Main Campus - Tyler School of Art
Room: B004

Dr. Joan Marter, a distinguished Temple alumna, is an internationally respected and widely published
art historian and curator. She is editor of Woman’s Art Journal and served as editorin-in-chief of the Grove Encyclopedia of American Art. In 2011, Marter received a Lifetime
Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art at the College Art Association
meetings. Guest curator for 16 exhibitions, her show Women and Abstract Expressionism was
honored by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA).
This paper problematizes the received canon of Abstract Expressionism by presenting the
critical reception of women artists from the 1950s to the present. As the organizer of the
only exhibition devoted to these artists—Women and Abstract Expressionism—she will also
consider some of the ethical problems in working as a guest curator.