Lucy R. Lippard

Lucy Lippard (born 1937) is an internationally known writer, art critic, activist and curator from the United States. Lippard was among the first writers to recognize the "dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. She is the author of 21 books on contemporary art and has received numerous awards and accolades from literary critics and art associations.

Life and work

Lucy Lippard was born in New York City and lived in New Orleans and Charlottesville, Virginia, before enrolling at Abbot Academy in 1952. After earning a B.A. degree from Smith College, she worked with the American Friends Service Committee in a Mexican village —- her first experience of a foreign nation. In 1962 she earned an M.A. degree in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

Since 1966, Lippard has published 20 books—including one novel—on feminism, art, politics and place. She has received numerous awards and accolades from literary critics and art associations. A 2012 exhibition on her seminal book, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object at the Brooklyn Museum, titled "Six Years": Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art", cites Lippard's scholarship as its point of entry into a discussion about conceptual art during its era of emergence, demonstrating her crucial role in the contemporary understanding of this period of art production and criticism. Her research on the move toward Dematerialization in art making has formed a cornerstone of contemporary art scholarship and discourse.