Gail Levin (born 1948) is an American art historian, biographer, artist, and a Distinguished Professor of Art History, American Studies, Women's Studies, and Liberal Studies at
Baruch College
Baruch College (officially the Bernard M. Baruch College) is a public college in New York City. It is a constituent college of the City University of New York system. Named for financier and statesman Bernard M. Baruch, the college operates unde ...
and the Graduate Center of the
City University of New York
The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven Upper divis ...
. She is a specialist in the work of
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realist painter and printmaker. While he is widely known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching.
Hopper created subdued drama ...
,
feminist art
Feminist art is a category of art associated with the late 1960s and 1970s feminist movement. Feminist art highlights the societal and political differences women experience within their lives. The hopeful gain from this form of art is to bri ...
,
abstract expressionism
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 ...
,
Eastern European Jewish influences on modernist art and
American modernist art. Levin served as the first curator of the Hopper Collection at the
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 (1875–194 ...
.
Early life and education
Levin was born and raised in
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
and graduated from
Northside High School.
Levin graduated from
Simmons College
Institutions of learning called Simmons College or Simmons University include:
* Simmons University, a women's liberal arts college in Boston, Massachusetts
* Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically black college in Louisville, Kentucky
* Ha ...
in 1969 with a B.A. and from
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
with an M.A. in fine arts in 1970, and she received her PhD in art history in 1976 from
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...
.
Art career
Artist
Levin is also an artist who has shown photographs,
photo collages, and
collages
Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an Assemblage (art), assemblage of different forms, thus creat ...
with a solo show at the
National Association of Women Artists
The National Association of Women Artists, Inc. (NAWA) is a United States organization, founded in 1889 to gain recognition for professional women fine artists in an era when that field was strongly male-oriented. It sponsors exhibitions, awards ...
at its New York Gallery in the spring of 2014. The show included her collage memoir, "On NOT Becoming An Artist," which tells her life in art in pictorial form, beginning with her mother teaching her to paint and then her parents forbidding her to become an artist.
Levin has also published books with her photographs, including "Hopper's Places", in which she identified all of the paintings by Edward Hopper and then located the actual sites and photographed them. In her 1985 review of a related show organized by Levin, Vivien Raynor wrote in the New York Times: "''Hopper's Places,'' a show that is as much about its guest curator, Gail Levin, as about its subject....Miss Levin has been building a small reputation as a photographer, and it is partly in this capacity that she now contemplates her subject....Miss Levin's deductions are invariably enlightening, as when she infers that Hopper's tendency to elongate structures was a reflection of his great height." In this book, Levin also analyzes the changes Hopper made in his paintings. Since she began this conceptual art project in the 1970s, several other photographers have emulated her project.
Curator
At the Whitney Museum of American Art, Levin was the curator of several landmark touring exhibitions, including Edward Hopper: Prints and Illustrations (1979) and Edward Hopper: The Art and The Artist (1980); Synchromism and American Color Abstraction, 1910-1925 (1978); and co-curator with Robert Hobbs of Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years (1978).
Levin continues to organize exhibitions for museums internationally.
Publications
Levin is the author of "Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonne." She has published books with her photographs, including "Hopper's Places" and "Marsden Hartley in Bavaria." She wrote the foreword to "The Lining of Our Souls: Excursion into Selected Paintings by Edward Hopper" by
Rolando Pérez (Cuban poet)
Rolando may refer to:
Entertainment
*''Rolando'', a 2008 puzzle-adventure video game
*'' Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid'', a 2009 puzzle-adventure video game
*"Rolando", a song by Roland Kirk from the album ''Domino''
People
*Rolando (giv ...
.
Levin is the author of three biographies: "Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography," "Becoming Judy Chicago: A Biography of the Artist" and "Lee Krasner A Biography." Levin also spearheaded a recent revival of the artist Theresa Bernstein (1890-2002) by producing and editing "Theresa Bernstein: A Century in Art," a monograph with essays by herself, four of her graduate students, and two other scholars, which accompanies a touring exhibition and a comprehensive research website.
Selected works
* Lee Krasner: A Biography (2011)
* Ethics and the Visual Arts, co-edited with Elaine A. King (2006)
* Becoming Judy Chicago: A Biography of the Artist (2007)
* Janet Sobel: "Primitivist, Surrealist, and Abstract Expressionist,” Woman's Art Journal 26, no. 1 (2005)
* Selected Works by Janet Sobel, the catalog of Janet Sobel's solo exhibition at Gary Snyder Fine Art, essay for Inside Out. 2003.
* Aaron Copland's America, co-authored with Judith Tick (2000)
* Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography (1995)
* Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonne (1995)
* Theme and Variation: Kandinsky and the American Avant-garde, 1912-1950 (1992)
* Marsden Hartley in Bavaria (1989)
* Twentieth-Century American Painting: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (1988)
* Hopper's Places (1985)
* Edward Hopper (1984)
* Edward Hopper: Gli anni della formazione (1981)
* Edward Hopper: The Art and the Artist (1980)
* Edward Hopper as Illustrator (1979)
* Edward Hopper: The Complete Prints (1979)
* Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years, co-authored with Robert C. Hobbs (1978)
* Synchromism and American Color Abstraction, 1910-1925 (1978)
Foundations and interests
Levin was the founding president of the Catalogue Raisonne Scholars Association and she serves on the Academic Advisory Council of the
Jewish Women's Archive.
References
External links
Gail Levin's websiteGail Levin's artworks on view
{{DEFAULTSORT:Levin, Gail
Baruch College faculty
City University of New York faculty
1948 births
American art historians
Women art historians
Rutgers University alumni
Tufts University alumni
Simmons University alumni
National Association of Women Artists members
Living people
Writers from Atlanta
American art curators
American women curators
American photographers
Fulbright Distinguished Chairs
American women historians
Historians from Georgia (U.S. state)
21st-century American women
Fulbright alumni