Francesca Woodman in “A Century of the Artist’s Studio: 1920-2020.” Whitechapel Gallery, London. February 24 through June 5, 2022.

In the 1960s, Betty Woodman worked primarily in stoneware at her studio in Boulder, Colorado. At that time, she focused on producing functional ceramics, keeping careful notes about each piece.

Forty-one years ago, 19 Artists—Emergent Americans was presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York featuring seven paintings by George Woodman, among work by eighteen of his contemporaries including Barbara Kruger, Guy de Cointet, and Manny Farber. The exhibition reflected curator Peter Frank’s desire to present the artists’ work as a series of small retrospectives. “What I have sought to assemble at the Guggenheim Museum is the skilled and confident visual articulation of engrossing ideas by individuals who have not been sufficiently recognized for their accomplishment,” he wrote.

Hi, this is Molly McBride Jacobson, archives intern at the Woodman Family Foundation. One of my projects has been inventorying, condensing, and rehousing Betty Woodman’s slide collection, which she used to document her work from the 1970s until the mid-2000s. She used this collection as a pre-digital database, arranging her slides by year and then separately by format.

Happy Valentine’s Day from the Woodman Family Foundation!

In the summer of 1954, recent college graduate George Woodman set out from Boston towards Albuquerque, New Mexico. He had a degree in philosophy, and a desire to study painting in a more concentrated way than he had been able to do as an undergraduate student supplementing his Harvard education with art courses at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. He and Betty Woodman—who had been married just a year—followed this set of Triptik maps across the country, carefully tracking miles and expenses along the way until they arrived at the University of New Mexico.

Ryan Brady, Collections Manager: Betty Woodman was an artist whose pragmatism seemingly stood in contrast to the loose comfort of her artistic style, but those of us who knew her well understood this sensibility as an asset to her prolific output. She kept things. Her Wallpaper pieces, which I had the privilege of closely working with her on during my time as her studio assistant from 2011 until her passing in 2018, resulted from her instinct to put all her materials to use.

Read a review on "Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories" by Andrew Dickson in BBC Culture. The exhibition is currently on view through December 23.

Read a review on "Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories" by Justin Kamp in The Art Newspaper. The exhibition is currently on view through December 23.

Deep thanks to our friends and supporters whose generosity and insights made “Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories” at Marian Goodman Gallery such a success: the talented Marian Goodman team; the scholars, curators and artists who shared their perceptive contributions to the video vignettes; the boundlessly inspiring Brooklyn Rail team and fellow panelists; the journalists and critics who wrote and spoke so movingly; the many viewers and followers for their continued interest in and openness to new facets of Woodman’s work. And to Francesca Woodman for creating a singular body of work that continues to captivate and invite. Wishing you all the happiest of holidays!

On the occasion of "Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories," Marian Goodman Gallery commissioned eight video vignettes by an array of art historians, curators, and artists, each whom brought their own perspective to Woodman’s work and the exhibition currently on view. In this video, Elisabeth Sussman, the Curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art, contextualizes Woodman's work within the framework of its era.

On the occasion of "Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories," Marian Goodman Gallery commissioned eight video vignettes by an array of art historians, curators, and artists, each whom brought their own perspective to Woodman’s work and the exhibition currently on view. In this video, Kevin Moore, a New York based curator and writer, on Woodman's Victorian aesthetic, identity exploration and the artist's role in her artistic narrative.