Betty Woodman

Betty Woodman, Francesca Woodman, and George Woodman also succumbed to the lure of beaches and seashores in their work, each artist reimagining the beachscape with a distinct sensibility and overlapping visual languages.

This summer, take in the fluid beauty of water as seen through the eyes of Betty Woodman, George Woodman, and Francesca Woodman.

Betty Woodman is known for her exuberant body of work, which is often bathed in vivid hues of yellow, fuchsia, red, and orange. Yet in the December 2006 issue of The Studio Potter devoted solely to color, she confessed—“without a moment’s hesitation”—that blue was her favorite.

Happy anniversary to Betty and George Woodman, who married on this day in 1953.

In 2012, Betty Woodman was commissioned to create an artwork for the Christopher S. Bond courthouse in Jefferson City, Missouri, through the General Services Administration’s Art in Architecture program.

In honor of International Museum Day this past week, our Collections Coordinator Celia Lê visited AMOCA, where Betty Woodman’s "Pillow Pitcher" is on view alongside works by Ron Nagle, Paul Soldner, Peter Voulkos, among others in "Hot! & Ready to Serve."

Happy birthday to Betty Woodman, born on this day in 1930. Known for her bold and exuberant colors in both art and self presentation, she is pictured here playfully dressed like her own sculpture “Roman Windows,” draped in a vivid yellow that echoes her sunlit New York City studio.

Throughout her career, Betty Woodman embraced the possibilities that different kilns and firing techniques offered, adapting her approach to the materials available in the diverse places where she lived and worked.

Betty Woodman and George Woodman are often celebrated for their exuberant use of color, while Francesca Woodman is best known for her dramatic black-and-white photographs, filled with shades of grey. Working across different mediums and methods, the Woodman artists used white—and the absence of color—to fascinating effects.

In the spring of 1981, Betty Woodman and Cynthia Carlson started planning for “An Interior Exchanged,” an environmental collaboration presented in ARTISANSPACE at the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1982.

On a trip to South Korea in 2001, Betty Woodman was introduced to the Joseon Dynasty folk art (minhwa)—with motifs like vibrant scenes of peonies and lotuses. With these paintings in mind, she started a new series of wall-based works titled “Ceramic Pictures of Korean Paintings,” which she first showed at the Daum Museum in 2002 as a five-panel mural.

Thrilled to announce our partnership with NYFA on the inaugural WOODMAN FAMILY FOUNDATION HOUSING STABILITY GRANT for ARTISTS (WFF HSG). In recognition of the increasing unaffordability of rental housing in New York City and the housing insecurity it creates for artists, we will award grants of $30,000—distributed over three years—to five visual artists with the goal of improving their housing stability.