backstory: A painting from my past
Recently I was in Santa Fe for a wedding (Sorry Ann! I wasn’t there long enough to call on you.) and saw an important painting from my past at SITE Santa Fe … May Stevens’ Soho Women Artists (1978).
This work was part of a Stevens show there but I knew it well from my days at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
As described in Art in America this past April, the painting, which is a gorgeous, breathtaking blue and almost 12 feet wide, “depicts artists Harmony Hammond, Joyce Kozloff, Marty Pottenger, Louise Bourgeois, Sarah Charlesworth, and Miriam Schapiro, alongside Lippard and Signora d’Apolito, who owned a SoHo bakery that the downtown women frequented.” Stevens’ painting of Artemisia Gentileschi, which was also on view at SITE Santa Fe, is visible in the background of Soho Women Artists.
As described in Art in America this past April, the painting, which is a gorgeous, breathtaking blue and almost 12 feet wide, “depicts artists Harmony Hammond, Joyce Kozloff, Marty Pottenger, Louise Bourgeois, Sarah Charlesworth, and Miriam Schapiro, alongside Lippard and Signora d’Apolito, who owned a SoHo bakery that the downtown women frequented.” Stevens’ painting of Artemisia Gentileschi, which was also on view at SITE Santa Fe, is visible in the background of Soho Women Artists.
Stevens has long been historically undervalued. You can read more about the artist and see her work in the links above.
Tracy Fitzpatrick
Director, Neuberger Museum of Art
Interim Managing Director, The Performing Arts Center
Find me on Twitter @tracyfitzart