Eila Kokkinen

While a graduate student in art history at the University of Chicago, Eila was art editor at Chicago Review from 1956-1958. After the University suppressed the Fall 1958 issue, Eila moved to New York, where she met Herbert Huncke, Ginsberg, Orlovsky and other poets of the Beat community. Intrigued by Huncke’s unique writing, she began to type his manuscripts, and this led to a lasting friendship with him. Eila’s career in art includes work as Assistant Curator for drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, research in 19th-century French drawings at the Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard, and as curator at the MIT art gallery, Cambridge, MA.