The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens “Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous” on Oct. 4, bringing Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock together in an institutionally sanctioned account of two artists whose names haven’t carried equal weight in the story told about them. Krasner put the imbalance plainly to art critic, author and documentary filmmaker Amei Wallach: “I happen to be Mrs. Jackson Pollock, and that’s a mouthful.”
The exhibition assembles 120 paintings from more than 80 national and international lenders, placing Krasner’s work alongside Pollock’s. The museum calls it a chance to reconsider both artists in conversation. But Krasner’s own words sharpen the stakes: she described herself as “a woman, Jewish, a widow, a damn good painter, thank you, and a little too independent.” The labels around her work matter. So does who gets to decide when a painter is finally seen on her own terms.
A name that crowded the frame
Wallach recalled meeting Krasner in 1973 at the house she’d shared with Pollock in the Springs section of East Hampton. Krasner sat barefoot in the house, her shirt untucked. Wallach described her as direct and forceful. The remembered details don’t soften Krasner’s account of her position. They give her voice room to cut through it.
At 65, Krasner was about to have her first solo exhibition in a major American museum. The Whitney Museum of American Art mounted “Lee Krasner: Large Paintings,” featuring 18 works spanning two decades beginning in 1953. That sequence—her first solo show in a major American museum at 65, followed by a Met exhibition pairing her work with Pollock’s—puts institutional recognition in view without pretending it arrived on the artist’s schedule.
Krasner spoke directly about the timing. “The alternative is that it could all have happened after I die,” she said. Her next thought was less ceremonious: “But to feel Big Boom Joy — oh, cut it out.” The museum door opening mattered. She’d had to wait for it.
Let the work be judged
Krasner also said, “When those paintings are up there, everybody can look and judge for themselves.” The paintings now hang within a major museum’s framing, alongside Pollock’s, in a show built from work supplied by more than 80 lenders. Viewers can compare the artists directly, while Krasner’s remarks keep attention on the conditions surrounding that visibility: her identity as a woman, Jewish, a widow, and a painter whose name was bound to her husband’s.
Wallach, who met Krasner in 1973, wrote that the exhibition offers a chance to reconsider the artists’ work together. That invitation doesn’t erase the gap between making the work and receiving a major museum’s platform. Krasner named the possibility that recognition might have come only after her death, then insisted that viewers judge the paintings. The museum can set the walls and assemble the lenders. The work is there. Krasner’s words refuse to let her disappear behind Pollock’s name.