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In partnership with the Audrey Flack Foundation, we are pleased to present this online exhibition honoring Flack, who passed away in 2024 at the age of 93. One of the enduring voices of the feminist art movement, Flack created a body of work that is bold, unapologetic, and singular. Join us in celebrating the legacy of this visionary artist and introducing her work to new audiences.
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"Art helps us live. It helps us deal with our mortality.
When a great artist dies, I think the planet loses something very important."
- Audrey Flack
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Self Portrait with Flaming Heart, 2022, Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 40 x 30"
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Wheel of Fortune (Vanitas), 1997/98, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 96 x 96"
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Flack is best known for her detailed, colorful, hyperrealist paintings. A pioneer in the field, she was among the first artists to use a projected photograph as a painting aid. She was also the first photorealist painter whose work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art for its permanent collection. In a male-dominated field, her bold works stood out. Her proud feminist spirit was always at the forefront, and her paintings often depicted symbols of womanhood.
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"Titian made art into his late 80s, and I’m now past that. I always wanted to paint like an old master, or rather an old mistress, a radical contemporary old mistress"
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Queen, 1976, Acrylic on canvas
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“I was just being me, you know? What I did was break the rules—I broke tradition."
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Self Portrait as Suicidal Saint Theresa, 6’ x 4’
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In the second half of her career, Flack turned from painting to sculpture, focusing primarily on large-scale bronze works depicting female figures, goddesses, and historical heroines. This work led to numerous public commissions in cities, courthouses, and colleges. Drawing on mythology and history, these monumental figures carried the feminist themes of her paintings into public space, giving powerful women a rare, visible place in the civic landscape.
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Flack working on the original casting of her comission, Queen Catherine
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Under pressure from the protests, political support was withdrawn, funding was lost, and the project was ultimately cancelled. Flack was disappointed by the lost opportunity. “I was told at the time that it would have been the largest public art statue made by a woman in the world, and second only to the Statue of Liberty in height,” she said. “As a woman and an artist, I wanted a beautiful, intelligent female out there. Queens has the greatest ethnic diversity of any borough, and I wanted her to be a healing force bringing people together.”
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Queen Catherine, bronze, installed in the Parque das Nações, Lisbon
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Adrienne de Noailles, the Marquise de Lafayette, bronze, 2024, installed on the Lafayette College campus this year - Flack's last major work before she passed
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"Art takes you out of this veil of tears, out of this profane time we live in; and great art brings you to another place. Look, we’re all going to die… but art can cut across time, cut across centuries. I stand in front of a late Rembrandt self-portrait and…500 years have gone and he’s right there for me. It brings you to another place. That is something that art does."
In memory of Audrey Flack
May 30, 1931 - June 28, 2024
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ABOUT THE PANELISTS
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Sharon Louden wears many interchangeable hats: artist, educator, advocate, consultant, community builder, founder and director of the Institute for Sustained Creativity, and editor of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series of books. As a changemaker, Louden amplifies creative voices and advances meaningful opportunities for artists — particularly those who are underserved and underseen — across all disciplines to help them sustain their creative lives.
With decades of experience across sectors, Louden is a visionary leader and connector who bridges communities and catalyzes change. She is a skilled collaborator, convening siloed stakeholders from the nonprofit and business sectors to generate dialogue and drive collective progress. At its core, all of her work is rooted in her active creative practice as a working artist.
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Maria Nevelson is the Founder and Executive Director of the Louise Nevelson Foundation, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Foundation was established for her grandmother in May of 2005 with a mission to educate and celebrate the life and work of the artist Louise Nevelson, a pioneering 20th century sculptor who’s signature black sculpture creations of assembled wood objects transcended space and transformed the viewer.
Nevelson LLC was established by Maria Nevelson in 1988 and she has created interiors for senior living facilities and residences, sculpted wood assemblages, and licensed the artwork of Louise Nevelson. Maria’s work has been seen on CNN TV’s “Style with Elsa Klensch”, in the permanent collection of University of Cambridge’s New Hall Art Collection, and jewelry collaboration with the Paris fashion house CELINE.
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Severin Delfs is Director of Development at Hollis Taggart and a legacy steward of the Audrey Flack Foundation and Estate. He has collaborated curatorially with the Parrish Art Museum (Southampton, NY) and LongHouse Reserve Sculpture Garden and Museum-Reserve Landscape (East Hampton, NY).
Other projects include the exhibitions Codes & Colors, Teruko Yokoi: Noh Theatre, and John Graham Comes Home in collaboration with the Brooklyn Home Company. He holds a BA from the Catalyst Institute for Creative Arts & Technology in Berlin, Germany. He is a member of the curatorial collective Below Grand.
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Darla Jackson is a sculptor living in Philadelphia. She received a BFA in Sculpture from Moore College of Art in 2003, and after receiving a John S. and James L. Knight Arts Challenge Grant in both 2011 and 2013, founded the Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, a membership based community sculpture studio.
Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions locally, including galleries and museums such as the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Seraphin Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Woodmere Art Museum, and a Wind Challenge exhibition at the Fleisher Art Memorial, and across the country at museums and galleries such as the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Thinkspace Gallery in Culver City, California, and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, Delaware. She has shown internationally in Belgium and Germany and has lectured about her work at venues including The Barnes Foundation. Jackson has taught sculpture at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Tyler School of Art, Fleisher Art Memorial and various workshops across the country. Jackson is currently a Medallic Artist for the United States Mint in Philadelphia, PA.
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AUDREY FLACK: I Believe in Art
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