Jill Johnstons literary career commenced in 1955, when she began writing criticism for The Dance Observer and Art News. After migrating to the fledgling Village Voice in 1959, Johnston emerged as a champion of avant-garde dance and art, covering seminal performances of the Judson Dance Theater, Happenings, the Fluxus movement, and other cutting-edge events. In Art News she reviewed painting and sculpture shows between 1959 and 1965.     Johnstons writing changed dramatically in the late 1960s, when she adopted a daring, experimental style that paid tribute to both Dada and Gertrude Stein. Remaining Dance Journal in title only, Johnstons weekly column in the Village Voice chronicled a period of revolutionary change and upheaval in American culture. Equal parts diaristic confessional and political diatribe, Dance Journal announced a new model of critical engagement with the world at large. By way of her enormously popular column, Johnston became a leading voice of second-wave feminism, the first woman to announce her sexual orientation in the mass media, and the celebrated author of Marmalade Me (1971), Lesbian Nation (1973), and Gullibles Travels (1974).     By the late 1970s, Johnstons relationship with the Village Voice had all but dissolved, and she turned her attentions inward, publishing two volumes of probing autobiography in quick succession, Motherbound (1983), and Paper Daughter (1985). At this same time, Johnston reinvented herself as a critic, becoming a regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review and Art in America. Her incisive studies of the work of Jasper Johns, which first appeared in the pages of Art in America, became the basis for her controversial book, Jasper Johns: Privileged Information, published in 1996.     Throughout the 1990s, Johnston continued to pen art, dance, and cultural criticism for various publications, while witnessing both collections and reprints of her earlier writings, including Secret Lives in Art (1994), Admission Accomplished (1998), and Marmalade Me (1998) revised and expanded. She also began extensive research on her third volume of autobiography, which illuminates Johnstons long-obscured ties to her father, a celebrated English bell founder, and the introduction of carillons to North America. Entitled Carillon: A Tale of English Secrets, American Money, and the Making of Big Bells, this ambitious project couples intimate self-exploration with broad cultural historyforthcoming in 2006.   Johnstons archive consist of 80 boxes (12x10x16), primarily manuscripts, drafts, correspondence and research material. All material has been categorized, organized and inventoried. An archival inventory book is available. Please contact George Minkoff (B, MS) at (413) 528-4575 and/or minkoff@bcn.net Below its table of content.