“1947: Creating an American Scene” NYAE Fundraiser Honoring Karen Wilkin and the Artist Equity Founders Salmagundi Club”

Founded in 1947 by a diverse group of American artists banding together, post WPA, to fend for themselves and their fledgling colleagues, New York Artists Equity Association (NYAE) forges on as an inclusive community for aspirant artists and makers, particularly those from underserved groups, seeking access to the greater art ecosystem.  

“1947: Creating an American Scene” pays tribute to NYAE’s forerunners, some famous, others lesser known, who had the radical foresight to establish an openly diverse aritsts association accessible to women, people of color, recent immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community.  “1947” will showcase works by founding NYAE members including Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Reginald Marsh, Louise Nevelson and Yasuo Kuniyoshi, the latter a Japanese immigrant who was the association’s first president.  A preview sample of “1947” works will be displayed at the Salmagundi fundraising event and the full exhibition will run through the month of December at Equity Gallery.  In addition to these historical works, the fundraising event will offer a sale of monotypes created and donated by current NYAE artist members.  

Karen Wilkin will be the fundraiser’s honored guest. Wilkin is a New York–based independent curator and art critic specializing in 20th-century modernism.

Educated at Barnard College (1962) and Columbia University, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, to Rome. Wilkin has organized numerous exhibitions internationally and is the author of monographs on Stuart Davis, David Smith, Anthony Caro, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, and Hans Hofmann. Her recent projects include a Hofmann retrospective for the Naples Art Museum, Naples, Florida, and, with William C. Agee, the introductory essays for the Stuart Davis Catalogue Raisonné.

Wilkin teaches in the Master of Fine Arts program of the New York Studio School. She is the Contributing Editor for Art for the Hudson Review and a regular contributor to The New Criterion, Art in America, The Hopkins Review, and the Wall Street Journal.

For further information about “1947: Creating an American Scene” or NYAE contact Michael Gormley, NYAE Executive Director at michael@nyartistsequity.org 

Image Credit: Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889 – 1953)
“Checked Cloth (Fruit in Basket)”, lithographic ink on printing paper, 10-1/4 x 15-1/4 in. (image)
16-5/16 x 21-5/16 inches (framed), signed lower right, courtesy Woodstock Artist Association and Museum Permanent Collection