Dona Nelson’s work is in included in the collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, and the Museum of New South Wales in Australia. She is a professor at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, Philadelphia.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, after Abstract Expressionism, many artists and critics considered the inventive aspect of large-scale abstract painting to be “dead,” saying that painting could now only be approached ironically, with an eye on the art market, essentially reducing the painter’s role to that of a high-end commodity producer.

For Dona Nelson, the conceptual rethinking of large-scale abstract paintings necessitated a rethinking of typical late-20th-century gallery conventions surrounding the display of paintings.

Nelson has chosen to activate the position of the art viewer. For many Abstract Expressionists, making big paintings with their whole bodies challenged the conventions of easel painting. Nelson has wanted the physical aspect of people walking around, looking at paintings, to activate their two-sided paintings.

The event is free and open to the public.