Doon Arbus is an American writer and journalist. She is the elder daughter of actor Allan Arbus and photographer Diane Arbus. She was 26 when her mother committed suicide, at which time she became responsible for the management of her mother's estate. She has authored or contributed to five books on Diane Arbus's work, including An Aperture Monograph and Revelations. She has also organized numerous photographic exhibitions in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Jeu de Paume, among other institutions. As a freelance journalist in the mid-1960s, alongside other writers like Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, and Robert Benton, she contributed to the New York Herald Tribune's Sunday supplement, New York, one of the earliest proponents of New Journalism. Her articles also appeared in Rolling Stone, The Nation, and Cheetah. Her 1966 article "James Brown Is Out of Sight" was among the first profiles of the R&B legend and is included in The James Brown Reader. Arbus was a longtime collaborator of Richard Avedon, with whom she coauthored the books Alice in Wonderland: The Forming of a Company, the Making of a Play and Avedon: The Sixties. Her play, Third Floor, Second Door on the Right, was produced at the Cherry Lane Theatre by the 2003 New York International Fringe Festival. Her first novel is The Caretaker.
Published Work
Selected Articles and Criticism
“James Brown Is Out of Sight,” New York/The Sunday Herald Tribune Magazine, 1966
“The Man in the Paper Suit: James Rosenquist,” New York/The Sunday World Journal Tribune Magazine,
“In Person: The Mothers of Invention,” Cheetah, 1967
“How Fat Alice Lost 12 Stone and Found Happiness, God, and the Chance of a Husband,” The London Sunday Times Magazine, 1969
“The Autobiography of Michael J. Pollard,” Cheetah, 1971
“Diane Arbus Photographer,” Ms. Magazine, 1972
“Walker Evans: Allusions to a Presence,” The Nation, 1978
“The Collector: Photographer Peter Beard’s Wild Life and Times,” Rolling Stone, 1978
Books
Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph. New York: Aperture, 1972
Alice in Wonderland: The Forming of a Company, the Making of a Play. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973
