Department of Fine and Performing Arts

Faculty: Gail Levin

Gail Levin (PhD, Rutgers University) is Professor of Art History, American Studies, and Women Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of CUNY. She is an art historian specializing in art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with diverse research interests that include the work of Edward Hopper, Marsden Hartley, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Judy Chicago, women artists, Jewish artists, Chinese emigre artists, and contemporary art of the United States, Europe, and Japan, as well as American Studies and the cinema. Her most recent book is Becoming Judy Chicago: A Biography of the Artist, (New York, Harmony Books, February 2007 ).
             Previous books include: Aaron Copland's America, co-authored with Judith Tick, (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2000). Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995; Munich: Paul List Verlag, 1998, second expanded edition, Rizzoli, 2007); Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonne [3 vols. and CD-ROM] (New York and London: Norton, 1995; 2006 Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 1995); Theme and Variation: Kandinsky and the American Avant-garde, 1912-1950 (Boston: Bullfinch Press, 1992); Marsden Hartley in Bavaria (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England, 1989); Twentieth-Century American Painting: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (New York: Sotheby Publications, 1987; New York: Harper & Row, 1988); Hopper’s Places (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985); Edward Hopper (New York: Crown Publishers, 1984; Paris: Flammarion, 1985; Munich: Sudwest-Verlag, 1986); Edward Hopper: Gli anni della formazione (Milan: Electra Editrice, 1981); Edward Hopper: The Art and the Artist (New York: Norton, 1980 ,London, 1981; Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 1986); Edward Hopper as Illustrator (New York: Norton, 1979, London, 1980]; Edward Hopper: The Complete Prints (New York: Norton, 1979 ,London, 1980; Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 1986); Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years , co-authored with Robert C. Hobbs (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1978; Tokyo: Seibu Museum of Art, 1978; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981); Synchromism and American Color Abstraction, 1910-1925 (New York: George Braziller, 1978).
             Levin is co-editor (with Elaine A. King) and a contributor to the anthology Ethics and the Visual Arts, (New York: Allworth Press, 2006.) She is editor of The Poetry of Solitude: A Tribute to Edward Hopper (New York: Universe Books, 1995, 2007 and as La Poesia del Silenzio, Milano, 1997) and of Silent Places: A Tribute to Edward Hopper (New York: Universe Books, 2002).
            Levin has recently contributed these essays to books: “Modern and Postmodern Art and Architecture,” in A Companion to the Classical Tradition, Craig Kallendorf, ed., Oxford, U. K.: Blackwells Publishing,  2007.; “From the New York Avant-garde to Mexican Modernists: Aaron Copland and the Visual Arts,” in Carol J. Oja and Judith Tick, eds., Aaron Copland and his World, Princeton University Press, 2005; “Judy Chicago in the 1960s,” in Avital Bloch and Lauri Umansky, eds., Impossible to Hold: Women and Culture in the 1960s, New York University Press, 2005; “Writing about Forgotten Women Artists: The Rediscovery of Jo Nivison Hopper," in Kristen Fredrickson and Sarah E. Webb, Singular Women: Writing the Lives of Women Artists (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
            Levin’s work has been published in more than a dozen countries, including essays in museum catalogues and such journals as American Art Review, Archives of American Art Journal, Arte y Parte (Spain), Art Journal, Art News, Arts Magazine, Art Research (Japan), Asian Art News (Hong Kong), Bijutsu Techo (Japan), Biography and Source Studies, BolaffiArte (Italy),Criticism, Dada and Surrealism, Du (Switzerland), Jong Holland (The Netherlands), Journal of Modern Jewish Studies (United Kingdom), Museum Studies,  RACAR (Canada), Woman’s Art Journal, Women in the Arts, and The Yale University Library Gazette. She has also written reviews and essays for such journals as The New York Times, London Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, Art Journal, Latino (a) Research Review, and Smithsonian Magazine.
            Levin’s work has been supported by many grants including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Rockefeller, Sloan, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations, Harvard, Yale, and Brandeis Universities, the Fulbright Commission, and currently, the Pollock-Krasner/Stony Brook Foundation. Her work has been recognized with awards including an Honorary Doctorate from Simmons College in 1996.
Her photographs are included in the collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center of the Stony Brook Foundation of the State University of New York in East Hampton, NY; and the Center for Photography, Woodstock, New York. Her photographs have appeared in books, magazines, and newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. She is a member and past president of the Catalogue Raisonne Scholars Association, an affiliate of the College Art Association.
Additional information is available in current editions of  Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Women, and Who’s Who in American Art.