The Art of Romare Bearden

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 Art of Romare Bearden--the most comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work ever assembled.

As the curator of modern prints and drawings at the National Gallery from 1988 through 2002, Fine organized exhibitions of work by American artists including Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, Helen Frankenthaler, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns; contemporary print-publishing workshops Crown Point Press, Gemini G.E.L., and Graphicstudio, U.S.F.; and of the Herbert and Dorothy Vogel collection of contemporary art. From 1972 to 1980, she 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.

Primary author of the exhibition catalogue The Art of Romare Bearden (hardcover, Harry R. Abrams, Inc, 2003; softcover, National Gallery of Art, 2003), Fine is lead author of the catalogue raisonné of Mark Rothko’s works on paper, a multi-volume, multi-year project to be published by the National Gallery of Art. She coordinated the 1999 Georgia O'Keeffe catalogue raisonné project, and has contributed essays to catalogues on the art of Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, James McNeill Whistler, Tyler Graphics, Ltd., and The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection, among others. She has written reviews for The International Review of African American Art (Hampton University Museum), and on Dox Thrash for the Philadelphia Museum of Art's 1976 bicentennial exhibition.

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 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 was educated at 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).

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