Elizabeth Woodman (née Abrahams; May 14, 1930 – January 2, 2018) was an American ceramic artist.

Early life and education

Betty Woodman was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, to Minnie and Henry Abrahams. Her parents were progressive socialists and her mother promoted a feminist viewpoint. During seventh grade, stifled by the home economics courses young women were relegated to, she successfully fought her way into a woodshop class, wherein she learned to use a lathe. Betty started pottery classes at age 16 and immediately took to clay. She attended the School for American Craftsmen at

Alfred University Alfred University is a private university in Alfred (village), New York, Alfred, New York. It has a total undergraduate population of approximately 1,600 students. The university hosts the New York State College of Ceramics, which includes The ...

in New York from 1948 until 1950.

Career

Woodman began her career in the 1950s as a production potter. Her career moved from functional pottery to fresh and exuberant art culminating in a retrospective show at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York in 2006, the first such retrospective for a living, female ceramicist, and a solo show at the

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...

in London in 2016 with the title ''Theatre of the Domestic''. She was a professor of art at the

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 syst ...

from 1978-1998. Following her daughter's death in 1981, Woodman's work subsequently shifted, evolving from functional pottery to the more abstract, thus transforming her career. She received an honorary doctorate from CU in 2007. Woodman convinced city of Boulder officials in the 1950s to fund the Pottery Lab, making it one of the first recreational pottery programs in the U.S. Her vision was to have students make pottery for fun but also develop their craft into a career. The Pottery Lab's creation resulted in around 100 kilns being constructed in the Boulder area.

Family

Betty Woodman met

George Woodman George Edgar Woodman (April 27, 1932 – March 23, 2017) was an American ceramicist, painter, and photographer.

in a pottery class she was teaching in Boston in 1950. They married in 1953. George Woodman was a painter and photographer. He headed the

art department. He died in March 2017. Betty and George Woodman had two children. Their daughter,

Francesca Woodman Francesca Stern Woodman (April 3, 1958 – January 19, 1981) was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring either herself or female models. Many of her photographs show women, naked or clothed, blurred (due to ...

, was a photographer who died by suicide in 1981 at age 22. Their son, Charles Woodman, is an artist.

Awards and honors

Woodman's awards and honors include: * National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1980,1986) * Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at the Bellagio Study Center, Bellagio, Italy (1995) * Fulbright-Hays Scholarship to Florence Italy (1996) * Doctor of Fine Arts Honors Causa from the

Nova Scotia College of Art and Design NSCAD University, also known as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design or NSCAD, is a public art university in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The university is a co-educational institution that offers bachelor's and master's degrees. The univ ...

(2006) * Doctor of Human Letters Honoris Causa from the

(2007) * Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...

(2009) * Gold Medal for Consummate Craftmanship,

American Craft Council The American Craft Council (ACC) is a national non-profit organization that champions craft based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1943 by Aileen Osborn Webb, the council hosts national craft shows and conferences, publishes a quarterly maga ...

Awards (2014)

Exhibitions

Woodman exhibited at museums and galleries in the US and internationally, including: * 'Betty Woodman' at the

Stedelijk Museum The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

, Amsterdam (1996) * 'Betty Woodman' at the

Daum Museum of Contemporary Art State Fair Community College is a public community college in Sedalia, Missouri, adjacent to the Missouri State Fairgrounds. In addition to the Sedalia campus, there are extended campus locations in Boonville, Lake of the Ozarks, Clinton, Wars ...

, Sedalia, MO (2002) * 'Theaters of Betty Woodman' at the

Museu Nacional do Azulejo The Museu Nacional do Azulejo (Portuguese for National Museum of the Azulejo), occasionally known in English as the National Tile Museum, is an art museum in Lisbon, Portugal dedicated to the azulejo, traditional tilework of Portugal and the fo ...

, Lisbon (2005) and the

Musée Ariana The Musée Ariana, also known as the Musée suisse de la céramique et du verre (''Swiss Museum of Ceramics and Glass''), is a museum in Geneva, Switzerland. It is devoted to ceramic and glass artwork, and contains around 20,000 objects from the ...

, Geneva (2006) * 'The Art of Betty Woodman' a retrospective exhibition of her career at the

, New York (2006) * 'Betty Woodman: Roman Fresco/Pleasures and Places' first exhibited at the

American Academy in Rome The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) in Rome. The academy is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. History In 1893, a group of American architects, ...

(2010) * 'Betty Woodman: Theatre of the Domestic' at the

in London, 2016

Collections

Woodman's work is included in public collections, including: *

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

Denver Art Museum The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With encyclopedic collections of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums between t ...

, Denver, CO *

, New York * Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris *

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York *

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

, New York *

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...

, Washington D.C. *

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

, Philadelphia, PA *

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, London *

Minneapolis Institute of Art The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United State ...

Other contributions

In the 1991 documentary ''Thinking Out Loud'', Woodman is interviewed by curator and painter

John Perreault John Lucas Perreault ( New York, New York, August 26, 1937 – September 6, 2015, New York, New York) was a poet, art curator, art critic and artist. Early life Perreault was born in Manhattan and raised in Belmar and other towns in New Jersey. ...

. In 2006 the monograph, ''Betty Woodman,'' was produced in conjunction with her retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it includes curatorial essays by Janet Koplos,

Barry Schwabsky Barry Schwabsky (b. Paterson, New Jersey, in 1957) is an American art critic, art historian and poet. He has taught at the School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute, New York University, Yale University, and Goldsmiths College, among others. Art cr ...

, and

Arthur Danto Arthur Coleman Danto (January 1, 1924 – October 25, 2013) was an American art critic, philosopher, and professor at Columbia University. He was best known for having been a long-time art critic for ''The Nation'' and for his work in philosophi ...

References

Bibliography

* ''The Ceramics of Betty Woodman'', exhibition catalogue, Freedman Gallery, Albright College,Reading, 1986. * Berlind, Robert: ''Betty Woodman: Between Sculpture and Painting'', exhibition catalogue, Blanden Memorial Art Museum, Fort Dodge, Iowa, 1999. * Danto, Arthus C/Koplos, Janet/Schwabsky, Barry: ''Betty Woodman'', Monacelli Press, New York, 2006.

External links

Betty Woodman at 15th Street Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Woodman, Betty 1930 births 2018 deaths American women ceramists Artists from Colorado American ceramists Jewish American artists American potters 20th-century American women artists Women potters 21st-century American Jews 21st-century American women People from Norwalk, Connecticut