Ginny and Hartley Neel on Alice Neel

Ginny and Hartley Neel, Executive Directors of the Estate of Alice Neel and the artist’s daughter-in-law and son, discuss the life and work of Alice Neel (1900 - 1984) on the occasion of Still Lifes and Street Scenes (2025).

Alice Neel (b. 1900, Merion Square, PA, USA; d. 1984, New York, NY, USA) has recently been honoured with a major retrospective titled Alice Neel: People Come First at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2021); Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2021); and the De Young Museum, San Francisco (2022). The artist’s first survey in Italy will open at the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin in October 2025. During her lifetime, the Whitney Museum of American Art celebrated Neel with her first retrospective in 1974 and a centennial, posthumous exhibition in 2000, which was initiated by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it was shown in 2001. A travelling exhibition highlighting the artist’s political and social engagement was co-organised by the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Barbican Centre, London and Munch Museum, Oslo (2022-2023). Other recent solo exhibitions include the Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa (2023); and a travelling exhibition co-organised by Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles; and the Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2016-2018); and Nordiska Akvarelmuseet, Skärhamn, Sweden (2016), among many others.