(COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.) — Overcoming obstacles such as sexism and discrimination by male artists, art critics, and art dealers, a group of fearless women including Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, and Joan Mitchell made careers for themselves by embracing avant-garde painting. Heroines of Abstract Expressionism, opening September 19, 2019 at Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, offers visitors a special glimpse of a one-of-a-kind private collection of paintings, works on paper, and sculpture by women artists who pioneered Abstract Expressionism in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. The exhibition is on view September 19–December 31, 2019.

Organized by the Fenimore, this major exhibition consists of over 30 works from the Richard P. Friedman and Cindy Lou Wakefield collection featuring objects that are both visually mesmerizing and technically complex. It offers the widest breadth of any private assemblage of this genre, featuring the works of 17 female artists. The artwork on display clearly demonstrates the various ways these artists were pushing themselves in new directions, as leaders and full participants, in the Abstract Expressionism movement.

Friedman and Wakefield reside in Southampton, on the East End of Long Island, an area where several Abstract Expressionist painters lived and worked and where their presence can still be felt. It was Wakefield, a freelance writer for the Pollock-Krasner House Study Center in East Hampton, who first encouraged Friedman to explore and seek out work by these artists, and he found it was a natural fit.

“At the root of my commitment to collecting works by women Abstract Expressionists is a desire to honor these artists,” said collector Richard P. Friedman. “These women created work that was as good as that of their more famous male colleagues–and they deserve similar respect and recognition.”

Abstract Expressionism was the first specifically American style to achieve international influence, and, as a result, 1940s New York replaced Paris as the center of the art world. The style was characterized by experimental, gestural, nonrepresentational painting, often on radically large canvases. For some of the artists associated with the movement, abstract art was a means of expressing ideas concerning nature, the spiritual, and the mind. For others, it was a way to explore formal and technical concerns.

From 1947 to 1951, a number of Abstract Expressionists, among them Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, and Mark Rothko, developed their signature painting styles. During the following years these artists, informally called the First Generation of the New York School, received growing recognition nationally and globally. Several groundbreaking women artists from this same period are featured in this exhibition including Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Hedda Sterne, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan, and Joan Mitchell. Heroines of Abstract Expressionism also includes works by painters such as Perle Fine, Mary Abbott and Michael (Corinne) West and sculptors Dorothy Dehner, Louise Nevelson, and Louise Bourgeois.

For more than sixty years the contributions these women made to the movement were all but forgotten while works by men such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning have been canonized in the history of American art. It has taken the dedication of scholars and museum curators—and the commitment of a handful of prescient collectors like Friedman and Wakefield—to restore these women artists to their rightful place in the history of American art.

Interest in this genre has dramatically increased in popularity over the last three to four years–as has the value of these much sought-after works. The streaming service Amazon Prime is even planning a new series, Ninth Street Women, which traces the intersecting lives and careers of Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan, and Joan Mitchell, all of whom were part of the historic artist-organized exhibition “Ninth Street Show” in New York in 1951.

Visit FenimoreArt.org for more information. The museum is open daily through October 14: 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Fall hours (October 15–December 31): 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday (closed Thanksgiving and Christmas Day). Admission: $12 for adults; $10.50 for seniors, and free for museum members and children (12 and under).