Celebrating Helen Frankenthaler's 96th birthday as well as all of the foundation's acomplishments this year. 

Read the full winter newsletter at the link below and sign up for our mailing list HERE!

Celebrating recent exhibitions, events, publications, and internships! 

Read the full fall newsletter at the link below and sign up for our mailing list HERE!

The Frankenthaler Foundation is pleased to share the details of its 2024 FCI Grantees—a diverse cohort of sixty-nine museums, art schools, and visual arts centers located throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. Through a range of clean energy and net-zero initiatives, retrofits of historical buildings, and the creation of comprehensive climate action plans, these organizations are leading the way in addressing climate change.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler in her East Eighty-third Street studio, New York, in front of “Hybrid Vigor” (1973, in progress), 1973. Courtesy Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Archives, New York. Photograph by Edward Youkilis. Artwork © 2024 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The Board of Directors of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation announced today that Richard Armstrong has been elected to serve as a Director on its Board.  A seasoned museum director, curator, and arts administrator, Armstrong has more than five decades of experience in museum governance and curation at preeminent art institutions across the country, most recently having served as the Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation from 2008 to 2023.

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View Gagosian Quarterly Article

On Thursday, March 21, 2024, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Executive Director Elizabeth Smith will speak about the work of Helen Frankenthaler in context of the Sheldon’s exhibition on artists of the New York School.

Image: Red Frame, 1964, Acrylic on canvas
98 3/16 × 82 inches (249.40 × 208.28 cm)
Sheldon Museum of Art, Nebraska Art Association

sheldonartmuseum.org

On Tuesday, March 26, 2024, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Executive Director Elizabeth Smith will join leaders from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Alvin Baltrop Trust, the John Giorno Foundation, and Black Rock Senegal to discuss inventive approaches to stewardship of artists’ legacies.

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On September 22, 2023, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation brought together colleagues and peers for a lively discussion on how visual arts organizations can increase their resiliency and reduce their climate impacts in the face of climate change during Climate Week NYC. 

Held at the New Museum, “Expanding Climate Action in the Visual Arts” spotlighted the work of select Frankenthaler Climate Initiative grant recipients, including the California Institute of the Arts, the National Nordic Museum, the Swiss Institute, and the Taft Museum of Art, and featured rousing call-to-action closing remarks from leadership from the RMI and the Gallery Climate Coalition.

This event was recorded on video: watch now

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation announced today that it is expanding its commitment to climate action in the visual arts, increasing funding for its Frankenthaler Climate Initiative (FCI) from $10 million to a total of $15 million and extending the grantmaking program to include at least two additional cycles in 2024 and 2025. This extension builds upon the success and growth of the initiative since first launching in 2021, which has included the tripling of the Foundation’s initial $5-million commitment and the broadening of its applicant parameters to include museums, non-collecting visual arts organizations, and art schools.

The Foundation simultaneously announced it is awarding $2.7 million to 48 art organizations across the country through its third grantmaking cycle, which launched earlier this year, bringing the total funding conferred to date to more than $10.8 million.

This talk, given by Foundation Executive Director Elizabeth Smith, reflected on Frankenthaler’s six-decade career in painting and printmaking, as well as specific works on view and from the museum’s collection. The lecture happened in conjunction with the exhibition The Pillars (in Norwegian: Søylerommet) which included Frankenthaler’s 1976 painting Sentry alongside artworks by other leading women artists.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation announced ten new recipients of its Frankenthaler Prints Initiative, an ongoing program for university-affiliated art museums that reflects the Foundation’s commitment to supporting undergraduate and graduate education in the visual arts and art history.

The awardees include ten museums from across the U.S., each of which will receive a group of prints and five to ten related trial proofs drawn from the Foundation’s extensive collection of work by Frankenthaler. The museums also receive a one-time grant of $25,000 to develop a project or program for the study, presentation, and interpretation of the editions and proofs within a three-year timeframe.

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The third application cycle of the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative will open for submissions on February 20, 2023 accepting proposals supporting energy efficiency and clean energy projects at visual art museums and art schools throughout the United States. This is the third cycle of the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative which marks a continuation of the Foundation’s $10-million, multi-year commitment to address climate change through cultural institutions.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, Cool Summer, 1962, oil on canvas, 69 3/4 x 120 inches (177.2 x 304.8 cm). © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

A scholar, curator, and arts administrator, Thomas brings more than 15 years of experience working across the visual arts and academia, including leadership roles at foundations, university art museums, and nonprofits supporting contemporary artists. He comes to the Foundation from the Aspen Institute, where he served as the inaugural Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Herbert Bayer Studies, and previously worked as Executive Editor and Assistant Curator to Okwui Enwezor. Thomas will begin at the Foundation in January 2023.

A conversation around the late art and life of Helen Frankenthaler and a celebration of the recent publication of Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works 1988—2009 (Radius Books). Participants include Douglas Dreishpoon, Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné, Clifford Ross, artist, Director and Former Chair of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, and Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, Beginnings, 1994, acrylic on paper, 78 3/4 x 77 3/4 in. (200 x 197.5 cm) © 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Advancing its $10 million commitment to climate action in the visual arts, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation expands its Climate Initiative with the next round of grants. Following the first phase of the initiative, which awarded funds exclusively to collecting museums, this second cycle of grants will reach a broader community within the visual arts by accepting applications from both collecting and non-collecting museums and institutions, including art schools, that are seeking to assess and rectify their impact on the environment. Nearly 50 institutions have received grants in this second cycle, with some $8.1 million conferred to date.

As part of its ongoing commitment to address critical issues impacting the visual arts, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation is dispersing $2.5 million to international organizations leading efforts to protect artists at risk around the world and cultural heritage in Ukraine.

Working with PEN America and World Monuments Fund, the Foundation has identified and addressed several core needs including emergency grants to artists, sustaining displaced and suppressed artists over time, and preserving both sites and collections important to cultural history.

Presented by Asia Society and the Foundation, the Frankenthaler Climate Art Awards aim to foster climate change awareness through the imagination and insights of an upcoming generation of visual artists.  Emerging artists (recent graduates or those enrolled in MFA programs in the U.S.) submitted work addressing climate change through www.climateartawards.org, and three recipients were selected by a jury panel comprised of leaders from four museums. The winners will receive a cash prize and will be honored at a ceremony at the Kennedy Center in April 2022 on the occasion of Asia Society's COAL + ICE exhibition.

Advancing its $10M Commitment to Climate Action in the Visual Arts, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation will open the next application cycle of the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative on April 3, 2022. This $10-million commitment to support energy efficiency and clean energy projects in art museums and institutions across the U.S. will support both Collecting and Non-Collecting Visual Art Institutions as well as Art Schools. Following the first phase of the initiative, which awarded funds exclusively to collecting museums, this second cycle of grants will reach a broader community within the visual arts by accepting applications from both collecting and non-collecting museums and institutions, including art schools, that are seeking to assess and rectify their impact on the environment.

Applications have opened for the newly launched 2022 Frankenthaler Climate Art Awards. Emerging artists (recent graduates or those currently enrolled in MFA programs in the U.S.) can submit work addressing climate change through www.climateartawards.org. Three recipients will be selected by a jury panel comprised of leaders from four museums. The winners will receive a cash prize and will be honored at a ceremony at the Kennedy Center in April 2022.

Building on the Foundation’s social impact philanthropy, the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative is a multi-year grant-making program designed to advance the goal of carbon neutrality in the visual arts. The Foundation conferred its full initial commitment of more than $5 million to nearly 80 collecting institutions across more than 25 states in its inaugural cycle. It has also dedicated an additional $5 million to be awarded over the next two years.

For more information and a full list of 2021 grantees, visit www.frankenthalerclimateinitiative.org. Information on the next grant cycle is expected to be available in early 2022.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, Cool Summer, 1962, oil on canvas, 69 3/4 x 120 inches (177.2 x 304.8 cm). © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Douglas Dreishpoon will give a virtual talk in conjunction with Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works, 1990–2003. The exhibition, curated by Dreishpoon, debuted earlier this year at the New Britain Museum of American Art and will be on view from June 12 - August 28, 2021 at the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

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The Foundation's Executive Director, Elizabeth Smith, was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S. in recognition of her significant achievement in fostering cultural and international exchange and honoring the Foundation’s work to promote the arts. The ceremony took place at Albertine at the French Embassy in New York City, with the participation of trustees, staff, Frankenthaler family, and friends of the Foundation.

Elizabeth Smith, Executive Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, joins Natalie Dupêcher, Assistant Curator of Modern Art, for a conversation about Helen Frankenthaler’s pivotal role in post-war American art. They will consider how the artist pioneered a highly original form of abstraction by looking at a selection of her works, including the monumental painting Hybrid Vigor, 1973, which is currently on view in the Menil Collection. On loan from a private collection, it is the first time this work is presented at a museum since it was acquired in the 1970s.

The Foundation announces new grants supporting small art museums impacted by COVID-19 and a roster of new two-year grants for digital initiatives and professional advancement opportunities for students and recent graduates that enhance equity and access in the arts.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, New Paths, 1973, acrylic and marker on canvas, 54 ¾ x 109 inches © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photograph by Robert McKeever, courtesy Gagosian

"Archive: Helen Frankenthaler," a feature by Tim Hornyak considers Frankenthaler's life, work and impact on the course of American abstract painting.

The Willem de Kooning Foundation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Teiger Foundation, and the Cy Twombly Foundation, as part of their respective COVID-19 relief efforts, have established an emergency relief grant program that will provide aid to Tri-State non-salaried workers in the visual arts who have experienced financial hardship from lack of income or opportunity as a direct result of the COVID-19 crisis. The program, initiated by The Willem de Kooning Foundation, will be administered in partnership with nonprofit arts service organization New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).

The Foundation announced the selection of five new institutional partners for Frankenthaler Scholarships, a multi-year initiative that has dedicated more than $4 million to art and art history graduate programs around the country. For the program’s next phase, the Foundation is awarding $500,000 to five different universities—The Graduate Center, CUNY; Harvard University; Institute of Fine Arts at New York University; Stanford University; and University of Chicago—to support the creation of named endowments that will offer one or more annual fellowships for doctoral students studying art history. These endowment gifts build on the inaugural round of Frankenthaler Scholarships, which support MFA programs in painting.

Image: Students from the second and third years of UCLA’s MFA Painting program with Professor Silke Otto-Knapp and HFF Executive Director Elizabeth Smith. 

Foundation for Contemporary Arts announced the creation of The Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting, a new $40,000 award in memory of the artist Helen Frankenthaler, who was one of FCA’s early supporters. Presented to an individual artist demonstrating Frankenthaler’s passion for innovation and experimentation in the medium, this annual grant is underwritten by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, and administered through FCA’s distinguished Grants to Artists program. 

The inaugural Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting will be made to New York-based artist Kerstin Brätsch.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler in her East Eighty-third Street studio, New York, in front of Hybrid Vigor (1973), 1973. Photo by Edward Youkilis/Courtesy Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Archives, New York/Artwork © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

“Helen Frankenthaler and James Schuyler: A Correspondence”, an essay by the Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné Douglas Dreishpoon exploring the relationship between artist Helen Frankenthaler and poet James Schuyler published in this Winter issue of the Paris Review. 

An interdisciplinary conversation on the common ground between painters, poets, and musicians who lived and worked in New York City, south of 14th Street, during the 1950s.

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In conjunction with a new year-long display of her work at Tate Modern, this panel discussion explored Frankenthaler’s life, work and legacy. The discussion was chaired by Mark Godfrey, Senior Curator of International Art at Tate Modern.

A display of Helen Frankenthaler’s work is on view at Tate Modern through November 15, 2020. Works lent by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, Vessel, 1961, oil on canvas, 100 x 94 inches, collection Tate, London © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photograph by Jordan Tinker, courtesy Helen Frankenthaler Foundation

Conversations among artists and art historians on the continuing influence, interest, and impact of mid-twentieth century abstraction. 

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, Deep Sun, 1983, color intaglio, sheet: 30 x 40½ in. (76.2 x 102.9 cm) plate: 24 x 35½ in (61 x 90.2 cm) © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Tyler Graphics, Ltd., Mount Kisco, New York

A talk about Helen Frankenthaler by Avis Berman, in conjunction with the exhibition Abstract Climates: Helen Frankenthaler in Provincetown. Berman is a writer, curator, and historian of American art, architecture, and culture.

Image: Provincetown Window, 1963-64. Acrylic on canvas, 82 3/8 x 81 7/8 inches. Collection of Josh and Beth Friedman. © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

In conjunction with the exhibition Abstract Climates: Helen Frankenthaler in Provincetown, art historian Alexander Nemerov, who is the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities as well as Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University, joins Clifford Ross, multi-media artist, and Chairman of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, in a conversation about Helen Frankenthaler.

Image: Indian Summer, 1967. Acrylic on canvas, 93 ½ x 93 5/8 inches. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1972. © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 

In conjunction with the exhibition Helen Frankenthaler Prints: Seven Types of Ambiguity, Carol Armstrong, Professor of the History of Art at Yale University, explored the artist’s accomplishments in prints. 

Image: Weeping Crabapple, 2009

Thirty-one color woodcut from 18 woodblocks

25 1/4 x 37 1/4 inches (64.13 x 94.61 cm)

© 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York. Photograph by Tim Pyle

Gagosian senior curator John Elderfield and director Jason Ysenburg led a tour of the exhibition Helen Frankenthaler: Sea Change: A Decade of Paintings, 1974–1983 at Gagosian, Rome.

Elderfield and Ysenburg explored the important period in Frankenthaler’s work that began in the summer of 1974, which was sparked by the changing appearance of the wide vistas and moving tides of the Long Island Sound. The show coincided with an exhibition of her work at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani in Venice on the occasion of the 58th Venice Biennale.

Artwork © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Douglas Dreishpoon, Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné and Michael Brenson, author of the forthcoming David Smith biography, discussed Frankenthaler and Smith’s fifteen-year friendship, from 1950 to 1965.

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Image: Helen Frankenthaler with David Smith at Frankenthaler’s West End Avenue apartment, 1956, in front of Mountains and Sea, 1952, oil and charcoal on unsized, unprimed canvas, 86 3⁄8 × 117 1⁄4 in. © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo © Burt Glinn / Magnum Photos

The program considered the work of Frankenthaler as a second-generation Abstract Expressionist and her pioneering role in the development of the Color Field school; a special focus was given to the painting Hurricane Flag as a key example of Frankenthaler’s work of the late 1960s and in the context of the artist’s six-decade career.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation announced two new major gift/grant initiatives—one establishing Frankenthaler Scholarships in painting and art history, the other a Frankenthaler Prints Initiative for university-affiliated museums.

For more information, please click on the link for the full press release.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, Untitled, 1967, screenprint, 25 3/4 x 17 7/8 inches (65.4 x 45.4 cm). © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Chiron Press, New York. Photograph by Steven Sloman, courtesy of Helen Frankenthaler Foundation

Acclaimed author Mary Gabriel spoke about her new book, Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art (Little, Brown), with Deborah Solomon, art critic and biographer.

The discussion was followed by a book-signing

Program organized in collaboration with the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation.

Youtube Broadcast

A panel discussion with Sanford Hirsch, Executive Director, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation; Katy Rogers, Programs Director, Dedalus Foundation; Daniel Belasco, Executive Director, Al Held Foundation; and Karen Wilkin, author, curator, and critic. Moderated by Douglas Dreishpoon, Director, Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, Beach, 1950, oil, sand, plaster of Paris, and coffee grounds on sized, primed canvas 34 1/4 × 32 inches (86.9 × 81.3 cm). © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The first in a series of public programs presented in conjunction with the exhibition Abstract Climates: Helen Frankenthalerin Provincetown. Elderfield is Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Distinguished Curator and Lecturer at the Princeton University Art Museum; and Consultant for Special Exhibitions at Gagosian Gallery.

Helen Frankenthaler's dedication to printmaking was the focus of a conversation between Douglas Dreishpoon, Director of Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné, Mark Pascale, Janet and Craig Duchossois Curator of Prints and Drawings at the The Art Institute of Chicago, and Ruth E. Fine, who, as the Curator of Modern Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Art, organized a retrospective of Frankenthaler’s prints in 1993-94.

Click here to listen to the audio recording, courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago.

A discussion about Helen Frankenthaler’s work and its connection to French art and culture. Participants included John Elderfield, Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art; Distinguished Curator and Lecturer at the Princeton University Art Museum; and Consultant for Special Projects at Gagosian Gallery; Douglas Dreishpoon, Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné and Chief Curator Emeritus at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Joachim Pissarro, Bershad Professor of Art History at Hunter College of the City University of New York and Director of the Hunter College Galleries; and artist Pat Steir.

Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, one of the nation’s leading residencies for emerging visual artists, received a $250,000 gift from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. The funds provided for a new studio building which was constructed on its rural campus in central Maine.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, June 1986. Photo by Barbara N. Lapcek

The panel focused on Helen Frankenthaler’s creative process, methods, and materials, as well as public reception of the artist’s works.

Throughout her career, Frankenthaler worked with a variety of print publishers to push the medium in new directions. No Rules featured work executed over four decades and examined her inventive and groundbreaking approach to the woodcut.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, Freefall, 1993, Hand-dyed paper in 15 colors and 12 color woodcut from 1 plate of 21 woodblocks, 78 1/2 x 60 1/2 inches (199.4 x 153.7 cm). © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

This exhibition comprised a selection of large paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, focusing on nature as a longstanding inspiration and including the full range of styles and techniques that she explored over five decades of work.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, Milkwood Arcade, 1963, Acrylic on canvas, 86 1/2 x 80 3/4 inches (219 x 203 cm). © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The first major exhibition of Helen Frankenthaler's work in Paris in more than fifty years included fourteen paintings and two works on paper, several not exhibited since the early 1960s.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, The Red Sea, 1959. Oil and charcoal on sized, primed canvas with painted wood frame, 69 5/8 × 68 1/2 inches

An art historian, curator, author, and educator, Mr. Dreishpoon will lead the development and production of the catalogue raisonné of Helen Frankenthaler’s paintings, works on paper, and mediums other than prints, which the Foundation intends to publish in both print and digital editions. He will additionally serve as Editor of the publication.

The Foundation served as Season Sponsor of the ongoing program series, which highlights the current work of AAR Fellows and Residents in the arts and humanities, in the form of lectures, presentations, and performances.

Hosted by the Foundation, the lecture was followed by a discussion led by Robert Slifkin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Fine Arts, NYU.

The grant underwrote the cost of a visual-arts studio—one of five new live-work studios at Yaddo—which was named in Frankenthaler's honor.

The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU held a symposium exploring new perspectives on the work of artist Helen Frankenthaler. Co-organized by Robert Slifkin, Associate Professor of Fine Arts, IFA, and Pepe Karmel, Associate Professor of Art History, NYU, in partnership with the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, the program featured presentations by five leading scholars of postwar modern art.

VIDEO (Produced by the IFA/NYU)

The project was titled Helen & Gordon (2015), based on the well-known photograph taken of Frankenthaler by Life magazine photographer Gordon Parks in 1957.

Image: Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Helen & Gordon, 2015. Photo by Andreas Scheiblecker, courtesy of museum in progress (www.mip.at).

The Clark Art Institute and the Aspen Institute presented a panel discussion exploring the emerging role of artist-endowed foundations as a force in cultural philanthropy and in the stewardship of America’s artistic heritage. The panel discussion highlighted pioneering research by the Aspen Institute, published as National Study of Artist-Endowed Foundations, documenting the rise in private foundations created in the United States by visual artists. 

Visual Chronology by Liz Hirsch; Texts by Daniel Belasco, Carroll Dunham, John Elderfield, Barbara Guest, Harmony Hammond, Liz Hirsch, Suzanne Hudson, Carrie Moyer, Laura Owens, Lane Relyea, Dwight Ripley, Sterling Ruby, Katy Siegel, Amy Sillman, Howard Singerman, Tracy K. Smith, and Mary Weatherford

The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University presented Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler, a groundbreaking exhibition that reconsidered the history of modern art and its renewed meaning for contemporary artists. Curated by Katy Siegel, Pretty Raw took the work of the artist Helen Frankenthaler (1928—2011) as the point of departure for an alternative version of modernist art over the past 50 years, a story usually written as a series of male masters.

Douglas Dreishpoon, Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné; John Elderfield, Chief Curator Emeritus at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, who has written extensively on the artist’s life and career; Elizabeth Smith, Executive Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation; and artist Clifford Ross, Frankenthaler’s nephew and Chairman of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in conversation on Helen Frankenthaler's career during the 1960s and 1970s. 

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, Hint from Bassano, 1973. Acrylic on canvas, 85 x 227 inches (215.9 x 576.6 cm). Audrey and David Mirvish, Toronto © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Watch Full Lecture

AlbrightKnox.org

In conjunction with the exhibition Making Painting: Helen Frankenthaler and J.M.W. Turner at Turner Contemporary Gallery, John Elderfield, Clifford Ross, Elizabeth Smith, and “Making Painting” curator James Hamilton joined writer, broadcaster and art historian Tim Marlow for a panel discussion on Helen Frankenthaler.

Image: Installation view of Making Painting: Helen Frankenthaler and J.M.W. Turner. All artwork by Helen Frankenthaler © 2020 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York