About us
The Woodman Family Foundation was established by Betty Woodman (1930-2018) and George Woodman (1932-2017) during their lifetimes. Love of beauty was at the heart of their lives and art. In this spirit, the Foundation is dedicated to stewarding the artistic legacies of Betty, George, and their daughter, Francesca Woodman (1958-1981). It will maintain a substantial collection of artworks by each artist, from all periods and media, which will be made available to museums, cultural institutions, scholars, and artists to further the appreciation and understanding of their work. The Foundation will also undertake the preservation and cataloguing of their extensive archives to make this information accessible for scholarly study. In the future the Foundation plans to place their artworks in public collections and make grants.
It was never my intention to start a family. At age fourteen I decided to become an artist, ambition enough for my life. At age eighteen I met an equally precocious young artist by the name of Betty Abrahams. Linked by a shared enthusiasm for art, we worked in different materials, pursued different goals, and came from different backgrounds. Marriage in 1953 and the subsequent arrival of Charles and Francesca left us a family of four.
These children grew up in a household of artists, filled with artist friends, art always before their eyes, art talk in their ears. It should come as no surprise that these children also became artists, with, again, different materials and paths to follow. And so we became a family of four artists working in different ways… but all sharing the conviction that art is the single interesting and worthwhile occupation. It was a family endowed with a clear sense of what it means to be an artist and given to sympathy and encouragement for each other’s efforts.
- George Woodman, 2007
circa 1980s
Photo: George Lange
