Judith Godwin

This list of 20 Includes exhibitions in Lincoln, Omaha, Des Moines, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York. I saw the latter three when I was one of 12 American fellows in the International Arts Journalism Institute in Visual Art in 2009.

“Now’s The Time,” Sheldon Museum of Art, 2017

There were multiple Sheldon shows drawn from its collection that I considered for this list. I ended up choosing the one that is most in my wheelhouse — "Now’s The Time,” an exhibition of Sheldon’s abstract expressionist works conceived by director and chief curator Wally Mason after “Yellow Band,” the museum’s Mark Rothko masterwork was exhibited in an AE survey in London and Bilbao, Spain.

A who’s who of mid-century artists, the smartly hung show included works by Barnett Newman, Han Hoffman, Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still, Willem deKooning, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, Lee Krasner along with newly acquired works by Judith Godwin and Perle Fine. That’s an impressive lineup for any museum, particularly a university museum in the middle of the country.

This painting was exhibited in the Denver Art Museum's remarkably successful 2016 exhibition, Women of Abstract Expressionism.

Judith Godwin | Solo Exhibition
Berry Campbell
February 2019  

Judith Loves Martha, a short film about Judith Godwin and Martha Graham, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Anna Gaskell.

The role of female artists in the development of Abstract Expressionism has historically been underplayed and the consequent value of their work in the marketplace diminished. But women played a key role in the articulation of the movement: as early as 1942, Lee Krasner’s work was exhibited alongside that of Jackson Pollock, her future husband; Joan Mitchell, Perle Fine, and Mary Abbott were regularly invited to the members-only Eighth Street Club, founded in 1949 by Willem de Kooning, Ad Reinhardt and others; and Elaine de Kooning and Helen Frankenthaler (who later married Robert Motherwell) were included in the seminal ‘Ninth Street Exhibition’ alongside Krasner and Mitchell, organised by Leo Castelli in 1951. Women also participated in the museum shows of the day; Grace Hartigan took part in the 1956 MoMA exhibition ‘Twelve Americans’, which also featured paintings by Philip Guston and Franz Kline.