Events
Panel Discussion
Expanding Climate Action in the Visual Arts
Friday, September 22, 2023, 5:30pm
New Museum, New York
Join the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation during Climate Week NYC for a panel discussion featuring recent Frankenthaler Climate Initiative (FCI) grantees. Through a moderated conversation with museum and university leaders, Expanding Climate Action in the Visual Arts explores current models for energy efficiency and clean energy in the arts—and concludes with a series of action items and next steps that arts organizations can consider taking. The event includes brief presentations by several recent FCI grant recipients, plus invited leaders from the cultural field who are shaping climate change action in the visual arts. The event will also be livestreamed.
Helen Frankenthaler, Reef, 1991 © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever
Talk
Elizabeth Smith
On Helen Frankenthaler
Sunday, May 21, 2023, 5pm EDT
Elizabeth Smith, executive director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, will give a talk as part of the Art of Relationships, a series of Zoom lectures organized in conjunction with the exhibition Creative Exchanges: Artists in Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner’s Address Books, on view at the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, East Hampton, New York, through July 30, 2023. Smith will consider some of Frankenthaler’s earliest works and will reflect on what made Frankenthaler’s painting, in Morris Louis’s later words, a “bridge between Pollock and what was possible” for other artists in the 1950s.
Elizabeth Smith. Photo: Scott Rudd
Book Signing
Douglas Dreishpoon
Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works, 1988–2009
Wednesday, September 28, 2022, 5–7pm
Gagosian Shop, New York
Douglas Dreishpoon will sign copies of the book Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works, 1988–2009 at the Gagosian Shop, New York, to celebrate its recent publication. The first title to explore the late period of Frankenthaler’s art and life, the book features a new essay by Dreishpoon, director of the Helen Frankenthaler catalogue raisonné project and chief curator emeritus at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York. It accompanies the first major exhibition of Frankenthaler’s late work, curated by Dreishpoon for the New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut, in 2021, and on view at the Baker Museum, Naples, Florida, through November 2022. Published by Radius Books in conjunction with the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, the volume will be available for purchase at the event.
Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works, 1988–2009 (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Radius Books in conjunction with the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, 2022)
Fundraiser
Artist Plate Project 2021
Coalition for the Homeless
Launching November 16, 2021, 10am est
Limited-edition bone china plates produced by Prospect and featuring artwork by more than forty artists—including Virgil Abloh, Urs Fischer, Helen Frankenthaler, Alex Israel, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Ed Ruscha, Sarah Sze, Tom Wesselmann, Jonas Wood, and Christopher Wool—will be sold through Artware Editions to raise funds for the Coalition’s lifesaving programs. The funds raised by the sale of the plates will provide food, crisis services, housing, and other critical aid to thousands of people experiencing homelessness and instability. The purchase of one plate can feed one hundred homeless and hungry New Yorkers.
Jonas Wood, Clipping Plate, 2021 © Jonas Wood
In Conversation
Katy Hessel, Matthew Holman, and Eleanor Nairne on Helen Frankenthaler
Wednesday, September 8, 2021, 1pm edt (6pm bst)
Join Gagosian for an online conversation between broadcaster and art historian Katy Hessel; Matthew Holman, associate lecturer in English at University College London; and Eleanor Nairne, curator at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, about the exhibition Imagining Landscapes: Paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, 1952–1976, on view at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, through September 18. The trio will discuss Frankenthaler’s early training, the development of her signature soak-stain technique and subsequent shifts in style, and her connections to the London art world. To join, register at eventbrite.com.
Left: Katy Hessel. Photo: Luke Fullalove. Middle: Matthew Holman. Right: Eleanor Nairne. Photo: Max Colson
Talk
Douglas Dreishpoon
On Helen Frankenthaler
Wednesday, June 16, 2021, 4pm EDT
On the occasion of Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works, 1990–2003 at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, exhibition curator Douglas Dreishpoon, director of the Helen Frankenthaler catalogue raisonné, will discuss the works on view. Frankenthaler’s invention of the soak-stain technique expanded abstract painting’s possibilities while referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways. During the 1990s, as her practice continued to evolve through the use of diverse media and processes, she naturally transitioned from tackling canvases on the floor to using larger sheets of paper laid out on the floor or on tabletops for easier accessibility. To join the online event, register at uncg.zoom.us.
Douglas Dreishpoon
Announcements
Support
Frankenthaler Climate Initiative
Building on the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation’s social impact philanthropy, the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative is a multiyear grant-making program designed to advance the goal of carbon neutrality in the visual arts. In its inaugural cycle, the Foundation conferred its full initial commitment of more than $5 million to assist nearly eighty collecting institutions across more than twenty-five states in improving their energy efficiency. It has also dedicated an additional $5 million to be awarded over the next two years. For more information and a full list of 2021 grantees, visit frankenthalerclimateinitiative.org.
Helen Frankenthaler, Cool Summer, 1962 © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever
Support
Tri-State Relief Fund
The Willem de Kooning Foundation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Teiger Foundation, and the Cy Twombly Foundation, as part of their respective COVID-19 relief efforts, have established an emergency relief grant program that will provide $1,250,000 in aid to non-salaried visual arts workers in the tristate area who have experienced financial hardship from lack of income or opportunity as a direct result of the COVID-19 crisis. The program will be administered in partnership with nonprofit arts service organization New York Foundation for the Arts.
Tri-state area of the United States
Donation
Helen Frankenthaler Foundation
COVID-19 Relief Effort
In response to the catastrophic situation artists and art organizations face in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation has announced a $5 million commitment to relief funding over the next three years. Building on its commitment to supporting artists and art institutions, this multiyear initiative marks the Foundation’s largest commitment of funding to date in support of a single cause since it became active in 2013.
Helen Frankenthaler, M, 1977, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York © 2020 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Steven Sloman
Podcast
Recording Artists
Radical Women
This new podcast, produced by the Getty, explores the lives and work of six women artists spanning multiple generations. Hosted by curator Helen Molesworth, the podcast draws on rare audio interviews from the 1960s and ’70s from the archives of the Getty Research Institute and includes an episode on Helen Frankenthaler and another on Eva Hesse, including commentary by Mary Weatherford.
Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea, 1952, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York, on extended loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC © 2019 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Arts Funding and Donation
Helen Frankenthaler Foundation
New Education Initiatives
On November 30, 2018, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation announced two new initiatives for arts funding: the Frankenthaler Scholarships, which will support graduate students of painting and of art history, and the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative, comprising gifts of selected prints by the artist to ten university-affiliated museums and grants to develop related programs. For more information, visit www.frankenthalerfoundation.org.
Helen Frankenthaler, Untitled, 1967 © 2018 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Chiron Press, New York. Photo: Steven Sloman
Museum Exhibitions
On View
Revolutions
Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960
Through April 20, 2025
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
hirshhorn.si.edu
Revolutions is a major survey of 270 artworks by 126 artists from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s permanent collection. Celebrating the museum’s fiftieth anniversary, the exhibition aims to capture the shifting cultural landscapes of a century defined by new currents in science and philosophy and ever-increasing mechanization. Shown alongside these historic works are contributions from nineteen contemporary artists whose practices demonstrate how many revolutionary ideas from a hundred years ago remain critical today. Work by Francis Bacon, Amoako Boafo, Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Rick Lowe, Sally Mann, Man Ray, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, and Cy Twombly is included.
Rick Lowe, Fire #4: This Time Athens, 2023, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC © Rick Lowe Studio
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Helen Frankenthaler in
Aktion, Geste, Farbe: Künstlerinnen und Abstraktion weltweit 1940–70
December 2, 2023–March 3, 2024
Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany
kunsthalle-bielefeld.de
This exhibition, whose title translates to Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–70, brings together more than 150 paintings by an overlooked generation of eighty international women artists. The exhibition’s geographic breadth demonstrates that, while Abstract Expressionism is said to have begun in the United States, artists all over the world were exploring similar themes of materiality, freedom of expression, perception, and gesture in the postwar period. The exhibition originated at Whitechapel Gallery, London. Work by Helen Frankenthaler is included.
Helen Frankenthaler, April Mood, 1974 © 2024 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: courtesy ASOM Collection
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The Inner Island
April 28–November 4, 2023
Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles, France
www.fondationcarmignac.com
This exhibition, which features more than eighty works by fifty artists, presents visitors with new, unknown worlds floating outside familiar geographies and temporalities. The artists included break away from reality, bringing to life fictional, mental, and abstract islands. Work by Harold Ancart, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, Simon Hantaï, Roy Lichtenstein, Albert Oehlen, and Christopher Wool is included.
Helen Frankenthaler, Overture, 1992 © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Closed
Helen Frankenthaler in
Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–70
June 3–October 22, 2023
Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles, France
www.fondation-vincentvangogh-arles.org
Action, Gesture, Paint brings together more than 150 paintings by an overlooked generation of eighty international women artists. The exhibition’s geographic breadth demonstrates that, while Abstract Expressionism is said to have begun in the United States, artists all over the world were exploring similar themes of materiality, freedom of expression, perception, and gesture in the postwar period. This exhibition has traveled from Whitechapel Gallery, London. Work by Helen Frankenthaler is included.
Helen Frankenthaler, April Mood, 1974, installation view, Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles, France © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: François Deladerrière
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Helen Frankenthaler in
Creative Exchanges: Artists in Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner’s Address Books
May 4–July 30, 2023
Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, East Hampton, New York
creativeexchanges.org
Three address books that belonged to Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner are on view together with more than thirty works by artists whose names, addresses, and telephone numbers appear in them. Work by Helen Frankenthaler is included.
Helen Frankenthaler, Cloudscape, 1951 © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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Helen Frankenthaler in
Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–1970
February 9–May 7, 2023
Whitechapel Gallery, London
www.whitechapelgallery.org
Action, Gesture, Paint brings together more than 150 paintings by an overlooked generation of eighty international women artists. The exhibition’s geographic breadth demonstrates that, while Abstract Expressionism is said to have begun in the United States, artists all over the world were exploring similar themes of materiality, freedom of expression, perception, and gesture in the postwar period. Work by Helen Frankenthaler is included.
Helen Frankenthaler, April Mood, 1974 © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: courtesy ASOM Collection
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Helen Frankenthaler and Jo Sandman
Without Limits
September 15, 2022–March 12, 2023
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine
www.bowdoin.edu
Born three years apart, Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) and Jo Sandman (b. 1931) matured absorbing the lessons of Abstract Expressionism. In the early 1960s both artists expanded beyond their painting practices (though never abandoned them) to explore new modes of expression. Although they worked independently of one another, Frankenthaler and Sandman, as a pair, point toward new modes of conceptualizing art practice and the important role of printmaking in that revolution.
Helen Frankenthaler, Deep Sun, 1983, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford Village, New York. Photo: Tim Pyle, Blue Light Studio
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Helen Frankenthaler
Malerische Konstellationen
December 2, 2022–March 5, 2023
Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany
www.museum-folkwang.de
This exhibition, whose title translates to Painterly Constellations, is the first monographic show of Helen Frankenthaler’s work in Germany in more than twenty years. It features seventy-five works on paper alongside a selection of paintings from distinct phases in Frankenthaler’s career. These range in size from intimate to monumental; some reference landscape, while others are resolutely abstract. This exhibition has traveled from Kunsthalle Krems, Krems an der Donau, Austria.
Installation view, Helen Frankenthaler: Malerische Konstellationen, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, December 2, 2022–March 5, 2023. Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Jens Nober, courtesy Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany
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Helen Frankenthaler
Late Works, 1990–2003
September 6, 2022–February 5, 2023
Baker Museum, Naples, Florida
artisnaples.org
Marking the first museum presentation exclusively dedicated to the late work of Helen Frankenthaler, this exhibition features ten paintings and twenty works on paper dating from 1990 to 2003, some measuring more than six feet in length. Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, Frankenthaler expanded the possibilities of abstract painting while referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways. In later years, her practice continued to evolve through her use of diverse media and processes, as she shifted from painting canvas on the floor to using larger sheets of paper laid out on the floor or on tabletops for easier accessibility. The continuity, in terms of content and execution between the late work (post-1990) and what came before it, is striking. Graced with memorable encounters, a vast art-historical image bank, and technical prowess, the aging artist moved in whatever direction suited her mood and imagination. This exhibition originated at the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut.
Installation view, Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works, 1990–2003, Baker Museum, Naples, Florida, September 6, 2022–February 5, 2023. Artwork © 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: RoseBudz Productions, courtesy Baker Museum, Naples, Florida
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Ways of Freedom
Jackson Pollock to Maria Lassnig
October 15, 2022–January 22, 2023
Albertina Modern, Vienna
www.albertina.at
Ways of Freedom examines the creative interplay between Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel in a transatlantic exchange and dialogue from the mid-1940s to the end of the Cold War. Exploring radically impulsive approaches to form, color, and material, the exhibition includes more than ninety works by nearly fifty artists with loans from museums worldwide. This exhibition has traveled from the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany under the title The Shape of Freedom: International Abstraction after 1945. Work by Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, and Simon Hantaï is included.
Helen Frankenthaler, Beach Scene, 1961, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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Monochrome Multitudes
September 22, 2022–January 8, 2023
Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago
smartmuseum.uchicago.edu
Revisiting classic modernist ideas about flatness, idealized form, and colors, this exhibition opens up the seemingly reductive format of the monochrome to reveal its global resonance and creative possibilities while working toward a more expansive narrative of twentieth and twenty-first century art. Work by Alexander Calder, Walter De Maria, Helen Frankenthaler, Theaster Gates, Frank Gehry, Sally Mann, and Richard Serra is included.
Sally Mann, The Bath, 1989 © Sally Mann
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Frisson
The Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang Davis Collection
October 15, 2021–November 27, 2022
Seattle Art Museum
www.seattleartmuseum.org
This exhibition celebrates the Friday Foundation’s gift of nineteen artworks from the Lang Collection to the Seattle Art Museum in honor of Seattle collectors Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang Davis. Dating from 1945 to 1976, the paintings, drawings, and sculptures in Frisson represent mature works and pivotal moments of artistic development from some of the most influential American and European artists of the postwar period. Work by Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, and Alberto Giacometti is included.
Francis Bacon, Study for a Portrait, 1967, installation view, Seattle Art Museum © The Estate of Francis Bacon. Photo: Jueqian Fang