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Home , Barbara Takenaga, Divisionism, Fannie Hillsmith, Helen Frankenthaler, Hyman Bloom, Jazz (Henri Matisse)

expanding ABSTRACTION

new england women painters 1950 to now

APRIL 7 - SEPTEMBER 17, 2017 deCordova Park & Museum

Contents

Introduction 5 Acknowledgements 9 Artists in the Exhibition 10 Expanding Abstraction by Decade 11 1950s & 1960s 12 1970s 22 1980s 36 1990s 48 2000s & 2010s 58 Timeline 65 Statistics 71

Introduction

This online publication is an exten- Narratives of abstract of the sion of the exhibition Expanding Abstraction: post-war period often commence with the New England Women Painters, 1950 to physically and emotively expressive work Now, on view at deCordova Sculpture Park of artists associated with Abstract Expres- and Museum from April 7 to September 17, sionism. Expanding Abstraction focused on 2017. The exhibition presented a vital yet less familiar pathways of abstraction that lesser-known history of abstract painting in developed in advance of or parallel to such New England by showcasing the work of canonical artistic movements. Organized women painters with strong connections to chronologically, the exhibition began with the region. Despite their relative exclusion works by Irene Rice Pereira and Alice Trum- from mainstream and male-dominated con- bull Mason, both prominently recognized in versations on postwar abstraction, these their day for developing modes of geometric artists have made significant contributions and . Pereira was one of to the field. Spanning from the 1950s to the the first to have a solo retro- present, the works in the exhibition broaden spective at a major New York art museum traditions of abstract painting and testify (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1953). to the artists’ unwavering productivity and They were also vocal advocates for non-ob- creative innovation. jective art: Mason was a founding member Expanding Abstraction was drawn pri- of American Abstract Artists (AAA), a group marily from deCordova’s permanent collec- formed in the late 1930s in tion, with select loans from area institutions that provided exhibition venues and enabled and private collections. By foregrounding opportunities for critical discourse of abstrac- diverse painting techniques, processes, and tion. She later served as treasurer (1939), concepts, Expanding Abstraction revealed secretary (1940–45), and president (1959– the complexities of painting in the region and 63) of this organization. Likewise, Pereira Right and above: Installation lay the foundation for a more inclusive under- published and presented at conferences on view, Expanding Abstraction: standing of abstraction through the late twen- subjects pertaining to abstraction and the New England Women Painters, 1950 to Now, deCordova tieth and early twenty-first centuries. With role of women artists. Expanding Abstraction Sculpture Park and Museum, the aim of deepening the study of post-war also brought attention to unique formal ex- Lincoln, MA. Photograph by abstract painting, this online document serves perimentations made by women artists, such Clements Photography and as a resource for scholars and curators. as Beverly Hallam, who pioneered the use of Design, .

5 6 and nationally. The issue included a text by Through this exhibition and online pub- the Boston-based artist Jo Ann Rothschild lication, we hope to amplify the recognition titled “The Invisible Woman Artist,” in which of women painters with strong New England she wrote candidly on the deep imbalance affiliations. Integrating their contributions into of opportunities to exhibit, teach, and sell art historical narratives offers a more diverse artwork that were available to women artists history of post-war painting. We are very in comparison to their male counterparts. grateful to each of the artists in this exhibi- Rothschild provided ratios and other sta- tion, many of whom shared conversations, tistics to support her findings. Inspired by resources, and additional materials on this her research, the curatorial team examined rich legacy of painting in New England. We deCordova’s exhibition history and perma- additionally want to thank the art historians, nent collection to better understand how and curators, and critics who offered nuanced when our institution has supported women perspectives on the complexities of gender artists since its founding in 1950. Some of and abstraction through their exhibitions, these findings are also included at the end of interpretations, and reviews of these painters. Above and right: Installation view, Expanding Abstraction: New England Women Painters, 1950 to Now, this document. deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA. Photograph by Clements Photography and Design, Boston. Sarah Montross, Associate Curator acrylic house paint in the 1950s, and which Brown, Jeanne Leger, Elizabeth Rosenblum, she shared through public demonstrations , and Maxine Yalovitz-Blanken- throughout New England. ship. These examples of education, display, In addition to exploring the painters’ and reception provide an introductory map innovations on the canvas, the show empha- of the systems of support, both personal and sized their inter-personal connections and crit- institutional, that enabled the exhibiting artists’ ical reception, particularly in the New Eng- careers. land region. Notable studio spaces, teaching Some of this contextual research was appointments, and instances of mentorship integrated into a timeline that spanned the were highlighted. Maud Morgan was a Museum’s gallery walls and flowed into the central agent in the Boston arts communi- educational and learning spaces. The time- ty, not only for her diverse approaches to line, also included in this online publication, abstraction, but as a role model and support- listed many notable shows, publications, er of younger artists. The exhibition called and events that featured artists in Expand- attention to venues and institutions throughout ing Abstraction. The first event is Fannie New England that were noteworthy for their Hillsmith–Abstract (1951), which support of women painters since the 1950s. was deCordova’s earliest solo exhibition of a One prominent example is the fellowship woman artist and its first exhibition of ab- program at the Radcliffe Institute for Inde- stract painting. Another significant touchstone pendent Study (now the Radcliffe Institute for was the publication of the March 1985 issue Advanced Study). Five artists in Expanding of Art New England that was devoted to the Abstraction were Radcliffe Fellows—Maggi state of women in the arts, both regionally

7 Acknowledgements Artists in the Exhibition

Exhibition organized by Jennifer Gross, former Chief Curator and Deputy Natalie Alper Anne Neely Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Sarah Montross, Associate Curator. Adria Arch Roberta Paul Dorothy Arnold Meg Brown Payson Additional research and writing was conducted by Martina Tanga, Melinda Ashley Irene Rice Pereira Koch Curatorial Fellow, Scout Hutchinson, Curatorial Assistant, Helen Kristin Baker Ann Pibal Lewandowski, former Koch Curatorial Fellow, Jana Herman, Curatorial Cynthia Bloom Katherine Porter Intern, and Clancy Taylor, Curatorial Intern. Lynn Traub, Registrar, Ross Maggi Brown Terri Priest Normandin, Preparator, and Rory Beerits, Associate Preparator, Elizabeth Rosenblum expertly managed the exhibition’s installation, loans, and other logistical concerns. Sharon Friedman Jo Ann Rothschild Jacqueline Gourevitch Jo Sandman Emily Silet, Head of Learning Environments, organized the timeline in Beverly Hallam Sandi Slone with the Curatorial Department. Julie Bernson, Deputy Fannie Hillsmith May Stevens Director of Learning and Engagement, provided crucial advising, editing, Sherrill Edwards Hunnibell Takenaga and support surrounding all aspects of exhibition planning. Our gratitude Reese Inman Lois Tarlow extends to Executive Director John B. Ravenal for his ongoing support of Elizabeth Saalfield Ives Irene Valincius critical exhibition projects such as this. Yeffe Kimball Barbara Weldon Jeanne Leger Lucy White This online document was designed by Emma Kraner, Curatorial Intern, and Alice Trumbull Mason Maxine Yalovitz-Blankenship Scout Hutchinson, Curatorial Assistant. Maud Morgan Support for this exhibition was generously provided by Amy and Jonathan Poorvu, Mary and Donald Shockey, The Meredyth Hyatt Moses Fund, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, the Deborah A. Hawkins Charitable Trust, Linda and George Kelly, and James and Audrey Foster.

9 10 1950s & 1960s

Expanding Abstraction Certain innovations in abstract painting from the mid-twentieth century, such as ’s drip paintings and ’s clouds of color, by Decade are well established in . Yet less familiar developments, like the architectural abstractions of Alice Trumbull Mason, also provided important avenues for explorations of line and space during the 1950s and 1960s. Artists working in these decades also frequently experimented with untested materials and techniques. Irene Rice Pereira used sheets of glass as an alternative to stretched canvases. Beverly Hallam pioneered a new synthetic medium, acrylic paint. Artists often translated personal experience—especially encounters with the natural world—into their paintings. Their interpretations, conveyed in rich fields of color and lyrical brushstrokes, capture the effects of natural phenomena such as light, weather, and seasonal shifts.

12 Alice Trumbull Mason Irene Rice Pereira Born 1904 in Litchfield, Connecticut Born 1902 in Chelsea, Died 1971 in New York, New York Died 1971 in Marbella, Spain

Mason was a founding member of to Analytic . A trip to Greece Pereira is known for her colorful Pereira often signed her work “I. Rice the American Abstract Artists group in solidified her commitment to abstraction, geometric abstractions influenced by the Pereira” to avoid potential discrimination New York, which presented and published after encountering the linear qualities and , a German art school which as a woman in the New York art world. In important theoretical support for patterns in archaic Greek sculpture and integrated , design, and industry. 1953, she was among the first women to in the . She began painting in a Byzantine mosaics. She also studied at In the 1930s, she began experimenting have a retrospective at a major New York “straight-edge” abstract mode after viewing the printmaking studio Atelier 17 in New with corrugated glass panels and paint art institution (Whitney Museum of American ’s work in the 1940s. As seen York, where many women artists working mixed with metal and radium. Sunrise, Sunset Art). Her career soon after took a downward in The Forest Floor, she often decentralized in abstraction found fertile ground for came after an eight-month residency in turn due in part to changes in her painting her compositions by creating crisp, grid- collaboration and support. gloomy Manchester, England, where Pereira style, but also to the rising dominance of based patterns. became interested in the spiritual impact of Abstract , gender biases, and Mason studied with Arshile Gorky at sunshine. The overlapping yellow rectangles the painter’s own distancing from the New the Grand Central Art School in New York evoke the movement of the sun. Their York art world. in the late 1920s, where she was introduced intersection with the blue squares symbolizes “light penetrating space.”

The Forest Floor Sunrise, Sunset 1950 1951 oil on panel oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches Worcester Art Museum / Gift of Mr. and Private collection, New York Mrs. Harold Kaye / Bridgeman Images Art © Estate of Alice Trumbull Mason/ Image used by permission of Djelloul and Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Marilyn Marbrook, estate of Irene Rice Pereira

14 13 Fannie Hillsmith Cynthia Bloom Born 1911 in Boston, Massachusetts Born 1933 in St. Louis, Missouri Died 2007 in Jaffrey, New Hampshire Died 2008 in West Hartford, Connecticut

This painting’s title refers to one of the created easel paintings that invite intimate Bloom paints drips, splatters, and Bloom’s first solo museum exhibition oldest opening moves in the game of chess. contemplation. loose brushstrokes to suggest a windswept in the United States was at deCordova in A portion of a chessboard appears amid Hillsmith was the first woman to have coastline and the dark skies of a brewing 1961. She graduated from Washington strips of wallpaper patterns that form the a solo exhibition at deCordova in 1951, storm. Inspired by the landscape of Block University in St. Louis in 1954. Bloom later quilt-like ensemble. In the 1950s, Hillsmith a year after the Museum opened. She Island, Rhode Island, she incorporated the travelled on a Fulbright award throughout combined the spatial fracturing of Cubism attended the Boston School of Fine Arts, natural materials and textures she found there , where she met American abstract with references to domestic interiors. While which her grandfather helped found. She into her work, including dried petals and painters who were also abroad, such as Cubist painting may seem out of date by then joined the Art Students League in New butterfly wings. One critic said her painting and . In , this time, some American artists continued York. Four years of study at Atelier 17, an was “clearly distinguished by its contact she studied at the location of the print to explore its possibilities. Hillsmith was then experimental print shop established by with nature which transcends, in her best studio Atelier 17. exhibiting in New York City alongside many Stanley Hayter, exposed her to canvases, into inspiration and imagination.” Abstract Expressionist artists and at Peggy and Cubism. In 1944, she joined the Guggenheim’s seminal Art of This Century American Abstract Artists, an organization gallery. In contrast to the -sized works that included Alice Trumbull Mason. of some of her contemporaries, Hillsmith

The Queen’s Gambit 1954 50 x 56 inches oil on canvas Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Winter’s Robe Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, 1960 gift of the Nathaniel Saltonstall Arts Fund oil on canvas Courtesy of the Estate of Fannie Hillsmith 48 x 61 ¼ inches and the Susan Teller Gallery, New York, NY Gift of the artist

15 16 Yeffe Kimball Helen Frankenthaler Born 1904 in Kansas City, Kansas Born 1928 in New York, New York Died 1978 in Santa Fe, New Mexico Died 2011 in Darien, Connecticut

At the time Kimball began painting 1960s, NASA commissioned her to create Frankenthaler, one of the seminal swaths of blue, red, and yellow along the abstractions in the 1950s, she was married new work. abstract painters of the twentieth century, is edges frame a central orange stain. to a nuclear physicist, who owned a Kimball worked mostly in New York known for devising a “soak-stain” technique Although based in New York City, sample of “fused earth” from the first atomic City and spent summers in Provincetown, in 1952. Working on the floor, she poured Frankenthaler had strong connections to New explosion. Space exploration inspired Massachusetts. She claimed to descend turpentine-thinned oil paint directly onto an England. She studied at her compositions, which recall clusters of from the Osage tribe, and her early work unprimed canvas. These large expanses in Vermont, and in the 1960s, spent summers stars and interstellar clouds. Kimball also depicted American Indian motifs. Though of diluted color seeped into the fibrous in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with her introduced textural effects and innovative scholars later determined she was actually material, uniting the image and canvas in then-husband, artist . For materials like acrylic resin into her work. Anglo-American, she was an advocate for a flat plane. Frankenthaler described her almost twenty years she had a studio and So dynamic were her interpretations of the rights and culture of American Indians. painting “as if it’s happened at once. It’s an home in Shippan Point, Stamford, Connecticut. astronomical phenomena that, in the early immediate image.” Orange Shapes in Frame In 1998, she moved her home and studio to marks Frankenthaler’s ambition to continually Darien, Connecticut, living there full-time. In innovate. During the 1960s, she began using 1972, Frankenthaler was the sole female artist acrylic paint and extended her compositions in an important exhibition of contemporary beyond the center of the canvas, filling the abstraction, particularly painting, entire surface area with saturated color. Here, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Orange Shapes in Frame 1964 acrylic on canvas Blue Space Concept 94 ½ x 75 ¼ inches 1960 Tufts University Permanent Collection: acrylic on canvas Gift of Placido Arango 84 x 120 inches © 2018 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

17 18 Jacqueline Gourevitch Beverly Hallam Born 1933 in Paris, France Born 1923 in Lynn, Massachusetts Lives and works in New York, New York Died 2013 in York, Maine

Gourevitch began her Cloud Paintings Rendered in diffused greys and blues, light Hallam was an early adopter of acrylic Hallam studied art education at the in the mid-1960s while living in Boston. smudges of paint suggest small patches of paint in the 1950s, soon after it became Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Whether referring to the trailing wisps of clouds over which a shadowy mass looms. commercially available. She experimented Boston, in 1945, and earned an MFA from cirrus clouds or dark, tempestuous storms, Gourevitch studied at the experimental with the new fast-drying medium in both Syracuse University, New York, in 1953. the works from this series capture the in North Carolina painting and printmaking. To create Crossed She returned to MassArt, where she taught atmospheric elements that shape these in the summer of 1950. She took a class Rock, she thickened the synthetic pigment painting, drawing, and design until 1962. shifting forms, such as wind, light, and there with famed critic , with a plasticizer and added powdered She had over forty-five solo exhibitions, temperature. Gourevitch remarks that who emphasized the flatness of the picture mica. Hallam used spatulas and sponges including one of her first at deCordova in “Observing the sky inevitably leads to plane as a means of achieving abstraction in addition to brushes to apply the mixture 1954. Hallam lived and worked on the reflection about the fugitive, the recurring, in painting. Gourevitch exhibited in several to canvas. Crossed Rock is inspired by the southern coast of Maine from the 1960s the abiding.” Visual space and depth group shows at deCordova in the 1970s, rocky Maine coastline, which Hallam would onward, where she was active in the artistic collapse in Cloud Painting #19, one of her including New England Women in 1975. often photograph. She then magnified community in Ogunquit. early abstracted interpretations of the sky. interesting patterns and structures, projected the images onto linen, and traced their contours.

Cloud Painting #19 Crossed Rock 1966 1966 oil on canvas acrylic and mica on belgian linen 50 x 43 ½ inches 20 1/8 x 35 ¼ inches Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Rigelhaupt Gift of Mrs. J. Scott Smart

19 20 1970s

In the 1970s, abstract painters moved beyond the flatness of the picture plane to advance the innovations of gestural and . They sought an attenuated perception of uncertain atmospheric space, often rendered in saturated colors. During this decade, painters were also inspired by new artistic genres, including Performance, Conceptual, Earth, and . This opening of possibilities motivated artists to take the traditional medium of painting in bold directions through experimental materials, dynamic spatial relationships, and innovative processes. Natalie Alper embraced new techniques such as spray painting. Others approached the surface of their canvases in sculptural terms, including Jo Sandman, who carved away pigment or applied layers of lacquer.

22 Maud Morgan Natalie Alper Born 1909 in New York, New York Born 1937 in , New York Died 1999 in Cambridge, Massachusetts Lives and works in Brookline, Massachusetts

In the late 1960s, Morgan began an independent life as a Cambridge- Influenced by color field painting in the Alper studied painting at New York making brightly colored, hard-edged based artist. She had a studio on Harvey 1970s, Alper created bands of color using University and history at paintings of primary shapes. This Street where she worked for over twenty air brushes, rollers, and sponges on large, before travelling to Europe and the Soviet monumental painting combines such grid- five years. Morgan was honored with often elongated, canvases. Diffusion gives Union. She graduated from the School of the based geometric abstraction with an many awards and achievements, including these works a luminous, ethereal quality and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1970 and exploration of pictorial depth. Some lighter the establishment of the Maud Morgan Alper’s use of pigment creates absorbing a few years later became the first woman to squares seem to come forward in the picture Purchase Prize at the Museum of Fine Arts, visual effects, such as the expansion and teach painting there. plane, while others recede into the hazy Boston in 1993. The prize celebrates a contraction of colors when placed beside yellow background. The picture plane is not Massachusetts woman artist for creativity, each other on a two-dimensional plane. flat, but animated by the energy produced vision, and significant contributions to the by the vibrant pixelated composition. contemporary arts landscape. Morgan separated from her husband in 1957 and by the 1970s, had established

Gold Coast II Untitled 1971-2 1972 oil on canvas acrylic on canvas 80 x 132 inches 61 ½ x 61 ½ inches Gift of Spaulding Investment Co. The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection

23 24 Terri Priest Born 1928 in Worcester, Massachusetts Died 2014 in Worcester, Massachusetts

Natalie Alper Untitled Drawing on her background as portrayals of water lilies. 1974 a graphic designer, Priest developed Priest’s work was shown in numerous watercolor on paper pulsing, optical effects in her paintings of exhibitions at deCordova, including Abstract 13 x 40 ½ inches overlapping vertical stripes that range from Painting in 1971, in which she was the The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection black-and-white to technicolor. In Panoply: only woman among fifteen artists. She took Summer Evening, thin lines form a vibrant painting classes as a child at the Worcester ground of turquoise, pink, and yellow, while Art Museum School and taught there from loose diagonal strands resemble beams of 1967 to 1976. She earned a BFA and MFA light. Priest said her paintings were at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. inspired by ’s atmospheric

Natalie Alper Untitled 1974 watercolor on paper 13 x 40 ½ inches The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection

Natalie Alper Panoply: Summer Evening Untitled 1976 1974 acrylic on canvas watercolor on paper 66 1/8 x 48 inches 13 x 40 ½ inches Museum Purchase The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection

25 26 Sherrill Edwards Hunnibell Sharon Friedman Born 1942 in Providence, Rhode Island Born 1945 in Lowell, Massachusetts Lives and works in Rehoboth, Massachusetts Died 1990 in St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands

Hunnibell transforms observations of shapes, and lines. This approach allows her In the late 1970s, Friedman developed meant to exist apart…without the stamp of nature into abstract patterns in Rangefinder to convey “visual and tactual sensations and a painting method by pouring layers of the artist’s involvement.“ in Four Parts. Stacked and overlapping rhythms similar to ones created by nature.” pigment on the back of raw canvases. She Friedman graduated from Boston grey rectangles resemble rock striations or Hunnibell graduated from the Rhode tilted the canvas at varying angles to create University in 1967 with a degree in fine tree bark. The four sections also form the Island School of Design, Providence, with ethereal washes of expanding colors. Her arts, painting, and sculpture. Throughout crosshairs of a manual camera’s rangefinder, a BFA in 1964, and from Brown University, work extends earlier innovations, such as the 1970s she exhibited in notable group emphasizing the mechanical process of Providence with a Master of Arts in Helen Frankenthaler’s dripping and staining shows, including at the Museum of Fine Arts, capturing an image. Reacting against Teaching in 1966. In 2004, she received a methods. Friedman aimed to remove the the Institute of , and Boston conventional landscape paintings, Hunnibell Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in mark of the artist’s hand: “My painting is by City Hall. has broken down the elements of fauna, Drawing and Printmaking. definition indirect in style and concept. It is flora, and found objects into primary colors,

Rangefinder in Four Parts Iris II 1977 1977 acrylic on canvas acrylic on canvas 60 ½ x 60 ½ inches 67 ¼ x 57 inches NEA Museum Purchase Plan The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection

27 28 Maud Morgan Born 1909 in New York, New York Died 1999 in Cambridge, Massachusetts

A visitor to Morgan’s studio in the such an experience through saturated 1970s wrote in a letter to her: “I much colors that counterbalance each other and admire, in each piece I saw, its movement are anchored by the central geometric into and out from struggle and harmony. composition. Seen from a distance, the The work all has such life force, such painting resembles an architectural plan with beauty…most fully to be explained by clearly delineated spaces. the most simple words: the experience of color. A most strange and intense experience, and as wonderfully spiritual as it is physical.” In Levels, Morgan achieves

Sharon Friedman Tiger Lily 1977 Levels acrylic on canvas 1977 67 ¼ x 57 inches oil on board 35 x 41 inches The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection Gift of Mr and Mrs. Robert Louis Smith

29 30 Jo Sandman Barbara Weldon Born 1931 in Boston, Massachusetts Born 1931 in Yuma, Arizona Lives and works in Somerville, Massachusetts Died 2007, in Del Cerro, California Islands

Kuan II is one of Sandman’s “removal Sandman studied at the experimental Weldon’s delicate abstract works she studied fine art at the University of drawings.” It consists of overlapping waxy Black Mountain College and earned a BFA overlap strata of watercolor paint and thin California, San Diego. Among her numerous strips of industrial insulation paper, which in fine art from Brandeis University in 1952. paper to form textured . Washes of awards, Weldon received the San Diego Sandman scored with sharp tools, lifting That year she had her first solo exhibition warm, earthy colors balance cool blues and Women Together Organization Award the layers to reveal the beige backing. at deCordova. From 1952 to 1953, she violets. Pasted strips of paper divide space for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts in Rather than applying pigment to a surface, studied with Abstract Expressionist Robert into interconnected rectangles of varying 1997. Among several paintings on view in this minimal composition is created from a Motherwell at , New York, sizes. The titles of her work often reveal this exhibition, Weldon’s work was part of subtractive process. Sandman felt this made and at the School of Painting as a source of inspiration for the artist. a large gift to deCordova by Dr. Beatrice “the ‘presence’ of the work...come from the in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She In the early 1950s, Weldon earned Barrett, a prominent art collector from materials themselves.” The title refers to a subsequently earned an MFA from University a Bachelor of Science in Biology from San Lincoln, Massachusetts. Zen Buddhist riddle or anecdote, such as of California, Berkeley, and a teaching Diego State University. After raising a family, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”, degree at Radcliffe College. Among other used to demonstrate the inadequacy teaching positions, she taught at Wellesley of logical reasoning and to provoke College and at Massachusetts College of enlightenment. Art and Design.

Jazz Expression 1978 Kuan II watercolor and on paper 1977 51 ¾ x 39 ½ inches removal collage The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection 40 ½ x 87 inches NEA Museum Purchase Plan

31 32 Melinda Ashley Jeanne Leger Born 1955 in New Jersey Born 1934 near Lake Erie, New York Lives and works in Arlington, Massachusetts Died 1990 in , England

Ashley’s paintings, drawings, stained panes of a stained glass window. During the 1970s, Leger created inspiration from nature, capturing the fleeting glass, and pottery often depict dancing Ashley, a dual French-American citizen, abstract compositions with a traditional movements of clouds, water, and wind with female nudes, flowers, and still life objects. studied ceramics in Paris in the late 1970s. glazing technique. Glazing involves the fluidity of her brushstrokes. Moonscape, a rare foray into abstraction, She settled in the Boston area in 1980. applying multiple layers of nearly translucent Leger studied painting at Syracuse consists of glossy lacquer on wood. After Her work is in the permanent collections of paint to the canvas to create a luminescent University, New York, earning a BFA in the lacquer was applied, the artist made the Art Institute of and the Boston effect. The vivid, swirling colors are built 1956. She moved to Massachusetts in the deep incisions into its surface to delineate Public Library. up incrementally, resulting in a whirlpool early 1960s. Among numerous awards, geometric shapes. The metallic, jewel-toned quality that recalls atmospheric seascapes Leger received fellowships from the Radcliffe forms shift in hue; their lustrous colors suggest by J.M.W. Turner. The palette and Institute at Radcliffe College (now the magnification of the whirl also resemble Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study), Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of enlarged Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1967 and flowers. Like O’Keeffe and Turner, Leger took 1968.

Moonscape Untitled c. 1979 1979 lacquer on board acrylic on canvas 47 ¼ x 35 ½ x 1 ½ inches 48 x 36 inches The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection

33 34 1980s

The paintings in this section are notably large-scale, expressive, and fearless in combining seemingly unrelated elements into a coherent whole. Some of the non-figurative painting created during this decade could be described as “impure” abstraction. These artists challenged the self-contained purity of abstraction by adding recognizable motifs or anecdotes from their personal lives into their work. Artists like Jo Ann Rothschild and Elizabeth Rosenblum integrate references to scientific, architectural, and art historical sources in their painting. Others, such as Sandi Slone and Natalie Alper, maintained their pursuit of expressive forms with personalized, calligraphic brushstrokes.

36 Elizabeth Saalfield Ives Dorothy Arnold Born 1942 in Akron, Ohio Born 1924 in Boston, Massachusetts Lives and works in Lexington, Massachusetts Lives in Boston, Massachusetts

Splashes of paint move across the by visceral visual cues, while the title, Hussy, Influenced by Abstract Expressionists strongest support for color field painting, surface of this energetic painting. Warm connects the sensual palette to the idea of a Joan Mitchell and Jackson Pollock, Arnold which suppressed line in favor of a dominant hues, from blushing magentas to striking mischievous or coquettish woman. created paintings that responded to the expressive field of color.” oranges, contrast with the more subdued Ives studied at , rhythms of the body and the landscape. While Arnold had been working as an grey and white tones of the background. and then the Art Students League in New Abstract V presents a central, vertical artist for decades, she earned a degree in These marks move the viewer’s eye York with Abstract Expressionist Theodoros movement of a dynamic stroke of paint. painting at age fifty-six from the School of diagonally across the work, slowing to Stamos. She earned a BFA from Connecticut This sweeping gesture varies in color, from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1980. observe the lively details of twirling marks. College, New London, in 1964 and has watery gray to burnt orange, and regal She was based in East Cambridge for many Although entirely abstract, the painting been based in the Boston area since the late purple. Curator Elisabeth Sussman wrote years, and her work has been exhibited in triggers a range of associations prompted 1970s. that Arnold’s work “should be seen in the solo and group exhibitions throughout the context of continuing debates around United States and abroad. She received a painting prevalent in Boston…[in] the mid to Massachusetts Artist Painting Fellowship in late 1970s.” During that time “there [was] 1990.

Hussy Abstract V 1980 1981 oil and acrylic on canvas acrylic and oil on canvas 53 ¾ x 58 inches 67 x 45 inches NEA Museum Purchase Plan The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection

37 38 Sandi Slone Jo Ann Rothschild Born 1939 in Boston, Massachusetts Born 1947 in Chicago, Illinois Lives and works in New York, New YorkIslands Lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts

Slone began her “Mandala” series to create an inviting and meditative visual This painting was inspired by Edouard eighties, during which she experienced “the in the early 1980s, pouring paint directly space. Manet’s The Execution of the Emperor wild prejudice against women,” amidst other onto the canvas in loose, swirling gestures. Slone studied at the School of the Maximilian (1869), in the collection of political and personal upheaval. With her canvas on the floor, she spilled Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), Boston, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Manet’s Rothschild earned a BFA from earth-toned hues onto a background of earned a BA in Art History from Wellesley historic painting represents the moment of Bennington College, Vermont, in 1971 and transparent washes to create the effect College in 1974. She had a solo exhibition the Emperor of Mexico’s death before a an MFA from the School of the Museum of of a delicate yet large-scale watercolor. at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, firing squad. Rothschild’s abstract painting Fine Arts, Boston, in 1980. In the 1980s she She added textured accents by removing in 1977, and was Professor of Painting at conveys a similarly violent impression through joined an all-women cooperative, the Tudor pigment with a sea sponge. She notes that the SMFA from 1975 to 2004, where she color, gesture, and impasto brush strokes. Street Etching Studio, and published essays her “Flung-Ink method” originated from “Zen taught with Natalie Alper. Alper and Slone She has said, “I wanted to get narrative into on the exclusion of women artists in museums painting a thousand years before Pollock.” also had studios in the same building in my abstraction. I wanted to tell stories, but and galleries in Boston. She was awarded The serpentine lines that arc along the Boston’s South End during the 1970s. I didn’t want to have to illustrate them and the first Maud Morgan Purchase Prize in edges of the canvas leave the center open I wanted them to be emotional rather than 1993 from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. factual.” She created this painting in the

Execution on a Grey Day Queen of the Night 1984 1981 oil on canvas acrylic on canvas 64 x 118 ¼ inches 68 ½ x 101 ½ inches Gift of Martin and Anonymous Gift Wendy Kaplan

39 40 Dorothy Arnold Maud Morgan Born 1924 in Boston, Massachusetts Born 1909 in New York, New York Lives in Boston, Massachusetts Died 1999 in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Arnold captures expressive rhythms compositions across large canvases and In Outremer, lively sparks of orange areas that had been colonized by France. found in nature, such as those created by then cut them into smaller fragments, a pepper a field of luminous cobalt blue. In awe of the continent, Morgan recalled, waves and wind. In this seascape, she process she called “.” In this Intersecting lines provide playful rhythms “Before I went people said, ‘If you really appears to have fused the sky and sea, triptych, Arnold’s parting of the canvases across the composition. The painting’s title let Africa get to you, you are never the eliminating the horizon line and with it a disrupts the expansiveness of the ocean and means “overseas” in French and is often same again.’ I let it get to me.” After her sense of depth in the landscape. Only a directs attention to the process of painting used to describe France’s territories outside trip, Morgan noticeably enlivened her color few additions of dense white paint suggest rather than the subject represented. of Europe. The year that Morgan painted palette. the crests of crashing waves. Arnold painted Outremer—at age 77—she traveled for six months to thirteen African countries, including

Ocean Patterns #13, #14, #16 Outremer 1986 1986 oil on canvas oil on canvas 12 x 12 inches (each) 50 x 60 inches The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection

41 42 Elizabeth Rosenblum Irene Valincius Born 1954 in New York, New York Born 1948 in Bonn, Lives and works in New York, New York Lives and works in Somerville, Massachusetts

This painting features the golden outline and give the painting ‘meaning.’” Of Lithuanian descent, Valincius was hover in front of a deep indigo backdrop, of a spinning wheel based on a design Rosenblum earned a BFA from Tufts born in a West German displaced persons while touches of luminous paint highlight the by ancient Roman engineer Vitruvius. An University, Medford, in 1980, and a camp after World War II and immigrated weathered strata. inky black trail descending from the wheel diploma from the School of the Museum to the United States soon after. Influenced Valincius studied at the School of the resembles a human spine. Rosenblum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1981. She was by the ambiguity of her nationality, her Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and earned compares her process of building images awarded a National Endowment for the work addresses transitory experiences a BFA from the University of Massachusetts, to the “Exquisite Corpse” technique of Arts and Humanities Visual Artists Fellowship and fluid interpretations of identity, evoking Boston, in 1978. She has taught at the Surrealist artists, in which unrelated phrases in 1987 and received a fellowship from the atmospheric conditions that are constantly in Massachusetts College of Art and Design, or images join together to form unexpected Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute at Radcliffe flux. The surface layers of this painting are Boston, and Montserrat College of Art, compositions: “Images are stacked and College (now the Radcliffe Institute for scratched and distressed, like an ancient Beverly, Massachusetts. superimposed....Puns, quibbles, and Advanced Study) in 1991. city wall. A central column appears to metaphysical conceits catch image to image

Rotate on My Axis? Untitled 1987 1987 ink, dye, oil, acrylic on canvas oil on canvas 76 ½ x 59 ¾ inches 62 x 43 inches Gift of the Artist Gift of George Lewis

43 44 Natalie Alper Maggi Brown Born 1937 in the Bronx, New York Born in Newark, New Jersey Lives and works in Brookline, Massachusetts Lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts

During the 1980s, Alper moved luminous spray paintings on view upstairs, Brown’s paintings feature geometric After raising a family, Brown returned away from using spray paint techniques the handmade gestures in this work represent shapes and architectural elements, such as to school and earned a BFA from Tufts and integrated drawing and calligraphic a renewed intimacy with the canvas. Alper columns and arched forms. To achieve her University and the School of the Museum mark making into her painting. In Events summarized the catalyst for this evolution: textural effects, Brown scraped and brushed of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1983. In 1986, she Without Witness, thick brushstrokes in muted “When I began in the ‘70’s, my work was paint onto the canvas, layered translucent was a fellow at the Mary Ingraham Bunting maroons and dense navy blues anchor the spare and reductive with no room for the glazes, and inscribed marks that read as Institute at Radcliffe College (now the composition. Additional zig-zagging gestures idiosyncratic….I felt cornered! I needed to arcane letters and symbols. The black-and- Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study). Her in multiple directions suggest absent-minded make work with a fuller range of feeling.” white checkerboard pattern is a frequent paintings have been exhibited at numerous scribbles. Compared with her earlier motif in Brown’s work. It may relate to her greater Boston institutions, including the interest “in the connection between things Institute of Contemporary Art, the MIT which are opposed, what they have in List Visual Arts Center, and the Rose Art common, and what kind of visual statement Museum. they make when combined.”

Egyptian Jump Start Events Without Witness 1988 1988 oil on canvas acrylic and pencil on canvas 82 ½ x 85 inches 72 x 96 inches Gift of the Artist; Gift of Noel G. Posternak Courtesy Barbara Krakow Gallery

45 46 1990s

In the paintings in this section, artists continue to allow their subjectivity and traces of the outside world into their abstract painting. Katherine Porter merged primary patterns based in the natural world with expressive brush- strokes and a bold color palette. Lucy White emphasized tactility across the surfaces of her compositions, inviting a desire to apprehend her work through touch as well as vision. In many of the works, abstraction and figuration hang in a counterbalance, as artists distill their perception of nature into near abstraction or draw inspiration from fleeting atmospheric effects, such as light and fire.

48 Katherine Porter May Stevens Born 1941 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Born 1924 in Quincy, Massachusetts Lives and works in Rhinebeck, New York Lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Porter’s dynamic grids, chevrons, and Porter studied at Boston University in Known for politically charged paintings, Design, Boston; the Art Students League discs seem to channel underlying forces 1962 and earned a BA from Colorado Stevens began adding deeper personal of New York; and the Académie Julian of the natural world. Her work often takes College, Colorado Springs, in 1963. In content following the death of her son, in Paris. Active in civil rights and feminist inspiration from environmental phenomena, the 1960s she joined The Studio Coalition artist Steven Baranik, in 1981. Quemada art movements in New York starting in the such as suns, stars, spiders, and trees. She in Boston’s South End, a group of artists II evolved from Baranik’s photographs of 1960s, she was a founding member of concentrates these into loose, energetic united around aesthetic, social, and political toy horses as they were lit on fire. Painted the , which included patterns, like the concentric forms that concerns. A highly influential abstract painter, on unstretched canvas, this work shows influential artists and critics such as Lucy radiate from the center of this painting. Porter has had several museum retrospectives the fleeting movements of the melting toys, Lippard. This painting was first shown in Vibrant, contrasting colors provide an added in New England and was twice included in recognizable by their kicking hindquarters. 1991 at deCordova in a two-person pulse. the . Stevens said that the “toy dioramas became exhibition of work by Stevens and sculptor metaphors for high drama, excruciating pain. Civia Rosenberg. Both were fellows at the But, at the same time…the story of a brilliant Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute at Radcliffe moment of life was illuminated.” College (now the Radcliffe Institute for Stevens studied painting at Advanced Study) in 1988. Massachusetts College of Art and

Prague Afternoon c. 1990 oil on linen Quemada II 79 x 83 ½ inches 1991 Donated by the late Seon Pierre Bonan, acrylic on unstretched canvas Jerome Lyle Rappaport, Theodore 72 x 72 inches Shoolman, and all of the partners of Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Philip Gold Charles River Park B. Company in Memory of Eric Kertzner, 1962-1989

49 50 Adria Arch Anne Neely Born 1953 in Niagara Falls, New York Born 1946 in Greenwich, Connecticut Lives and works in Arlington, Massachusetts Lives and works in Dorchester, Massachusetts

Inspired by spills, cracks, and other the female form and psyche,” noting that Focusing on a single element such as made dots create an airy halo of branches unplanned shapes in nature, Arch explores “their weathered state suggests both physical a leaf, feather, or stalk, Neely explores around a main stalk. formal and textural qualities in her paintings, and emotional stress and the will to survive.” archetypal forms that reflect her deep Neely studied at Colby Sawyer prints, books, and drawings. On this double- Arch earned a BFA from Carnegie involvement with nature. She reflects that College in New London, New Hampshire, sided triptych, the artist abstracted the Mellon, Pittsburgh, in 1974 and an MFA in while “[t]ending a summer garden, I notice and earned a BFA at Old Dominion forms of shells through a monotype printing painting at the Massachusetts College of the structure of this kingdom of color, flowers, University in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1970. process. This technique involves applying Art and Design, Boston, in 1985. She has then labyrinths of stems, stalks, and leaves From 1974 until 2012, she taught at Milton paint or ink on a glass plate, pressing it taught at Endicott College, MassArt, and and finally the earth filled with life and Academy, Milton, Massachusetts. In 1993, onto the wood surface, and enhancing the Montserrat College of Art. decay. At first I hold onto such familiar things she was featured in a solo exhibition at transferred image with acrylic paint. Arch my garden offers, but then when painting, deCordova. An active printmaker, Neely considers shells “metaphors for aspects of I enter another kind of kingdom.” In Plume, worked at Rugg Road Prints and Papers, a detail of a small section of a feather where a number of fellow women artists, becomes a study in color and texture. Neely including Maud Morgan, also practiced layered ink, wiped the paper with a cloth, with new materials and methods in the and then scratched and scraped it with her 1980s. fingers and a palette knife. Obsessively-

Plume Shell Triptych 1994 1993 monotype on paper monotype and acrylic on wood (triptych) 44 ½ x 91 ¼ inches 15 3/8 x 10 1/8 inches (left panel); 15 3/8 x 10 ¾ inches (center panel); Anonymous Gift 15 3/8 x 10 5/8 inches (right panel) Gift of the Artist

51 52 Maxine Yalovitz-Blankenship Lucy White Born January 9th in Rome, Georgia Born 1959 in Brunswick, Maine Lives and works in Waban, Massachusetts Lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts

This quilt-like mural is composed of as a fellow at the Mary Ingraham Bunting Geometric structure meets playful White earned a BFA in Painting from over two hundred small canvases bearing Institute at Radcliffe College (now the whimsy in Blue Eyes. The artist applied tiny the College of Art and Design, abstract motifs and discernable images, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study) in blue felt circles across a painted wood Minnesota, in 1981. Her work has been including doors, windows, and boats. The 1993-94. She earned a BFA from Atlanta panel and coated them with clear resin. shown at the Hunterdon Art Museum, New grand scale and personal touches suggest College of Art, Georgia, and an MFA from The dimples between the inlaid elements Jersey, the Portland Museum of Art, Maine, an epic narrative. Yalovitz-Blankenship Pratt Institute, New York. Yalovitz-Blankenship create a curious texture that bends around and the , Waltham, applies paint intuitively to her canvases, taught at the School of the Museum of Fine the edges, pulling them into the painting Massachusetts. In 2006, she received a charging the surface with decisive, vigorous Arts, Massachusetts College of Art and and blurring the line between illusion and Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in brushstrokes built up in layers. She also Design, and Simmons College. She has object. This work reflects the unique form of Painting. works with her hands, her fingerprints visible received numerous awards, including a John abstraction White developed in the 1990s in the thick impasto, emphasizing a direct Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation by merging the Minimalist grid with artifacts connection to her art. Fellowship in 1996. of suburban life, such as Handi-Wipe towels, Yalovitz-Blankenship created this work Band-Aids, and dishcloths.

Blue Eyes 1996 resin, felt, and acrylic on wood 23 x 23 x 1 ¾ inches Museum Purchase with funds donated by Cathy England, James and Audrey Foster, Crossings Mary Levin Koch and William C. Koch, 1994 Joyce and Edward Linde, Blair L. and oil on canvas Charles W. Trippe, and an anonymous 81 x 207 inches donor Museum Purchase with partial funds provided by Richard Florsheim Art Fund

53 54 Lois Tarlow Born 1928 in Brockton, Massachusetts Lives and works in Newton, Massachusetts

Atmospheric mystery suffuses this studied with , Oskar Kokoschka, painting as darkness shrouds the view of a and at the Boston Museum tree canopy seen from below. Though the School (now the SMFA). Tarlow had her first title refers to a recognizable subject, Tarlow solo exhibition at deCordova, in 1956. She disguises it in her black-on-black composition received two Pollock-Krasner Foundation and textured surface, enhanced with wax Grants, in 1997 and 2002. Starting in and charcoal powders. She says, “However the late 1970s, she published numerous representational my paintings may appear, interviews with fellow artists in Art New abstraction has always been a strong England, including several artists shown in impetus.” this exhibition. Tarlow earned a BFA at Goucher College, Baltimore, in 1950. Next, she

Monkey Tree 1999 acrylic, oil, wax, graphite and charcoal powders on canvas 56 x 66 x 3 inches Museum Purchase with funds provided by the Joan Winer Charitable Fund

55 2000s & 2010s

Towards the end of the twentieth century, artists and critics questioned the relevance of abstract painting as they had done periodically throughout the century. With the arrival of the 2000s, however, abstraction experienced a resurgence, both within New England and the art world at large. Rather than pursuing formalist abstraction or reviving art historical references, some painters shown here were drawn to systems of nature, technology, and the human body. The meticulous brushwork and labor-intensive, accumulative processes employed by this new generation of abstract painters speak to a desire for creative control in the face of pluralism, globalization, and the digital revolution. These cultural shifts inspired a new visual language in which the use of repeated patterns and computer-generated algorithms act as a means of processing the overwhelming amount of information produced by our digital age. Their works strike a precarious balance between chance and control, chaos and order, embracing the tensions that are inherent in our contemporary world.

58 Roberta Paul Barbara Takenaga Born 1956 in Monticello, New York Born 1949 in North Platte, Nebraska Lives and works in Newton, Massachusetts Lives and works in Williamstown, Massachusetts and New York, New York

Paul’s work often revolves around personal biography as well as the universal The hypnotic patterns in Takenaga’s of abstraction. The paintings all start out questions of memory and nostalgia. In the experience of aging and the uncertainty with luminous abstractions seem to radiate and that way.…but the thing is, they definitely 1990s, her father began to suffer from a which we regard the passage of time.” pulse. Mandala designs and detailed have references to and allude to illusionistic neurological brain disorder and was asked Paul studied at the Art Students League, patterns of symmetry as meditative aids things.” to draw the face of a clock as part of a New York, in 1978 and earned an MFA inspire Takenaga. Her meticulously rendered Takenaga earned an MFA at the diagnostic test. As his condition advanced, in Visual Arts from the University of North paintings oscillate between expansive University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1978. the clocks became increasingly warped. Dakota, Grand Forks, in 1981. Her work cosmic landscapes and depictions of In 2013, she was elected to the National In 2000, Paul began incorporating this appeared in a number of group exhibitions cellular growth. In describing her relationship Academy, New York. She is a Professor imagery into her work. In Nude in a Blue at deCordova since the 1980s. She teaches to abstraction she has said, “I think of of Art at , Williamstown, Robe, Meme, five of these amorphous drawing and painting at the New Art Center the paintings as abstract.…because I’m Massachusetts, where she has taught since clock faces appear on a clean white in Newton, Massachusetts. interested in flatness and shape and all 1985. background. For Paul, “[t]he clock refers to the gestures one might think of as issues

Nude in a Blue Robe, Meme 2002 Tremolo #4 gouache on panel 2005 49 x 38 inches Acrylic on canvas Museum Purchase with funds provided by 60 x 45 inches James and Audrey Foster Museum Purchase

59 60 Reese Inman Meg Brown Payson Born 1970 in Pittsfield, Maine Born 1953 in Portland, Maine Lives and works in Belfast, Maine Lives and works in Freeport, Maine

Drawing on her background in of the grid reflects the ordered layout of LED Working around a table, Payson used “fascinated by the human need to construct computer programming, Inman uses displays, monitors and projectors, and the eyedroppers, razors, and sandpaper to meaningful order in a world filled with too algorithms to determine the underlying circuit boards that control them.” drip, scrape, and spread acrylic paint on much information.” structure of her abstract paintings. She Inman earned a BFA in Visual and a panel. She refers to this process as “the Payson graduated from the College inserts instructions into her computer, which Environmental Studies from Harvard search for a painting.” The fluid circular of Fine Art at Boston University with a randomly generates a pattern of dots from University in 1992. In 2004 she earned a forms are inspired by Celtic knots and BFA in 1977 and earned an MFA from a set of colors. Using a printout of the code, diploma from the School of the Museum Australian Aboriginal dream paintings. The Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, in Inman painstakingly paints each dot. The of Fine Arts, Boston, receiving the school’s finished work contains a tension between 1993. From 1995 until 2014, she was an precision of the machine contrasts with the Dana Pond Award in Painting in 2004 order and chaos, yet an overall balance Associate Professor at the Maine College of imperfections of the artist’s hand. Stringlattice and 2005. In 2007 she was included in emerges from the layers of color. Payson is Art, Portland. II refers to digital mapping, static, and data. deCordova’s exhibition, Big Bang! Abstract Inman states that “[t]he underlying structure Painting for the 21st Century.

Stringlattice II 2006 Drift: 8/06 acrylic on panel 2006 39 ¼ x 39 ¼ inches Acrylic on panel Gift of the Artist and Museum Purchase, Gallery NAGA Fine Art, Inc. The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Fund

61 62 Ann Pibal Kristin Baker Born 1969 in Minneapolis, Minnesota Born 1975 in Stamford, Connecticut Lives and works in North Bennington, Vermont and New York, New York Lives and works in New York, New York and Torrington, Connecticut

In RPTD, delicate lines of rich earth women who have worked with hard edges Baker applies translucent glazes perhaps a tsunami, radiant even as it tones and blue pastels intersect on a dark in painting, and this is significant to me, as it of color to create dizzying vortices and portends chaos. background of broad brushstrokes. The was then, when I started.” sweeping gestures in her saturated Baker completed undergraduate studies thin lines mirror and repeat across the Pibal earned an MFA in Painting from paintings. Rather than a paintbrush, she at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, surface. Pibal says they suggest “movement, Iowa University, Iowa City, and has been on uses palette knives, tape, and squeegees Boston, and Tufts University, Medford, in repetition, or something in the process of the faculty at Bennington College in Vermont to spread acrylic paint on sheets of plastic. 1998. She earned an MFA in Painting being built or, conversely, dismantled.” She since 1998. Her work was included in The Baker’s process of accumulating layers at Yale University, New Haven, in 2002. notes that her work has “direct intersections 2012 deCordova Biennial. In 2013, Pibal evokes a collage while the luminosity of A 2010 exhibition of her paintings at the with the very heavy patriarchy one deals received deCordova’s Rappaport Prize her color recalls stained glass. Diaphanous Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, marked her first with in painting—especially in geometric and a John Simon Memorial Guggenheim Leverage suggests an ocean swell or solo show at an American museum. painting....There are only a small number of Foundation Fellowship.

RPTD 2011 Diaphanous Leverage acrylic on aluminum 2016 14 x 17 ¼ inches acrylic on PVC Gift of the Stephen and Sybil 44 x 60 inches Stone Foundation by exchange Gift of Mrs. Culver Orswell, by exchange

63 64 1950s & 1960s

1951 One year after deCordova opens, Fannie Hillsmith–Abstract Paintings is the first solo exhibition of a woman artist and its first exhibition of abstract painting.

Timeline 1953 DeCordova holds a memorial exhibition for artist and dealer Margaret Brown, who championed abstract painting in Boston and exhibited artist Maud Morgan.

1957 9 Women Painters opens at Bennington College, Vermont, and includes work by Fannie Hillsmith, Alice Trumbull Mason, and Helen Frankenthaler, among others.

1960 In 1960, deCordova acquires its first painting by a woman artist, Mooring, by Jo Sandman.

1963 & 1967 In 1963, the Fitchburg Art Museum opens the exhibition Sixteen Massachusetts Women Painters, including Beverly Hallam, followed by a Maud Morgan retrospective in 1967.

66 1970s 1980s

1971 publishes her influential essay, 1981 “Why Have There Been No Great Women The Institute of Contemporary Art launches its Boston Artists?” in ARTnews, sparking a re-examination Now exhibition series with Boston Now: Abstract of the status of women in the arts. Painting, which includes work by Jo Sandman.

1982 1971 The Boston chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art Lucy Lippard curates the important feminist is founded by Patricia Hills, Patricia Johnston, and exhibition, Twenty Six Contemporary Women Susan Schwalb to increase opportunities, visibility, Artists at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and recognition for women in the arts, joining the in Ridgefield, Connecticut. national organization founded in 1973.

1985 1973 The March issue of Art New England is devoted Natalie Alper is hired as the first woman entirely to the state of women in the arts, both painting professor at the School of the Museum regionally and nationally, and includes Jo Ann of Fine Arts, Boston, where she continues to Rothschild’s article “The Invisible Woman Artist.” teach until 1993.

1975 1987 New England Women exhibition at deCordova Maud Morgan receives the Women’s Caucus includes paintings by Natalie Alper, Cynthia for Art Lifetime Achievement Award at the WCA Bloom, Jacqueline Gourevitch, Beverly Hallam, Boston conference. Katherine Porter, Terri Priest, and Jo Sandman. Jamie Cope, Maud Morgan, Artist, 1983; printed 2001, silver gelatin print, 3/50, 9 5/8 1987 x 12 inches, Gift of Arlette and Gus Kayafas 1977 The Women’s Caucus for Art annual conference is held Rose Art Museum Director Carl Belz invites in Boston, accompanied by a wealth of exhibitions, emerging women museum professionals (Susan events, panel discussions, and seminars. Countless Ginsburg, Bonny Saulnier, Deborah Wye, and Sally women from across the art world joined forces to acti- Yard) to select the artists for the exhibition, From vate venues, like the Boston Public Library, throughout Women’s Eyes, which includes Katherine Porter. . Over sixty greater Boston museums, galleries, and alternative spaces showed the work of women artists in conjunction with the conference.

67 68 1990s 2000s & 2010s

2000 1990 Jennifer Hall is the first recipient of deCordova’s distin- May Stevens receives the Women’s Caucus for guished Rappaport Prize. Of the following 15 recipients, Art Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1999, the 10 are women: Annee Spileos Scott (2001), Debra Olin Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, opens Stevens’ (2004), Sarah Walker (2005), María Magdalena Cam- Images of Women: Near and Far, the museum’s first pos-Pons (2007), Ursula von Rydingsvard (2008), Liza retrospective of a living female artist. Johnson (2010), Orly Genger (2011), Suara Welitoff (2012), Ann Pibal (2013) (left), and Liz Deschenes (2014).

1993 2003 Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett donates her collection of nearly Jo Ann Rothschild receives the inaugural Maud 170 art works to deCordova. The collection includes Morgan Purchase Prize from the Museum of 14 of the paintings from Expanding Abstraction, includ- Fine Arts, Boston, a biennial prize celebrating ing those by Natalie Alper, Dorothy Arnold, Melinda mid-career female artists in Massachusetts. Ashley, Sharon Friedman, Yeffe Kimball, Jeanne Leger, Maud Morgan, and Barbara Weldon. Bea Barrett with Yeffe Kimball 1993-4 2007 Maxine Yalovitz-Blankenship is a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, founded in Big Bang! Abstract Painting for the 21st Century 1960 as a postgraduate study center for female exhibition at deCordova includes paintings by Barbara scholars and artists, and now known as the Radcliffe Takenaga, Meg Brown Payson, and Reese Inman for Institute for Advanced Study at . a total of 8 women artists in the 15-person exhibition.

1994 2010 The present the annual Paul J. Cronin Memorial Lecture at deCordova. Founded in 1985 The Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art opens by outspoken women artists, the group anonymously at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with Kristin yet vocally advocates for gender equality in Baker: New Paintings, curated by Jen Mergel. museums, galleries, and the art world at large.

1996 2015 Curator Katy Siegel organizes Pretty Raw: After More Than Minimal: Feminism and Abstraction and Around Helen Frankenthaler, at the Rose in the 70s, curated by Susan Stoops at the Rose Art Museum, and uses Frankenthaler’s work as Art Museum, features works by artists such as a lens through which to re-examine the male- , , and . Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler dominated history of modern . (install), 2015. Courtesy Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University. Photography: Charles Mayer

69 70 Percentage of solo or two-person exhibitions Statistics at deCordova that featured women:

1950s 31% 1960s 10% 1970s 5% 1980s 20% 1990s 48% 2000-16 47%

72 48% OF THE ARTISTS FEATURED IN DECORDOVA’S BIENNIAL AND ANNUAL SHOWS SINCE 1989 HAVE BEEN WOMEN.

65% OF DECORDOVA’S RAPPAPORT PRIZE RECIPIENTS SINCE 2000 HAVE BEEN WOMEN ARTISTS.

33% OF ALL THE PAINTINGS AND PRINTS IN DECORDOVA’S PERMANENT COLLECTION ARE BY WOMEN.

23% Installation view, Expanding Abstraction: OF THE IN THE PARK ARE BY New England Women Painters, 1950 to Now, deCordova Sculpture Park WOMEN. and Museum, Lincoln, MA. Photograph by Clements Photography and Design, ACQUIRED IN 1993, BEVERLY PEPPER’S SILENT PRESENCE Boston. IS ONE OF THE FIRST SCULPTURES BY A WOMAN ARTIST TO ENTER THE COLLECTION.

73 74