HYBRID IN-PERSON AND ONLINE PROGRAM

With Darkness Came Stars: The Art and Life of Audrey Flack

Nancy G. Heller, Professor Emerita of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia

Reception 1:00 - 1:30 pm 

For more than a half a century Audrey Flack (1931-2024) was a prolific, versatile, fearless, and innovative visual artist. She achieved national and international fame during the 1970s as a founder and the only prominent female member of a group of painters known as Photo Realists. At a time when serious art was supposed to be abstract, Flack created enormous, exquisitely detailed still lifes that astonished viewers with their skill, and contain surprisingly complex levels of meaning.

In the 1980s Flack changed course, making monumental bronze sculptures of mythological and historical female figures. Later in life she returned to working in two dimensions, with multimedia drawings that combine references to American popular culture and Old Master European art. A native New Yorker and lifelong feminist, Flack was a graduate of Yale and Cooper Union. She was a popular teacher who wrote several books and was the lead singer/songwriter in a bluegrass band, where she also played banjo. Her work is in the collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and many other prominent institutions.

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)