Remembering Jackie Ferrara, Alison Knowles, and John Adams Griefen
This week, we honor a sculptor who lived and died on her own terms, a Fluxus pioneer, a color field painter, and more.
In Memoriam is published every Wednesday afternoon and honors those we recently lost in the art world.
Alison Knowles (1933–2025)
The first woman of Fluxus
She worked not only between disciplines but between media, seemingly exploding the boundaries of every form she inhabited. Across a six-decade career, she was a pioneering force in process- and computer-based art, relational aesthetics, and more, incorporating both chance and sound while drawing upon the political resonances of everyday objects. “People don’t touch art,” she said in a 2010 oral history with the Archives of American Art. “That’s one of the problems.”
Read our full obituary here.
Jackie Ferrara (1929–2025)
Sculptor who contained chaos in geometric forms
A fixture of New York’s downtown art scene, she discovered her visual language of graceful wooden structures and architectural environments while renovating her Soho loft. She saw her art as puzzles to be solved, and her public sculptures dot midwestern towns. "Ferrara might have sought to contain the chaos of her life in precise, geometric forms," Zoë Lescaze writes, "but their subtle unpredictability reflects her own."
Read our full obituary here.
John Adams Griefen (1942–2025)
Abstract painter and Color Field pioneer
He made important contributions to abstract art in the United States and Europe with his monumental acrylic-on-canvas paintings. His works are held by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC; the Boston Museum of Fine Art, and more.
Mitchell D. Kahan (1951–2025)
Former director of the Akron Art Museum
He was among the longest-serving art museum leaders in the United States as CEO and director of the Akron Art Museum between 1985 and 2013. “He combined deep knowledge of the Museum’s history with genuine care for its future," Jon Fiume, current director and CEO of the Akron Art Museum, told Hyperallergic.
