Barbara Takenaga (born 1949) is an American artist known for swirling, abstract paintings that have been described as psychedelic and cosmic, as well as scientific, due to their highly detailed, obsessive patterning.Diehl, Carol
"Barbara Takenaga at DC Moore,"
''Art in America'', February 2012. Retrieved September 24, 2020.Berlind, Robert
"Barbara Takenaga, New Paintings,"
''The Brooklyn Rail'', October 2013. Retrieved September 24, 2020.Buhmann, Stephanie

''Artcritical'', October 2003. Retrieved October 15, 2020. She gained wide recognition in the 2000s, as critics such as David Cohen and Kenneth Baker placed her among a leading edge of artists renewing abstraction with paintings that emphasized visual beauty and excess, meticulous technique, and optical effects.Cohen, David
"James Siena at Pace, Barbara Takenaga at McKenzie Fine Art, Suzan Frecon at Peter Blum,"
''The New York Sun'', November 17, 2005. Retrieved October 15, 2020.Baker, Kenneth. "'Radial Gradient'", ''ARTnews'', February 2005.MacMillan, Kyle
"Beauty's Bold Comeback,"
''Denver Post'', May 20, 2009. Retrieved September 24, 2020.MacAdam, Barbara A. "The New Abstraction," ''ARTnews'', April 2007. Her work suggests possibilities that range from imagined landscapes and aerial maps to astronomical and meteorological phenomena to microscopic views of cells, aquatic creatures or mineral cross-sections.Jones, Mary
"Sliding Away in Space: Barbara Takenaga at DC Moore,"
''Artcritical'', September 27, 2018. Retrieved September 24, 2020.Johnson, Ken

''The New York Times'', December 28, 2001, p. E44. Retrieved October 15, 2020.Yau, John
"Demotic Abstraction with a Twist,"
''Hyperallergic'', September 8, 2018. Retrieved September 24, 2020. In a 2018 review, ''The New Yorker'' described Takenaga as "an abstractionist with a mystic’s interest in how the ecstatic can emerge from the laborious."Scott, Andrea K
"Five Female Painters to See in New York Art Galleries,"
''The New Yorker'', September 8, 2018. Retrieved September 24, 2020. Takenaga has had solo exhibitions at the

MASS MoCA The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building complex located in North Adams, Massachusetts. It is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing ar ...

Hunter Center, Huntington Museum of Art,

Neuberger Museum of Art Neuberger Museum of Art is located in Purchase, New York, United States. It is affiliated with Purchase College, part of the State University of New York system. It is the nation's tenth-largest university museum. The museum is one of 14 sites o ...

Space 42, and Art in General, and a twenty-year survey at

Williams College Museum of Art The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is a college-affiliated art museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It is located on the campus of Williams College, and is close to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) and the Clark Ar ...

in 2017.Griffin, Amy
"Takenaga’s Art at MASS MoCA Big as Prairie Itself,"
''Albany Times-Union'', September 24, 2015. Retrieved October 12, 2020.Raven, Arlene, "The Conversation: Barbara Takenaga," ''Manual'', New York: Art In General, 1993.Cheng, Scarlet
"Barbara Takenaga at Williams College Museum of Art,"
''Artillery Magazine'', January 2, 2018. Retrieved September 24, 2020.Balken, Debra Bricken et al. ''Barbara Takenaga'', New York/Williamstown, MA: DelMonico Books/Williams College Museum of Art, 2020. She has participated in group shows at the Frist Art Museum, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts,

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appa ...

, deCordova Museum, and

San Jose Museum of Art The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum in downtown San Jose, California, United States. Founded in 1969, the museum holds a permanent collection with an emphasis on West Coast artists of the 20th and 21st centur ...

, among others.Epstein, Edward M. "'...that women tend to make': The Female Gaze at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art," ''Artcritical'', February 6, 2013. Retrieved October 27, 2020.Capasso, Nick. ''Big Bang! Painting in the 21st Century'', Lincoln, MA: deCordova Museum, 2007. In 2020, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and she has been recognized by the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...

and

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...

.''Artforum''
"Sanford Biggers and Zoe Leonard Among 2020 Guggenheim Fellows,"
''Artforum'', April 9, 2020. Retrieved September 23, 2020.Rosenberg, Karen

''The New York Times'', May 30, 2008. Retrieved October 15, 2020. Takenaga lives and works in New York City and is the Mary A. & William Wirt Warren Professor of Art, Emerita at

Williams College Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was kill ...

.Belcove, Julie L. "Barbara Takenaga," ''Elle Décor'', Best of the Best issue, June/July 2014.Einspruch, Franklin
"Energies Illustrated: Barbara Takenaga at Gregory Lind Gallery,"
''The New York Sun'', May 15, 2012. Retrieved September 24, 2020.John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Barbara Takenaga
Fellows. Retrieved September 23, 2020.

Mature work and critical reception

Writers characterize Takenaga as an abstract painter despite the illusionistic and suggestive qualities of her art, noting that the work emerges from imagination, reflection and an intuitive process combining chance, order and repetitive labor, rather than from observation.Balken, Debra Bricken. "The Way of the Dot," ''Barbara Takenaga'', New York/Williamstown, MA: DelMonico Books/Williams College Museum of Art, 2020, p. 12–29.Kushner, Robert. "'Macro:Micro/Micro:Macro, Barbara Takenaga in Conversation with Robert Kushner," ''Barbara Takenaga: New Paintings'', New York: DC Moore, 2013. She often begins with splashy, faux-

Abstract Expressionist Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

grounds, before methodically but intuitively applying hand-painted forms to create patterns; the process is informed by her early printmaking background and employs a flat, graphic approach that includes tracing, transferring, outlining, and pooling paint.Tilley, John Martin
"The Edge,"
''Office'', September 14, 2018. Retrieved September 24, 2020.Wayne, Leslie

''Two Coats of Paint'', September 2, 2018. Retrieved September 24, 2020. Takenaga's diverse influences include Tantric

mandala A mandala ( sa, मण्डल, maṇḍala, circle, ) is a geometric configuration of symbols. In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of practitioners and adepts, as a spiritual guidance tool, for e ...

s, the woodblock prints of

Utagawa Kuniyoshi Utagawa Kuniyoshi ( ja, 歌川国芳, ; January 1, 1798 – April 14, 1861) was one of the last great masters of the Japanese ukiyo-e style of woodblock prints and painting.Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric ''et al'' (2005). "Kuniyoshi" in He was ...

, Japanese- Pop graphic artist

Tadanori Yokoo is a Japanese graphic designer, illustrator, printmaker and painter. Yokoo’s signature style of psychedelia and pastiche engages a wide span of modern visual and cultural phenomena from Japan and around the world. Career Tadanori Yokoo, bo ...

Sol LeWitt Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism. LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...

, Roger Brown, and the

Pattern and Decoration Pattern and Decoration was a United States art movement from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. The movement has sometimes been referred to as "P&D" or as The New Decorativeness. The movement was championed by the gallery owner Holly Solomon. The ...

movement.Takenaga, Barbara
"Barbara Takenaga on a Rajasthan Manuscript Page,"
''Painters on Paintings'', May 15, 2014. Retrieved September 24, 2020. Writers such as John Yau and Debra Bricker Balken ascribe her emphasis on decoration and detail, spatial ambiguity, and visceral, optical qualities to her interests in the ecstatic, pleasurable qualities of non-Western and Op art, each of which offered alternatives to Abstract Expressionism's self-expressive existential angst and Minimalism's flat, reductive self-referentiality.Rubin, David S. ''Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art since the 1960s'', San Antonio, TX/Cambridge, MA: San Antonio Museum of Art and MIT Press, 2010. Retrieved September 24, 2020. Formally, Takenaga engages opposing elements of surface and depth, flatness and dimension, stasis and movement.Shepard, Jim. "Self-Effacement and the Sublime," ''Barbara Takenaga'', New York/Williamstown, MA: DelMonico Books/Williams College Museum of Art, 2020, p. 30–3. In conceptual terms, critics identify persistent (if submerged) themes in her work involving personal history, wonder and dread, mourning and mortality, along with a sense of levity that she has called "earnest goofiness."Princenthal, Nancy. ''Barbara Takenaga: New Paintings'', New York: DC Moore, October 2011.

Painting (2001–09)

In the early 2000s, Takenaga committed to abstraction, working modestly scaled variations on a set format: centripetal or centrifugal patterns that radiate or coil from a slightly off-center focal point, forming all-over fields that evoke nocturnal skies and celestial forms (e.g., ''Night Painting'', 2001).Kushner, Robert. "Barbara Takenaga at McKenzie Fine Art," ''Art in America'', February 2004. ''New York Times'' critic Ken Johnson described these paintings as "optically riveting and transcendentally suggestive fa swarming, spacey feeling like traveling at the speed of light through a galaxy or a psychic center of illumination." Her late-2001 work was created in the shadow of grief following the death of her mother; she immortalized the memory of both her parents in the ethereal works ''Shizue'' and ''Toshiwo''—bright, radiating constellations of concentric dots and spirals on nebulous blue fields that convey both mortality and visual euphoria. Critics such as ''Art in America'' 's Robert Kushner identified an expansion of Takenaga's vocabulary in shows at McKenzie Fine Art (2003, 2005), which yielded surprising, more dynamic arrangements within her tight self-imposed parameters. Feathery swirls in ''Wave'' (2002) suggest studies of ornate, autonomous systems evoking both decorative cross-cultural and scientific imagery; later works resemble vibrant cellular or bubble forms (''Rubazu''), bulbous spiraled microorganisms (''Tarazed #1''), and jeweled mandala or Paisley patterns (''Gold + Red''). In subsequent work, she explored subdued palettes evoking loss—grays, white, black, pale greens and turquoises, and metallic golds and silvers—and forms suggesting ambiguous, otherworldly environs (''Ghost Triptych'' 2007–8), molecular frameworks or the suction-cup undersides of sea stars and octopi (''Ozma'', 2009), and bent, skewed grids and lattices like three-dimensional, topographic maps of black holes that approach Op art, such as ''Angel (pink)'' (2008) and ''Zardo'' (2009).Jancar, Ava
"Op Parts,"
''Artslant'', March 14, 2008. Retrieved October 12, 2020.

Post-2009 painting

In 2010, Takenaga made two significant shifts in her work: she began incorporating a flat, linear element serving as both horizon and spatial division, and she relinquished some control, allowing chance elements and looser patterns (still dot swirls, undulating constellations and bursting whorls) to emerge in bolder compositions.Yau, John
"Barbara Takenaga: New Paintings,"
''Hyperallergic'', November 2011. Retrieved September 24, 2020. Critics suggest the horizon line—normally a stabilizing element—disrupted her typically ordered work, allowing a wider pictorial range to evolve that alluded to imaginary landscape and aquatic as well as galactic realms.Cheng, Dewitt. "Critic’s Pick, SF Bay Area," ''Art Ltd.'', May 2012. The shifts first appeared in paintings that drew on Takenaga's

midwestern The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...

upbringing. The largely gray and blue ''Nebraska Painting EL1'' (2010) and ''Whiteout'' (2011) suggest limitless winter fields vanishing into big skies, while the more colorful ''Sparkler (Red Line)'' (2010) and ''Red Funnel'' (2013) allude to fireworks, carnival lights and tornadoes. She renewed her interest in ambitiously scaled, horizontal work in the panoramic triptychs ''Rise/Fall'' and ''Forte'' (2011), ''Diptych (Ikat)'' (2012), and later, ''Nebraska'' (2015, MASS MoCA), a 110-foot mural that repeated a dizzying, hand-painted wallpaper pattern reminiscent of a snowy, furrowed field under a distant blue sky. John Yau identifies a dissonance and instability he likens to dissimilar systems invading each other's territory in this work (e.g., ''Ronin'', 2011). He attributes this to her looser approach and use of unearthly metallic paints (which change with the angle of the light), noting a collective, disquieting effect he interprets as acknowledgement of an indifferent universe. ''Art in Americas

Carol Diehl Carol Diehl is an American artist, art critic and poet. In addition to her writing, most recently appearing in her blog ''Art Vent'',''Art Vent''Carol Diehl blog Retrieved March 8, 2018. she is best known for her paintings, which have often docume ...

, however, discerns a sense of order beyond the easily comprehensible in the work's suspension between visual excess and rigor; she compares its mystical quality to

van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...

's ''

The Starry Night ''The Starry Night'' ( nl, De sterrennacht) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Painted in June 1889, it depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Prove ...

''. In her later work, Takenaga has admitted more open space and exposed the drips, puddles, and spatters of her modulated underpaintings as a compositional element (e.g., the lantern-like ''Green Light'', 2013). She has also continued to expand her associative range to include northern lights, meteor showers (''Night Painting (JFM)'', 2016), geodes and fractals, in work that Ken Johnson describes as viewed more "through the ecstatic, possibly pharmaceutically aided perceptions of a hippie dreamer" than "the technologically assisted eyes of a scientist."Yau, John
"The Face of Infinity Is Not a Picture: New Paintings by Barbara Takenaga,"
''Hyperallergic'', September 22, 2013. Retrieved September 24, 2020.Johnson, Ken

''The New York Times'', April 14, 2016. Retrieved September 24, 2020.Rubin, David
"Zombie Abstraction (Pt 3), Editors' Roundtable,"
''Visual Art Source'', June 12, 2015. Retrieved September 24, 2020. Takenaga's paintings in the shows "Outset" (2018) and "Manifold" (2019) at DC Moore Gallery employ austere, contemplative palettes (black, iridescent white, silvery gray and blue) and bolder, shifting figure-ground relationships featuring large, dark shapes like holes in the images (e.g., ''Aeaea''; ''Hello'').Barcio, Phillip. "Barbara Takenaga’s Fluctuations of Space," ''Ideel Art'', September 19, 2018. Retrieved September 24, 2020.Waltemath, Joan
"Barbara Takenaga and Patricio Guzmán: Telescopes and Other Visions,"
''Brooklyn Rail'', February 5, 2019. Retrieved September 24, 2020.Wei, Lilly, "On Systems of Radiance," ''Outset'', New York: DC Moore, 2018. Their mysterious forms draw widely—on classical Japanese art, scientific imagery and mid-century abstraction—and leave behind her fields, tarmacs and horizon lines for more confrontational, turbulent references to explosions, space travel, drifting land masses, and microbiology, evoking a world of constant pressure and relentless change.Paglia, Michael
"Four Solos Create a Beautiful Pattern at Robischon Gallery,"
''Westword'', June 12, 2019. Retrieved October 12, 2020. Works such as the sprawling, five-panel ''Manifold 5'' use abstracted silhouette imagery (a river, clouds, robes, elephants, votive candles, geyser forms) taken from Japanese screens and other Eastern sources; they function as patterns or dark grounds flipping between positive shapes and negative space. The contrasting ''Serrulata'' (in translation, cherry tree) layers and presses together multiple processes—patterns, pours, Sumi ink-like splotches, and drips of dark blue, black and gray—creating patterns on a shell pink ground to suggest cherry blossoms and themes of disruption, dispersal, decay and transience.

Early biography and career

Takenaga was born in

North Platte, Nebraska North Platte is a city in and the county seat of Lincoln County, Nebraska, United States. It is located in the west-central part of the state, along Interstate 80, at the confluence of the North and South Platte Rivers forming the Platte River. T ...

in 1949. She earned a BFA (Art and English, 1972) and MFA (1978) from

University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sy ...

. Her graduate studies focused on printmaking and took place against a backdrop of 1970s post-psychedelic

consciousness raising Consciousness raising (also called awareness raising) is a form of activism popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group on some cause or ...

, interest in the Eastern thought and

second-wave feminism Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades. It took place throughout the Western world, and aimed to increase equality for women by building on previous feminist gains. ...

; they culminated in a 52-foot, gridded mural-installation, ''Here to Here, Sense and Nonsense'' (1978), composed of several dozen abstract-patterned lithographs. After receiving her MFA, Takenaga taught at

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...

and

University of Denver The University of Denver (DU) is a private research university in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1864, it is the oldest independent private university in the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Univ ...

, before moving to New York City and joining the faculty of

in Massachusetts in 1985.Williams College Museum of Art
"Patternings: Ed Epping and Barbara Takenaga."
Retrieved September 24, 2020. During this time, she produced large-scale installations combining elements like rocks and cut and patterned paper that alluded to Zen raked gardens; their balance of

asymmetrical Asymmetry is the absence of, or a violation of, symmetry (the property of an object being invariant to a transformation, such as reflection). Symmetry is an important property of both physical and abstract systems and it may be displayed in pre ...

elements, spatial ambiguity, black graphic markmaking, and subtle color explored the role of Japanese-American cultural identity in her art. Takenaga presented in solo exhibitions at A.I.R. Gallery and Art in General, and in group shows at the

Boston Center for the Arts Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Asian American Arts Centre The Asian American Arts Centre (AAAC) is a non-profit organization located in Chinatown in New York City. Founded in 1974, it is one of the earliest Asian American community organizations in the United States. The Arts Centre presents the ongoing ...

and

Asian Art Museum (San Francisco) The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco – Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture"About"
Asian Art Museum website. ...

, among others.Sherman, Mary, "NEFA Fellowship Recipients," ''Boston Herald'', September 13, 1992. In the 1990s, Takenaga turned to enormous (often twenty-foot-long) acrylic paintings constructed from hollow wooden doors, which used enigmatic abstract shapes and symbols drawn from science,

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...

and classical Eastern art.Zimmer, William. "Invention Hews to Yankee Tradition," ''The New York Times'', March 14, 1993. Retrieved October 14, 2020. ''The Long Resonance'' (1991) is a representative work; it features a cloud-like expanse breaking into a dark, rectangular ground decorated with icons, silhouettes (animals or Japanese figures) and garlands of red, dotted lines that presage her future paintings. In subsequent work, she dramatically reduced her scale to intimate () abstractions eliminating signage and recognizable elements. ''Nevus'' (1997) and ''Tortuca'' (1998) employ whimsical, intricate spirals overlaid on modulated grounds of beige and brown.Johnson, Ken
"Trippy World,"
''The New York Times'', October 22, 1999, p. E41. Retrieved September 23, 2020. Inspired by an offhand observation of spiraling tufts of hair on her dog, these forms evolved into Takenaga's mature work when she began painting variations on darkened backgrounds, evoking celestial phenomena.Israel, Nancy Cohen
"Barbara Takenaga,"
''Patron'', April–May 2018. Retrieved September 24, 2020. In the early 2000s, Takenaga exhibited at institutions including McKinney Avenue Contemporary, the CU Art Museum (both solo), the Tang Teaching Museum, and

Museum of Contemporary Art Denver The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA Denver), in Denver, Colorado, was founded in 1996 as the first dedicated home for contemporary art in the city of Denver. For seven years, MCA Denver occupied a renovated fish market in Sakura Square in lower dow ...

, among others.Chandler, Mary Voelz. "Art by Numbers," ''Rocky Mountain News'', July 14, 2005.Berry, Ian. ''About Painting'', Saratoga Springs, NY: Tang Teaching Museum, 2004.Paglia, Michael, "Basis Loaded, Decades of Influence," ''Westword'', June 29, 2006.

Recognition and public collections

Takenaga has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2020), been elected an academician of the

(2013), and been recognized with awards from the For-Site Foundation, National Academy Museum, American Academy of Arts & Letters,

New England Foundation for the Arts The New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of six not-for-profit regional arts organizations funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and by private foundations, corporations and ind ...

and

New York State Council on the Arts The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) is an arts council serving the U.S. state of New York. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell (1905–1996 ...

; she has received residencies from the Space Program of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, Smith College printmaking workshop, and Dieu Donne Papermill.FOR-SITE Foundation
Barbara Takenaga
Artists. Retrieved September 23, 2020.Art in General
"The Conversation, Barbara Takenaga,"
Artist Residency. Retrieved October 15, 2020.Ace Gallery
''Artists to Artists: A Decade of the Space Program–an exhibition of works from the Space Program of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation''
Colorado Springs, CO: The Art Foundation, 2002. Retrieved October 27, 2020. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

, Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation,

Crocker Art Museum The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Western United States, located in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1885, the museum holds one of the premier collections of Californian art. The collection includes American works dating f ...

,Crocker Art Museum
"14 Artists from the Crocker’s Collection to Look for at Art Auction 2020!"
June 26, 2020. Retrieved September 23, 2020.

Ackland Art Museum The Ackland Art Museum is a museum and academic unit of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was founded through the bequest of William Hayes Ackland (1855–1940) to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is located a ...

Arkansas Art Center The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts (AMFA), formerly known as the Arkansas Arts Center, is an art museum located in MacArthur Park, Little Rock, Arkansas. The museum is undergoing an expansion and renovation. During this time, it is closed to the ...

,Arkansas Arts Center
"Drawing on History: The National Drawing Invitational: A Retrospective Exhibition."
Retrieved September 24, 2020. deCordova Museum,deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum
''Tremolo #4'', Barbara Takenaga
Permanent Collection. Retrieved September 24, 2020.

Henry Art Gallery The Henry Art Gallery ("The Henry") is a contemporary art museum located on the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington. Located on the west edge of the university's campus along 15th Avenue N.E. in the University District, it wa ...

,Henry Art Gallery
Barbara Takenaga, ''Silver and Pink #2''
Objects. Retrieved September 24, 2020.

Museum of Outdoor Arts Museum of Outdoor Arts (MOA) is a non-profit museum and gallery based in Englewood, Colorado. It was founded in 1981 by John W. Madden, Jr. and his daughter, Cynthia Madden Leitner. Open 365 days a year, the outdoor sculpture garden combines fin ...

,Museum of Outdoor Arts
''Pink + Green'', Barbara Takenaga
Artwork. Retrieved September 23, 2020.

Museum of Nebraska Art The Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA) is the official art museum of the state of Nebraska. The museum is located in Kearney, Nebraska, and is administratively affiliated with the University of Nebraska at Kearney. The official charter of MONA makes ...

,Museum of Nebraska Art
Barbara Takenaga
Retrieved September 23, 2020.

New Jersey State Museum The New Jersey State Museum is located at 195-205 West State Street in Trenton, New Jersey. It serves a broad region between New York City and Philadelphia. The museum's collections include natural history specimens, archaeological and ethnograph ...

,Purchase College
"In Conversation: Barbara Takenaga and Helaine Posner,"
Neuberger Museum of Art, Events. Retrieved October 12, 2020. Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art,Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art
Barbara Takenaga
Collection. Retrieved September 23, 2020. San Jose Museum of Art,San Jose Museum of Art
Barbara Takenaga
Objects. Retrieved September 23, 2020.

Sheldon Museum of Art The Sheldon Museum of Art is an art museum in the city of Lincoln, in the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. Its collection focuses on 19th- and 20th-century art. History Sheldon Art Association In 1888, The Sheldon Art Assoc ...

,Sheldon Museum of Art
Barbara Takenaga, ''Wheel (Nebraska)''
Collection. Retrieved September 24, 2020. Tang Teaching Museum,The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery
Barbara Takenaga, ''Blue Silvergreen Wheel''
Collection. Retrieved October 27, 2020. and

United States Embassy The United States has the second most diplomatic missions of any country in the world after Mainland China, including 166 of the 193 member countries of the United Nations, as well as observer state Vatican City and non-member countries Kosovo a ...

,U.S. Department of State
Partners.
Art in Embassies. Retrieved October 15, 2020. as well as many college, university and corporate collections. She has exhibited at DC Moore Gallery (New York, since 2009), Gregory Lind Gallery (San Francisco, 2003–19) and Robischon Gallery (Denver), and her print publishers include Shark’s Ink (Colorado) and Wingate Studios (New Hampshire).

Mature work and critical reception

Painting (2001–09)

Post-2009 painting

Early biography and career

Recognition and public collections

References

External links