Gail Levin 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, United States. It is a constituent college of the City University of New York system. Named for financier and statesman Bernard M. Baruch, the colle ...

and the

Graduate Center of the City University of New York The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and postgraduate university in New York City. Formed in 1961 as Division of Graduate Studies at City University ...

. She is a specialist in the work of

Edward Hopper Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realism painter and printmaker. He is one of America's most renowned artists and known for his skill in depicting modern American life and landscapes. Born in Nyack, New York, to a ...

feminist art The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce feminist art, art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of co ...

abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

, 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 a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

Early life and education

Levin was born and raised in

Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...

and graduated from Northside High School. Levin graduated from

Simmons College Institutions of learning called Simmons College or Simmons University include: * Simmons University Simmons University (previously Simmons College) is a private university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1899 by ...

in 1969 with a B.A. and from

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university in Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts, United States, with additional facilities in Boston and Grafton, as well as Talloires, France. Tufts also has several Doctor of Physical Therapy p ...

with an M.A. in fine arts in 1970, and she received her PhD in art history in 1976 from

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

Art career

Artist

Levin is also an artist who has shown photographs, photo collages, and

collages Collage (, from the , "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 assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...

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). 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 Theresa Ferber Bernstein-Meyerowitz (March 1, 1890 – February 12, 2002) was an Americans, American artist, writer, and supercentenarian born in Kraków, in what is now Poland, and raised in Philadelphia. She received her art training in Philad ...

(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 The Jewish Women's Archive (JWA) is a national non-profit organization whose mission is to document "Jewish women's stories, elevate their voices, and inspire them to be agents of change." JWA was founded by Gail Twersky Reimer in 1995 in Brook ...

References

External links

Gail Levin's websiteGail Levin's artworks on view
{{DEFAULTSORT:Levin, Gail 1948 births Living people 21st-century American women American art historians American women art historians Baruch College faculty CUNY Graduate Center faculty Rutgers University alumni Tufts University alumni Simmons University alumni National Association of Women Artists members Writers from Atlanta American art curators American women curators American photographers Fulbright Distinguished Chairs Historians from Georgia (U.S. state)