May Stevens
Encyclopedia
May Stevens is an American feminist artist, political activist, educator, and writer. Major works include: Freedom Riders (1963), "Big Daddy" series (1968-1976), Ordinary/Extraordinary (1976), and SoHo Women Artists (1978). In 1977, she was one of the featured artists discussed in a seminar given by Jacqueline Moss
at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. The seminar was titled "The Women's Movement: Iconography, Esthetics".
Jacqueline Moss
Jacqueline Moss was an American art historian, lecturer, writer and art critic. She was the curator of education at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art and lectured widely on modern and 20th century art. Her articles and seminars often had a focus on women artists...
at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. The seminar was titled "The Women's Movement: Iconography, Esthetics".
Selected Exhibitions
- 2008 "May Stevens: Big Daddy, Paintings and works on paper, 1968-1976" Mary Ryan Gallery, NY
- 2006 "How American Women Artists Invented Postmodernism: 1970-1975," Mabel Smith Douglas Library, Rutgers (traveling exhibition)
- 2002 "In the Spirit of Martin: The Living Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit, MI
- 2002 Personal and Political: Women Artists of the Eighties, Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY
- 1999 "May Stevens: Images of Women Near and Far," Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
- 1995-98 "Sniper’s Nest: Art That Has Lived with Lucy R. Lippard," Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM
- 1989 "Mothers of Invention," Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New York, NY (traveling exhibition)
- 1988 One Plus or Minus One, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY
- 1988 "Committed to Print, 1960 to Present," Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
- 1985 Ordinary/Extraordinary, A Summation 1977-84 Boston University Art Gallery, MA (traveling exhibition)
- 1984 "Tradition and Conflict, 1963-1973," The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
- 1983 "Portraits on a Human Scale," The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
- 1982 "Art Couples 1: May Stevens and Rudolf Baranik," P.S. 1, New York, NY
- 1980 "Issue: Social Strategies by Women Artists," Institute of Contemporary Art, London
- 1977 "Consciousness and Content," Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
- 1973 Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
- 1971 "The Permanent Collection: Women Artists," The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY
- 1963 "Freedom Riders: Paintings by May Stevens," Roko Gallery, New York, NY
- 1957 "May Stevens," ACA Gallery, New York, NY
- 1951 Salon De Jeunes Peintres, Paris, France
- 1951 Salon D’Autumne, Paris, France
Selected Public Collections
- Allen Memorial Art MuseumAllen Memorial Art MuseumThe Allen Memorial Art Museum is located in Oberlin, Ohio and is run by Oberlin College. Founded in 1917, its collection is one of the finest of any college or university museum in the United States, consistently ranking among those of Harvard and Yale...
, Oberlin, OH - Brooklyn MuseumBrooklyn MuseumThe Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
, New York, NY - Harvard University Art MuseumsHarvard University Art MuseumsThe Harvard Art Museums, part of Harvard University, comprise three museums and four research centers .The Harvard Art Museums...
, Cambridge, MA - Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
- Hunter Museum of American ArtHunter Museum of American ArtThe Hunter Museum of American Art is an art museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The museum's collections include works representing the Hudson River School, 19th century genre painting, American Impressionism, the Ashcan School, early modernism, regionalism, and post World War II modern and...
, Chattanooga, TN - Jersey City MuseumJersey City MuseumJersey City Museum is a former art museum that was most recently located in the Van Vorst Park section of Downtown Jersey City, New Jersey. Serving a diverse community, the Museum collects, exhibits, preserves, and interprets its collections of 19th- and 20th-century paintings, works on paper,...
, Jersey City, NJ - Joslyn Art MuseumJoslyn Art MuseumThe Joslyn Art Museum is the principal fine arts museum in the state of Nebraska, United States of America. Located in Omaha, it is the only museum in the state with a comprehensive permanent collection...
, Omaha, NE - Metropolitan Museum of ArtMetropolitan Museum of ArtThe Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
, New York, NY - Minneapolis Institute of ArtsMinneapolis Institute of ArtsThe Minneapolis Institute of Arts is a fine art museum located in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, on a campus that covers nearly 8 acres , formerly Morrison Park...
, Minneapolis, MN - Museum of Contemporary Art, Los AngelesMuseum of Contemporary Art, Los AngelesThe Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
, CA - Museum of Fine Arts, BostonMuseum of Fine Arts, BostonThe Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, attracting over one million visitors a year. It contains over 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas...
, MA - Museum of Modern ArtMuseum of Modern ArtThe Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, New York, NY - National Museum of Women in the ArtsNational Museum of Women in the ArtsThe National Museum of Women in the Arts , located in Washington, D.C. is the only museum solely dedicated to celebrating women’s achievements in the visual, performing, and literary arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay...
, Washington, DC - New Museum of Contemporary ArtNew Museum of Contemporary ArtThe New Museum, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to presenting contemporary art from around the world...
, New York, NY - New Mexico Museum of ArtNew Mexico Museum of ArtThe New Mexico Museum of Art , the oldest art museum in the state of New Mexico, is one of four state-run museums in Santa Fe...
, Santa Fe, NM - San Francisco Museum of Modern ArtSan Francisco Museum of Modern ArtThe San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
, San Francisco, CA - School of Visual ArtsSchool of Visual ArtsThe School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...
, New York, NY - University Art Museum, SUNY AlbanyUniversity at Albany, SUNYThe State University of New York at Albany, also known as University at Albany, State University of New York, SUNY Albany or simply UAlbany, is a public university located in Albany, Guilderland, and East Greenbush, New York, United States; is the senior campus of the State University of New York ...
, NY - Williams College Museum of ArtWilliams College Museum of ArtThe Williams College Museum of Art is a teaching museum located in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It is a department of Williams College. The museum's mission is to "advance learning through lively and innovative approaches to art for the students of Williams College and communities beyond the...
, Williamstown, MA - Washington University, St. Louis, MO
- Whitney Museum of American ArtWhitney Museum of American ArtThe Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, New York, NY
Selected Awards
- 2004 Edwin Palmer Memorial Prize for Painting, National Academy of Design
- 2001 College Art Association Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement “as an artist, poet, social activist and teacher”
- 2001 Andy Warhol Foundation Award
- 1997 Massachusetts College of Art Alumna of the Year
- 1990 WCA Honor Award for Lifetime Achievement
- 1988-89 Bunting Fellowship, Radcliffe CollegeRadcliffe CollegeRadcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was the coordinate college for Harvard University. It was also one of the Seven Sisters colleges. Radcliffe College conferred joint Harvard-Radcliffe diplomas beginning in 1963 and a formal merger agreement with...
- 1986 Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
in Painting - 1983 National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the ArtsThe National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
Grant in Painting - 1978 LINE Association Grant for Artist’ Books
- 1971 MacDowell ColonyMacDowell ColonyThe MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...
Fellowship - 1968-69 National Institute of Arts and Letters Child Hassam Purchase Award
- 1958 New England Annual Landscape Prize
Selected Bibliography
- Alloway, Lawrence. May Stevens. Catalog for Big Daddy Series. New York: Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, 1973.
- Braff, Phyllis. “The Feminine Image in Its Many Facets in the 20th Century.” New York Times, April 6, 1997.
- Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art and Society. London: Thames and Hudson, 1991.
- Glueck, Grace. “May Stevens ‘Rivers and Other Bodies of Water’”. New York Times. June 1, 2001.
- Gouma-Peterson, Thalia and Patricia Mathews. “The Feminist Critique of Art History.” Art Bulletin, September 1987.
- Hills, Patricia, ed. May Stevens. Ordinary/Extraordinary: A Summation, 1977-1984. Essays by Donald Kuspit, Lucy Lippard, Moira Roth, Lisa Tickner. Boston: Boston University Art Gallery, 1984.
- Hills, Patricia and Phyllis Rose. May Stevens Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate Communications, 2005.
- King, Martin Luther. Preface in Freedom Riders [exhibition catalogue]. Roko Gallery, New York, NY, 1963
- Johnson, Ken. “May Stevens.” New York Times, November 21, 1997
- Lippard, Lucy R. From the Center. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1976.
- Lippard. “Caring: Five Political Artists.” Studio International [London, England], March 1977.
- Lippard. “In Sight, Out of Mind.” Z Magazine, May 1988.
- Lippard. “The Politics of Art Criticism.” Maine Times, August 4, 1989.
- Mathews, Patricia. “A Dialogue of Silence: May Stevens’ Ordinary/Extraordinary, 1977-1986.” Art Criticism 3, no. 2, Summer 1987.
- Mathews. “Feminist Art Criticism. ”Art Criticism, vol. 5, no. 2, 1989.
- “May Stevens” The New Yorker. February 17 & 24, 2003.
- Murdoch, Robert. “May Steven.” ARTnews. October 1999.
- Olander, William. One Plus or Minus One. Essays by William Olander and Lucy Lippard. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1988.
- Parker, Rosika and Griselda Pollock, eds. Framing Feminism: Art and the Women’s Movement 1970-1985. London: Pandora, 1987.
- Plagens, Peter. “A Painful War’s Haunted Art.” Newsweek, September 1989.
- Pollock, Griselda. “The Politics of Art or an Aesthetic for Women.” FAN 5, [London, England], 1982.
- Shapiro, Barbara Stern. May Stevens: Images of Women Near and Far. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1999.
- Wallach, Alan. “May Stevens: On the Stage of History.” Arts, November 1978.
- Wei, Lilly. “May Stevens at Mary Ryan” Art in America. November 1996.
- Withers, Josephine. "Revisioning Our Foremothers: Reflections on the 'Ordinary. Extraordinary' Art of May Stevens." Feminist Studies vol. 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1987), pp. 485-512.
- Zimmer, William. “Ten Major Women Artists.” New York Times, March 22, 1987.