Mavis Pusey Receives First Major Museum Survey At ICA Philadelphia

Forbes

5 days ago

Mavis Pusey, 'Nuvae,' mid-1960s. Oil on burlap canvas, 30 x 40 inches. Private collection. ICA Philadelphia
Female.
Black.
Abstractionist.
Three strikes and you're out.
Out of art history.
Patriarchy and racism explain the first two. The third strike needs extra context.
In the few occasions when a Black woman broke through art history's glass ceiling, their work was figurative. Think Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) and Lois Mailou Jones (1905–1998).
African American artists working in the 20th century, and to a smaller extent since–both men and women–were expected by the art establishment–museums, curators, galleries, collectors–to make overtly representational artwork related specifically to the Black experience. Take Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) or Romare Bearden (1911-1988) for example. African American artists who broke through in a big way depicting the Black experience in America using figures. Norman Lewis (1909-1979) was a talented contemporary, a Black man; he painted in an Abstract Expressionist style to only marginal acclaim compared to Lawrence or Bearden or other white AbEx painters despite the high caliber of his work.
Mavis Pusey (1928-2019) was female, Black, and an abstract painter. And massively overlooked. Nearly forgotten.
Nearly.
For the first time, the life and work of the Jamaica-born artist will be fully explored in a major museum survey. The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania–ICA Philadelphia–presents 'Mavis Pusey: Mobile Images' through December 7, 2025, an extensive retrospective spanning her 50-year career featuring more than 60 works including paintings, drawings, and prints, as well as archival materials.
Hallie Ringle, Interim Director and Daniel and Brett Sundheim Chief Curator of the ICA Philadelphia, curates the show. She was directed toward Pusey in 2015 by the Studio Museum in Harlem's legendary director and chief curator Thelma Golden. Golden came across Pusey in a catalog. Intrigued, Golden asked Ringle, who was serving as Assistant Curator at the Studio Museum at the time, if she'd like to research Pusey.
Absolutely.
'I didn't know anything about (Pusey) before Thelma asked if I wanted to look into her,' Ringle told Forbes.com. 'I was completely unfamiliar with her work, but now that I do know more about her, I see how many intersections her life has had with people that I'm more familiar with, and it just becomes all the more shocking that I didn't know.'
Pusey studied at the famed Art Students League in Manhattan under Will Barnet (1961–1965). It was her Plan B. She wanted to be a fashion designer, but finding a professional path forward difficult, took advantage of a grant to attend classes at the League. Barnet encouraged her to keep going.
She later worked at Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop (1969–1972) in the City which was frequented by major figures such as Emma Amos, Lawrence, Bearden, and Melvin Edwards.
'I remember seeing these prints that she made in Paris,' Ringle said. 'I thought they were incredible. They use these kind of musical staffs in them, and to see the clash of music and color, it felt like seeing sound in a way that I don't often experience. I was immediately excited by that.'
Hooked, Ringle had to find Pusey before starting the heavy lifting of examining her career. Through the artist's Massachusetts gallery, a social worker, and Pusey's caretaker family, Ringle located her in Orange, VA about 90 miles southwest of Washington, D.C. Just in time. Pusey was suffering from dementia.
Between 2015 and the artist's passing in 2019, Ringle met with Pusey numerous times. Ringle acknowledges it wasn't like visiting with Pusey during her prime would have been.
'I really got a sense of what she was like through the archival materials. Hearing her give lectures, seeing the letters that she wrote, the people that she was in contact with–you get this picture of a person who was so dynamic and really brought people together,' Ringle explained. 'Her (New York) apartment was a gathering place. (She was) somebody who was able to create community around her wherever she went, and also someone who was deeply invested in a larger sense of art history and making. She had an extensive book collection. She was interested in continuing her education about art and was often going to exhibitions and really kept up with the museum and gallery scene in New York when she was there and then even after.'
Ringle and the Studio Museum team painstakingly reassembled Pusey's body of work before her death. The Studio Museum acquired a large portion of her work for its collection. With Ringle's appointment at ICA, she continued advancing the research, prompting a close collaboration between ICA and the Studio Museum on comprehensive conservation and research initiatives preserving the artist's legacy.
The Studio Museum will present the exhibition in spring of 2027 with a stop at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in between.
Seven newly discovered paintings debut in the presentation alongside key works through each period of Pusey's creative trajectory. Artworks are contextualized by the inclusion of photographs, notes, and ephemera from Pusey's lifetime, offering historical and personal insight into the artist's boundary-pushing body of work. A Life Of Inspiration
Mavis Pusey with her work 'Within Manhattan.' Studio Museum in Harlem
Born and raised in Retreat, Jamaica, Pusey would go on to live in New York from the late 50s through late 80s, with considerable time spent in London, Paris, and Philadelphia, as well as Virginia following New York through the end of her life. She created rich, abstract paintings and works on paper inspired by her wide-ranging interests in fashion and the urban environment of cities she lived in throughout her life.
'She took the influences of her life and built them into her practice,' Ringle said. 'So, while it's abstract, it's also recognizable and familiar in so many ways. Even when you're seeing her more almost figurative works, you see that they look like (clothing) pattern pieces, or they look like something related to the body that feel relatable.'
Early in life, Pusey worked cutting fabric in a Kingston garment factory. She developed her own clothing line and made handbags. Examples of both appear in the show. She learned printmaking in Paris around the time of the massive 1968 student protests there. Pusey spent a lifetime thinking about the dynamics of New York City.
'She had such a unique and specific view of the world that you can see through her practice. Many of the archival materials allow us to see the world through her mind,' Ringle said. 'For example, we found film. She used to walk around New York City taking pictures and she would turn those into inspiration for her works. We saw a black and white picture of a truck that had the bed (with a) kind of barrier on it made out of wood, and the angle of the boards just so clearly showed up in one of her prints. This is how she's walking around the world, seeing it in geometries, and seeing it as her work appears. To be able to–even for that glimpse–see the world through her eyes, that made me think this is an incredibly special person that I feel honored to have been able to work on.'
Through it all, Pusey resisted pressures to create figurative, overtly socio-political work, remaining committed to abstraction. A particular subgenre of the movement called 'geometric abstraction.' One look at her paintings explains the moniker. Pusey's abstraction was built on geometric shapes. That's how she saw the world.
The exhibition's title, 'Mobile Images,' takes its name from one of her prints.
'It is a print that she originally made in black and white and editioned in black and white, and then later returned t –we believe she returned to it–decades later and created another version in color,' Ringle explained. 'It felt like the most appropriate title for the exhibition because it felt like her going through the city and experiencing the city through these kind of geometries. The world is constantly mobile and in motion to her, and you feel that in her work. It's like you've caught a moment in time, not a stagnant painting, it's very active.'
Serendipitously to the exhibition and Ringle's promotion, Pusey taught in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts–commuting from New York–between 1974 and 1986. That school, and others where she taught simultaneously, helped Ringle piece the artist's life and archive together.
Pusey had work included in the 2024 Whitney Biennial, the most prestigious survey of contemporary American art. Curators there shared what they found. When Pusey died, her obituary ran in The New York Times , bringing more leads out of the woodwork. She wasn't completely unknown. She had artwork in the collection at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, and was included in a 1971 group show there, 'Contemporary Black Artists in America.' The Museum of Modern Art–the apex–holds her work, still, Golden was unfamiliar with her, as was Ringle, and they've dedicated their lives to this.
'It turns out, she's been here all along,' Ringle said. 'It's an all too familiar story with Black artists, especially abstractionists, and in women in particular. If she had received the recognition she deserves, we would all know about her by now.'
That's one of the goals for this presentation: recognition. It's too late for the attention to do Pusey any good, but it's not too late for the historical record to be corrected. For her talent and innovation and vision to be acknowledged, included, immortalized. Not out of charity or because she was a nice lady, because her work merits that station. It helps fill out the record. It belongs. She belongs. More From Forbes Forbes 'Elizabeth Catlett: Black Revolutionary Artist' At National Gallery Of Art By Chadd Scott Forbes New York Celebrates Two Landmark Cultural Anniversaries In 2025 By Chadd Scott Forbes 19th-Century 'Afric-American Picture Gallery' Brought To Life At Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library By Chadd Scott