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The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women

The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women represents three decades of collecting by philanthropist and political activist Barbara Lee. It brings together painting, sculpture, and photography by iconic modern and contemporary artists whose work and ideas have changed the course of art history. Ranging from portraiture to performance, abstraction and representation, conceptual and craft-based work, the art in the collection presents personal and political explorations of identity; feminism; materiality; and the body as the site of pleasure, violence, repression and expression.

Barbara Lee’s extraordinary gifts deepen the ICA’s holdings of works by Louise Bourgeois, Tara Donovan, Marlene Dumas, Mona Hatoum, Yayoi Kusama, Cindy Sherman, and Lorna Simpson, and adds important works by artists who are part of the ICA’s exhibition history, including Sandra Cinto, Ellen Gallagher, Eva Hesse, Jenny Holzer, Doris Salcedo, Joan Semmel, Amy Sillman, Kiki Smith, and Kara Walker. With a supplementary gift—enhancing the original gift—including significant works by Sherrie Levine, Marisol, and Alice Neel, the Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women now encompasses a total of 85 major works of 20th- and 21st-century art. 

    Filter
    Photography of sculpture, two ceramic forms resting on top of two pillars made from kiln bricks

    So and So and So and So and On and On

    Arlene Shechet
    Blue painting of a meter on a blue board and pole outside

    Station Meter

    Josephine Halvorson
    A series of four tall paintings, three of black skeletons and one of a nude young girl with her hands behind her back.

    The Messengers

    Marlene Dumas
    Tara Donovan, Untitled (Pins), 2003

    Untitled (Pins)

    Tara Donovan
    A color photograph of a cropped blue-green hand with curled fingers underneath a plate of etched glass.

    Untitled

    Sandra Cinto
    A drawing of two abstract, tubular forms detailed with short, black marks.

    Untitled

    Louise Bourgeois
    A bronze sculpture of a symmetrical, drooping form resembling a pelvis or two opposing phalluses suspended from a wire at the center.

    Janus Fleuri

    Louise Bourgeois
    A hemispheric white marble sculpture with protruding, rounded spikes.

    Germinal

    Louise Bourgeois
    A sculpture of an abstracted torso and legs of a female figure arching in a display case.

    Arched Figure No. 1

    Louise Bourgeois
    A sculpture of thin, wispy gold wire loosely shaped into two wedding ring shapes.

    Wedding Ring Drawing (Circumference of a Living Room)

    Cornelia Parker
    A color photograph of artist Cindy Sherman, a white woman, posed as Marilyn Monroe with blond hair and parted red lips, seated on the floor in jeans, boots, and a pale blouse.

    Untitled

    Cindy Sherman
    A black-and-white photograph of the artist in a dress, dark coat, dark ankle boots, and hair in a 1960s hairstyle, posed on an empty stairwell lined with tall concrete pillars and glass.

    Untitled Film Still #63

    Cindy Sherman
    A black-and-white photograph of the artist on a very dark urban street, with blond hair and a dress skirt and blouse under a trench coat that she pulls closed around her neck.

    Untitled Film Still #54

    Cindy Sherman
    A black-and-white photograph of the artist with blond hair, a white blouse, and a calf-length plaid skirt standing on the side of an open road in a hilly evening landscape, her back turned to the viewer and a suitcase by her side on the ground.

    Untitled Film Still #48

    Cindy Sherman
    A black-and-white photograph of the artist, a white woman, posed on the empty outdoor platform of the Flagstaff train station and captured from across the tracks under a partly cloudy sky.

    Untitled Film Still #44

    Cindy Sherman
    An oil painting of two figures embraced in an erotic, intimate position, shown from above. The figure on top is painted bright green with blue hair; the figure on the bottom is painted pink, tan, and dark grey.

    Green Heart

    Joan Semmel
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