshop, Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Poetry Society of America, and Musica Reservata. He produced the documentary film Keep Dancing which examined the 90-year careers of dancers Marge Champion and David Saddler and is a study on the process of aging. He also produced Mia, A Dancer's Journey on the life of the ballerina Mia Slavenska as remembered by her daughter. He was a past faculty member at New York University.

In addition to Mr. Turnbaugh's advocacy in the world of dance, he was an early collector and champion of the depiction of homosexual life in fine art. After the suppression of his desires in his youth, he embraced and felt joyously liberated in his sexuality as the nascent gay movement bloomed as the 20th century rolled on.

He was a dedicated fundraiser and attracted support at the birth of the Soho foundation and gallery founded by Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman which was the first to exclusively exhibit fine art of an explicit gay nature. It later evolved into The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, the first of its kind in America. Mr. Turnbaugh served on the Board of Directors of both and wrote many articles in their journal The Archive. His articles on the art of homosexuality were just as passionate as the ones he wrote on dance and were published widely in a variety of periodicals and innovative journals worldwide.

The internationally acclaimed artist Richard Prince, who was a neighbor in Soho, met and befriended Mr. Turnbaugh, a creative friendship that was inspiring and nurturing to both. His collection of Mr. Prince's artworks, ephemera, and correspondence was gathered in an exhibition at the Los Angeles gallery of Edward Cella in 2016 and documented in an accompanying catalog - Richard Prince: The Douglas Blair Turnbaugh Collection (1977-1988).

Mr. Turnbaugh became a friend and collected the work of British artist Duncan Grant, a prime member of the Bloomsbury Group, who had largely fallen from fame into obscurity. His 1987 book, Duncan Grant and the Bloomsbury Group, followed in 1989 by Private: The Erotic Art of Duncan Grant (which showcased a cache of explicit homosexual themed work which the artist kept hidden under his bed in his London studio and gave to Mr. Turnbaugh with the understanding that it would eventually be published), proved to renew interest in the artist and his work.

He encouraged and became a patron of Patrick Angus, a young struggling American artist whose erotic work would have been discarded upon his death in 1992 even though Mr. Turnbaugh had embarked on the first monograph of this art - Strip Show: Paintings by Patrick Angus. Another book, Patrick Angus: Los Angeles Drawings followed soon after. As a result, an artist who would have been largely ignored gained exposure and a dedicated following.

Mr. Turnbaugh also published a series of books documenting his own mostly autobiographical visual art commencing with Beat It (28 Drawings), followed by Cherubim: The Photographs of Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, Freehand: Sketchbook Drawings 1960-Present, and Fragments. He was the star of Refuge, an internationally recognized short film by Melanie Aronson, in which he poignantly mused on his own sexual awakening.

Douglas Blair Turnbaugh was born to Orville Wendelle and Geneva Violet (Blair) Turnbaugh in Lewiston, Idaho on May 17, 1934. He was graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Washington, did graduate work at New York University, and attended Alliance Francaise in Paris. He was married in 1971 in England to Lindsay Geddes and later amicably divorced. He married Nelson Blair Lee in New York City in 2014, who survives him.

In the last years of his life, Mr. Turnbaugh had been concluding work on a biography of Serge Diaghilev with the working title The Quest for Love.

His collection of Ballets Russes related material and personal archives has been donated to the Ballets Russes Special Collection and Archive at the University of Oklahoma. His donation is highly prized for its breadth of material and historic importance, comprising such items as a Princess (Tsarevna) costume designed by Natalia Goncharova from the 1926 production of The Firebird, porcelain figures of Nijinsky, choreology scores, original souvenir programs, photographs, and personal and historic correspondence.