Beyond Ninth Street: Legacies of Women in Abstraction

“I follow the rules until I go against them all.” —Helen Frankenthaler

In recent decades, artists, scholars, and curators have reexamined the Eurocentric and male-focused narratives that have long shaped the history of postwar American abstraction. This exhibition, organized from Kemper Museum’s Permanent Collection, contributes to this conversation by highlighting an intergenerational group of women abstract artists who were active in the 1950s and the 1960s in New York City—Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011), Jane Freilicher (1924–2014), Grace Hartigan (1922–2008), Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989), and Joan Mitchell (1925–1992)—alongside a more recent generation of abstract artists, including Shinique Smith (born 1971) and Gilda Snowden (1954–2014).

Beyond Ninth Street builds on the museum's commitment to the study, acquisition, and presentation of modern and contemporary abstract art. Other exhibitions that have expanded understandings of American abstraction by recognizing artists who have been historically excluded as well as the current generation include Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today, Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives and the current major career retrospective Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence, on view in the Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery June 2–August 27, 2023.

Beyond Ninth Street: Legacies of Women in Abstraction is organized by Kemper Museum assistant curator Krista Alba.

Works in the Exhibition

More Abstract Works by Women Artists in the Permanent Collection

The works compiled on this virtual checklist have been recently exhibited and are now resting so that they may be shown again in the near future and preserved for generations to come.