Biography: Ruth Fine

Ruth Fine, curator of special projects in modern art at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., is curator of the exhibition The Art of Mark Rothko: Selections from the National Gallery of Art, organized for the Hong Kong Museum of Art, and Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. Fine contributed an overview of Rothko’s art to the exhibition’s publications and is also the lead author of Mark Rothko: The Works on Paper, a multivolume catalogue raisonné projected for publication by the National Gallery in 2010.

As curator of modern prints and drawings at the National Gallery from 1988 through 2002, Fine organized exhibitions of work by several American artists, including Romare Bearden, Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, John Marin, and Georgia O'Keeffe and contemporary print-publishing workshops Crown Point Press, Gemini G.E.L., and Graphicstudio, U.S.F. She also organized exhibitions of works from the Herbert and Dorothy Vogel collection of contemporary art.

Fine was coordinator of the 1994 catalogue raisonné of Roy Lichtenstein’s prints (revised 2002) and co-coordinator of the 1999 Georgia O'Keeffe catalogue raisonné, a project undertaken in conjunction with the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. She has contributed numerous essays to exhibition catalogues ranging in subject from the art of Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, and James McNeill Whistler to Tyler Graphics, Ltd. and The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection, among others. From 1972 to 1980, Fine served as curator of Lessing J. Rosenwald's collection of prints and drawings, a major gift to the National Gallery that was housed at Rosenwald’s home in Jenkintown, PA, until his death in 1979.

Fine is a painter/printmaker whose work is in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum Library, London, the Museum of the Book, The Hague, and the National Library of Canada, as well as Columbia University, Bryn Mawr College, Dartmouth College, the Boston Public Library, and I.B.M. She has illustrated five limited-edition books, lectures frequently, and has taught studio art (printmaking, painting, drawing, and design) at the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts), Beaver College (now Arcadia University), and the University of Vermont. Fine graduated from the University of Pennsylvania (M.F.A., 1964) and the Philadelphia College of Art (B.A., 1962) and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1961).

General Information

The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden are at all times free to the public. They are located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, and are open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on December 25 and January 1. For information call (202) 737-4215 or the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176, or visit the Gallery's Web site at www.nga.gov.

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