The Personal Archives of the Trailblazing Artist Pacita Abad Find a Permanent Home
Andrew Russeth, artnet
May 2025
Twenty years after the artist Pacita Abad’s death, in 2004, of cancer, at 58, her astonishing achievements are finally reaching a wide audience. A rip-roaring retrospective began at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2023 and ended its travels at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto earlier this year, winning acclaim all along the way. Meanwhile, museums have been snapping up her works—her ingenious quilted trapunto pictures, her dazzlingly colorful paintings of masks, her candid depictions of women and immigrants. She was prolific, seemingly indefatigable. Now the Filipina American’s voluminous archives have been acquired by Stanford University’s libraries and its Cantor Arts Center. […]