Calvin Tomkins was a celebrated staff writer for The New Yorker, contributing to the magazine for more than six decades. He wrote his first fiction piece in 1958 and his first nonfiction piece in 1962, becoming one of the most influential art writers of his generation. His profile subjects included Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Philip Johnson, Julia Child, Georgia O’Keeffe, Leo Castelli, Frank Stella, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Damien Hirst, Richard Serra, Jasper Johns, Vija Celmins, David Hammons, Pipilotti Rist, Peter Doig, Chris Ofili, Ed Ruscha and Kerry James Marshall. From 1980 to 1988, he wrote the magazine’s Art World column. Before joining The New Yorker, he served as a general editor at Newsweek.

Tomkins authored more than a dozen books, including The Bride and the Bachelors, Merchants and Masterpieces, Living Well Is the Best Revenge, Off the Wall, Duchamp: A Biography, and Lives of the Artists. A revised edition of his Duchamp biography was released in 2014, and The Lives of Artists, a six‑volume anthology of his profiles, was published in 2019.

A longtime resident of Newport, Rhode Island — the starting point of The Great Elephant Migration in 2024 — Calvin offered his support to the project before he died. The Migration was honored to have his encouragement, a gesture that reflected his lifelong commitment to artists, creative innovation and the power of cultural storytelling.

As he wrote with characteristic wit and warmth, “As Chairman of the International Social, Athletic, and Philosophical Society of Heffalumps, I salute our fellow Pachyderms on their Historic Grand Migration across America.”

His legacy continues to shape the way we understand art, influence and the individuals who expand the world’s imagination.