BETTY PARSONS – Alison Jacques

Ana Mendieta

TATE MODERN, LONDON: UNTIL 17 JANUARY 2027

Sheila Hicks: Beyond

PALAIS DES BEAUX-ARTS DE LILLE, FRANCE: UNTIL 8 MARCH 2027

Eileen Agar

INCLUDED IN ‘PEGGY GUGGENHEIM IN LONDON: THE MAKING OF A COLLECTOR’, PEGGY GUGGENHEIM COLLECTION, VENICE, ITALY

SKY GLABUSH

INCLUDED IN ‘THIS MUST BE THE PLACE’, WHITECHAPEL GALLERY, LONDON: UNTIL 8 NOVEMBER

Betty Parsons

INCLUDED IN ‘ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM: THE EAST END, 1940 TO TODAY’, PARRISH ART MUSEUM, WATER MILL, US: UNTIL 14 FEBRUARY 2027

PACITA ABAD

INCLUDED IN ‘IN FOCUS: ASIAN AMERICAN ART FROM THE COLLECTION’, CANTOR ARTS CENTER AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY, US: UNTIL 22 FEBRUARY 2027

Betty Parsons

INCLUDED IN ‘ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISTS: THE WOMEN’, GRINNELL COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART, GRINNELL, US: UNTIL 2 JANUARY 2027

PACITA ABAD

INCLUDED IN ‘STATUE OF LIBERTY FROM BARTHOLDI TO WARHOL’, AMON CARTER MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, FORT WORTH, TEXAS: UNTIL 3 JANUARY 2027

Birgit Jürgenssen: Rupture

DECEMBER: MUZEUM SUSCH, SWITZERLAND

LENORE TAWNEY

INCLUDED IN ‘GREATER THAN THE SUM: PRACTICES OF GATHERING, REUSE, AND ASSEMBLAGE’, JOHN MICHAEL KOHLER ARTS CENTER, SHEBOYGAN, US: OPENING 24 OCTOBER

Ana Mendieta

INCLUDED IN ‘FROM THE CENTRE: LOOKING AT LUCY LIPPARD’, MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, CHICAGO, US: UNTIL 11 JULY 2027

ANA MENDIETA

INCLUDED IN ‘SLOW BURN’, FINE ARTS GALLERY, SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY, SAN FRANCISCO, US

Betty Parsons: An Expanded World

THE HESSEL MUSEUM AT CCS BARD COLLEGE, NEW YORK

Ana Mendieta: Traces

AUGUST: FIGGE ART MUSEUM, DAVENPORT, US: UNTIL 28 FEBRUARY 2027

Betty Parsons, Bahamas (detail), 1950. © The Betty Parsons and William P. Rayner Foundation. Courtesy of Alison Jacques, and Alexander Gray Associates, New York. Photography: Michael Brzezinski

The American Federation of Arts is pleased to announce Abstract Expressionists: The Women. The exhibition will present a fresh look at important contributions U.S. women painters working in New York, California, and Paris made to Abstract Expressionism from the early 1940s through the 1970s. The show features approximately fifty works from The Levett Collection by over thirty women artists, offering audiences a more in-depth understanding of a singular aspect of twentieth-century American art, one whose significance has only just begun to receive proper recognition.

Until recently, the historical and critical reception of Abstract Expressionism—an American postwar artistic phenomenon—has almost uniformly marginalized its women practitioners. The development of expansive, gestural paintings with a radical approach to scale, surface, and process has historically been associated with male creativity, invoking a New World ‘heroic’ masculinity that defined the American post-war era. Abstract Expressionists: The Women upends this gendered narrative, demonstrating that women artists working in the Abstract Expressionist style were not merely acolytes or interpreters, but ambitious innovators all their own. Concurrent with their more celebrated male peers, many of these women experimented with spontaneity and immediacy in their large-scale compositions, also exhibiting the automatic techniques and extemporaneous characteristics associated with ‘action painting’. Focusing on the talent, commitment, and ingenuity of more than two dozen women artists, this exhibition reveals the vital impact made by women painters on the first truly avant-garde artistic movement to originate in the United States.

Abstract Expressionists: The Women is enriched by compelling and informative didactic material, including archival photographs and ephemera, a comprehensive timeline chronology of female achievement during this period, and other historical documentation. The exhibition is accompanied by a more than 200 page catalogue (Merrell Publishers, April 2023) detailing the world-class Levett Collection through scholarly essays and lavish illustrations. Showcasing the resolution, innovation, and creativity of an unparalleled group of women artists, Abstract Expressionists: The Women reveals the integral role they played in defining American art on a national and international stage.