The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens “Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous” today, Oct. 4, with 120 paintings from more than 80 national and international lenders. It’s a big undertaking. Bringing that many works together takes cooperation from a wide network of collectors and institutions.
The Exhibition
The show places Lee Krasner’s paintings alongside Jackson Pollock’s. The museum calls the pairing a rare chance to reconsider both artists’ work in conversation. Visitors won’t have to take anyone’s word for it. They can stand before the canvases and decide.
Amei Wallach, an art critic, author and documentary filmmaker, wrote that the exhibition gives viewers that very chance to reconsider the artists’ work together. Wallach first met Krasner in 1973, 53 years ago.
A Painter Who Wouldn’t Wait
Wallach recalled the meeting vividly. Krasner sat barefoot, her shirt untucked, in the Springs section of the East Hampton house she’d shared with Pollock for some 11 years. Wallach described her as direct and forceful.
Krasner didn’t hedge about how the world saw her. “I happen to be Mrs. Jackson Pollock, and that’s a mouthful,” she told Wallach. Then she went further: “I was a woman, Jewish, a widow, a damn good painter, thank you, and a little too independent.”
She was 65. And her first solo exhibition in a major American museum was about to open. The Whitney Museum of American Art mounted “Lee Krasner: Large Paintings,” featuring 18 works spanning two decades and beginning in 1953.
Judged on the Work
Krasner didn’t wrap the moment in sentiment. “The alternative is that it could all have happened after I die,” she said. She waved off the idea of a triumphant celebration, too: “But to feel Big Boom Joy — oh, cut it out.”
What she wanted was simpler. “When those paintings are up there, everybody can look and judge for themselves,” she said.
That line captures her stance. She didn’t ask for a verdict in advance. She asked for a hearing. More than seven decades after the earliest of those Whitney works, dated to 1953, the Met gives her paintings and Pollock’s equal wall space and the same open invitation.
Why This Matters:
The Met exhibition rests on a straightforward idea: let the work be seen, and let the public judge. Krasner asked for exactly that in 1973, and by her own account, she’d waited a long time. The show’s scale—120 paintings from more than 80 lenders—shows what voluntary cooperation among collectors and institutions can produce without anyone dictating the terms. For readers who value independence, merit and the freedom to form their own opinions, the story’s appeal is plain. Krasner didn’t define herself by her marriage, and she didn’t wait for permission. Whether the pairing changes how critics rank the two painters remains an open question. The paintings are on the walls, and that’s where she wanted the argument settled.