Visual Art

Pace Gallery and BAM, in collaboration with Trisha Brown Dance Company, present an exhibition of works by Elizabeth Murray, whose visual design can be seen in this season’s presentation of Brown’s 2003 work PRESENT TENSE. Heart and Mind features a selection of Murray’s paintings and drawings. Murray’s work blurs the distinction between abstraction and representation, and her shaped canvases challenge traditional conceptions of painting. After her New York debut at the 1972 Annual at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Murray was the subject of numerous international solo exhibitions. In 1999, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, and in 2005, her career was honored with a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Soon after her death in 2007, MoMA hosted a private memorial during which Murray’s longtime friend and fellow artist Trisha Brown performed a tribute.

Exhibition is open to the public during building hours. The Diker Gallery Café is open to the public during BAMcafé hours.

About the Artist

Elizabeth Murray (b. 1940, Chicago; d. 2007, New York) received a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1962 and an MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California in 1964. Murray’s paintings and drawings blur the distinction between abstraction and representation, and her shaped canvases challenge traditional conceptions of painting. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Skowhegan Medal for Painting (1986) and the Larry Aldrich Prize in Contemporary Art (1993). [more]

In 1999, she was named a MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The College Art Association honored her with a Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2006. Murray’s work has been the subject of more than seventy solo exhibitions worldwide. The Dallas Museum of Art organized a retrospective exhibition of her work in 1987, which traveled to the Albert and Vera List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Des Moines Art Center; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art. Elizabeth Murray, the 2005 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, traveled to Institut Valencià d’Art Modern in Valencia, Spain in 2006. In 2007, her work was included in the Italian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. Murray designed mosaic murals for two New York City subway stations, Blooming (1996) at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan and Stream (2001) at 23rd Street-Ely Avenue in Queens. Her work is featured in numerous collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; The Detroit Institute of Arts; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art.

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