About the artist:

May Stevens (born June 9, 1924) is an American feminist artist, political activist, educator, and writer. Major works include: Freedom Riders (1963), "Big Daddy" series (1968–1976), Ordinary/Extraordinary (1976), and SoHo Women Artists (1978). In 1977, she was one of the featured artists discussed in a seminar given by Jacqueline Moss at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. The seminar was titled "The Women's Movement: Iconography, Esthetics". Stevens was born to working-class parents, Alice Dick Stevens and Ralph Stanley Stevens, in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Quincy. Stevens had one brother, Stacey Dick Stevens who died of pneumonia at the age of fifteen. May Stevens studied at the Massachusetts College of Art, the Art Students League and the Academie Julian in Paris. She began her first major painting series in 1963, Freedom Riders (with catalogue essay by Martin Luther King, Jr.) before moving to New York in 1967, where she lived and maintained studios with her husband, Rudolf Baranik, until 1997. During this time, she taught at the School of Visual Arts (1961–96). Other well-known painting series include Big Daddy (1967–76); Artemesia Gentileschi (1974–79); History Paintings (1974–81); Ordinary Extraordinary / Rosa Luxemburg and Alice Stevens (1976-91); Sea of Words (begun in 1990); and Rivers and Other Bodies of Water, (begun in 2001). Stevens helped found the magazine Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, published from 1977 to 1992. Stevens’ has exhibited widely throughout her life. She moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1998 and in 1999, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, had a major retrospective of her work, entitled Images of Women Near and Far 1983-1997, the museum’s first exhibition for a living female artist. Her solo exhibition in 2006 at the Minneapolis Institute of Art traveled to Springfield Museum of Art, MO and National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Stevens’ work is in numerous museum collections, including the British Museum; Brooklyn Museum; Cleveland Museum; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, NY; National Academy of Design, NY; National Museum of Women in the Arts; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Whitney Museum of American Art. Stevens is the recipient of numerous awards including the College Art Association Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement as an artist, poet, social activist, and teacher (2001), 10 MacDowell Colony residencies, Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award, Bunting Fellowship (1990), Guggenheim Fellowship in painting (1986), National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in painting (1983), Andy Warhol Foundation Award (2001). SELECT EXHIBITIONS 1951 Salon D’Autumne, Paris, France 1951 Salon De Jeunes Peintres, Paris, France 1957 May Stevens, ACA Gallery, New York, NY 1963 Freedom Riders: Paintings by May Stevens, Roko Gallery, New York, NY 1971 The Permanent Collection: Women Artists, The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY 1973 Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 1977 Consciousness and Content, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY 1980 Issue: Social Strategies by Women Artists, Institute of Contemporary Art, London 1982 Art Couples 1: May Stevens and Rudolf Baranik, P.S. 1, New York, NY 1983 Portraits on a Human Scale, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 1984 Tradition and Conflict, 1963-1973, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY 1985 Ordinary/Extraordinary, A Summation 1977-84 Boston University Art Gallery, MA (traveling exhibition) 1988 Committed to Print, 1960 to Present, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1988 One Plus or Minus One, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY 1989 Mothers of Invention, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New York, NY (traveling exhibition) 1995–98 Sniper’s Nest: Art That Has Lived with Lucy R. Lippard, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM 1999 May Stevens: Images of Women Near and Far, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA 2001 Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA Rivers and Other Bodies of Water, Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, NY (begun in 2000) 2002 Personal and Political: Women Artists of the Eighties, Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY 2002 In the Spirit of Martin: The Living Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit, MI 2003 Deep River, new paintings and works on paper, Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, NY 2005 New Works, Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, NY 2005-6 The Water Remembers: Paintings and Works on Paper from 1990-2004 Started at the Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, MO and traveled to the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts (June – September 2005) and the National Museum of Women in the Arts (October 2005 – January 2006). 2006 How American Women Artists Invented Postmodernism: 1970-1975, Mabel Smith Douglas Library, Rutgers (traveling exhibition) 2006 Women, Words, and Water: Works on Paper by May Stevens, Rutgers University 2007 ashes rock snow water: New Paintings and Works on Paper, Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, NY 2008 May Stevens: Big Daddy, Paintings and works on paper, 1968-1976 Mary Ryan Gallery, NY 2010 May Stevens: Crossing Time, I.D.E.A. Space at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO 2011 One Plus or Minus One, Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, NY 2012 May Stevens: The Big Daddy Series, National Academy of Design, New York, NY 2013 May Stevens: Political Pop at ADAA: The Art Show, Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY SELECT PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH British Museum, London, UK Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY Cleveland Museum, Cleveland, OH Harvard University Art Museums/ Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY National Academy of Design, NY National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA School of Visual Arts, New York, NY Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, OH Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute, IN University Art Museum, SUNY Albany, NY Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA Washington University, St. Louis, MO Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY