Grace Hartigan: The Gift of Attention | Fall 2025

Grace Hartigan: The Gift of Attention brings together a selection of significant works from artist Grace Hartigan (1922–2008). Hartigan was an American Abstract Expressionist painter and member of the New York School—an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians in the 1950s and 1960s that included Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, and Frank O’Hara. The exhibition explores her work produced in the 1950s and 1960s—a period for which she is highly celebrated—and illuminates the profound impact mid-20th-century American poetry had on this artist. In mid-century New York, many poets and painters were each other’s champions, inspirations, and collaborators. For Hartigan, her circle of poets–cum–supporters included Daisy Aldan, Barbara Guest, James Merrill, Frank O’Hara, and James Schuyler. The synergistic environment is most obvious in works that are direct impressions of poetry or poets, such as Hartigan’s Oranges series of 1952, inspired by Frank O’Hara’s pastorals, or The Masker (1954), which is an indirect portrait of O’Hara. Less familiar but just as significant is Hartigan’s double portrait of poet Daisy Aldan —cofounder of Tiber Press—and her romantic partner, Olga Petroff (Two Women, 1954), or works that responded to Barbara Guest’s poetry (Snow Angel, 1960; Barbara Guest Archaics, 1968), among several others. That several of these poets were queer or worked in queer circles is important as well. Author Maggie Nelson, in her book Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions, argues that these writers “actualized a different kind of environment” during an extremely sexist and homophobic time—an environment “in which women were present and pivotal as fellow artists, collaborators, friends, and literary predecessors.” The exhibition is loosely organized by four themes: Hartigan’s direct impressions of poets; an exploration of poets as patrons; artworks inspired by or reflective of literal prose; and works created from significant collaborations Hartigan had with key writers. In addition to paintings, the exhibition will include other media by Hartigan, including her screen prints produced for Folder, a literary magazine published by the queer-owned Tiber Press. The Gift of Attention considers the relationships among New York School poets and painters by bringing Hartigan to the fore, with close attention paid to the queer networks that helped support her work. Grace Hartigan: The Gift of Attention is organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Books and Products in this exhibition collection focus on subjects such as :

Names:

• Grace Hartigan
• Jackson Pollock
• Larry Rivers
• Helen Frankenthaler
• Willem de Kooning
• Elaine de Kooning
• Frank O’Hara
• Daisy Aldan
• Barbara Guest
• James Merrill
• James Schuyler
• Maggie Nelson

References:

• American Abstract Expressionist painter
• New York School
• mid-20th-century American poetry
• Tiber Press
• queer networks
• Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions by Maggie Nelson