Biography

Ruth Fine
Curator of Special Projects in Modern Art

Ruth Fine is curator of special projects in modern art at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the organizing curator for The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States project. She has written the introductory essay for the catalogue that accompanies this project and that is copublished by the National Gallery of Art and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Fine was curator of modern prints and drawings at the National Gallery from 1988 to 2002 and has worked closely with Dorothy and Herbert Vogel since 1991, when their collection was transferred from New York to Washington. She was co-curator of From Minimal and Conceptual Art: Works from the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection and conducted and edited "Dorothy and Herbert Vogel in Conversation" for the accompanying catalogue. Fine also contributed "Many Artists / Many Things" to the catalogue for Women Artists in the Vogel Collection exhibition organized in 1998 by Breneau University in Gainesville, Georgia.

Fine has organized exhibitions of works by American artists including Romare Bearden, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, Jasper Johns, John Marin, and Mark Rothko as well as by contemporary print-publishing workshops such as Crown Point Press, Gemini G.E.L., and Graphicstudio U.S.F. She is the lead author of Mark Rothko: The Works on Paper, a multivolume catalogue raisonné projected for publication in 2010. 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. Fine currently serves as advisor to the in-progress catalogues raisonné on the art of Richard Diebenkorn, Roy Lichtenstein, and James McNeil Whistler.

Fine has contributed essays to exhibition catalogues ranging in subject from the art of Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist 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 who has illustrated five limited-edition books that are in the libraries of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Museum of the Book, The Hague; and the National Library of Canada, as well as several museum and university libraries in the United States. She lectures frequently and has taught studio art at the University of the Arts, Arcadia University, and the University of Vermont. Fine graduated from the University of Pennsylvania (MFA, 1964) and the University of the Arts (1962) and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1961).

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Ruth Fine Curator of Special Projects in Modern Art

Ruth Fine
Curator of Special Projects in Modern Art