Mary Beth Edelson
Born 1933, East Chicago, Indiana
1955 BA DePauw University, Indiana
1958 MA New York University
Selected museum exhibitions: Kunsthalle Münster (2018); Princeton University, New Jersey (2015); Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2014); Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden (2006); Stony Brook Museum, SUNY (2002); University of Tennessee, Knoxville (1989); Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C. (1989); MoMA PS1, New York (1986); Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (1983); Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (1980); Franklin Furnace, New York (1978)
Selected honors: International Artists Studio Program, Sweden (2006); Yaddo Residency (2005); Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (2001); Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2000); Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, DePauw University, Indiana (1993)
Selected public collections: Brooklyn Museum; Detroit Institute of Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington; Tate Modern, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Whitney Museum of American Art
A celebrated American artist, Mary Beth Edelson is an activist, and pioneer of the first-generation feminist art movement. For the past fifty years she has created iconic works of art – ranging from photography, painting, sculpture, and drawing to performance, print making, books, collages and murals – often using her own body as canvas and subject matter. Celtic, 1974-1975, is from her series of Great Goddess Cut-Outs. Standing 8 feet high, this shaped painting asserts itself as an iconic and archetypal emblem of femininity and spirituality across time and cultures.