Presidential Lecture

Abstract Expressionism: Who’s in the Picture?

In the late 1940s, Abstract Expressionism took the American art world by storm. Soon, it took over the world. As artist Barnett Newman wrote, in 1948, “We are in the process of making the world, to a certain extent, in our image.” But whose image was “ours” exactly? The movement’s practitioners—primarily white men—professed new freedoms and certainly did not speak with one voice. The seemingly hermetic infrastructure that supported them was both self-limiting and largely off-limits to women and artists of color, whose contributions were equally significant. In this talk, Adam Weinberg highlights artists of the era who exceeded the limits of a defined style and milieu, among them Ed Clark, Beauford Delaney, Philip Guston, Lee Krasner, Norman Lewis, Joan Mitchell, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne, and Alma Thomas.