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Houston gets preview of art historian's book on abstract expressionist Lee Krasner

"The Men in Lee Krasner's Life," a talk by Gail Levin, Monday, March 28, 1 p.m.

Lee Krasner

Art historian Gail Levin's forthcoming book, "Lee Krasner: A Biography," is an important revisionist look at this major American woman artist that corrects a lot of stereotypes in literature about Krasner's husband Jackson Pollock.

Her talk, "The Men in Lee Krasner's Life" will be delivered at 1 p.m. Monday, March 28 in the Honors Commons on the second floor of the M.D. Anderson Library. Levin is Distinguished Professor of Art History, American Studies, and Women's Studies at the Graduate Center and Baruch College of the City University of New York.

Her work speaks to scholarly, student, and popular audiences.  Levin's other writings include biographies of Judy Chicago and Edward Hopper; books on Abstract Expressionism; and criticism on contemporary American art from the perspective of feminism and American Jewish identity politics.

Levin has also curated exhibits on American art at the Whitney Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and elsewhere.

Levin's work embodies a key direction in recent art historical scholarship, which draws on interdisciplinary perspectives and offers critical re-evaluation of traditional ways of understanding art and its history. Her visual perceptivity is integrated with a nuanced historical and theoretical framework that resonates with the work of the UH art history faculty having varying specialties.

Gail Levin will be the first in a series of distinguished art history speakers that is being planned for the 2011-2012 academic year to celebrate the launch of University of Houston's new Masters in Art History degree program. As with Levin's talk, the School of Art intends the series as a way to engage and expand dialogues throughout the university and in Houston on a range of themes currently of concern in various disciplines.

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