About the Foundation
Dorothy Dehner Foundation
for the Visual Arts
A New York–based nonprofit dedicated to preserving and advancing the legacy of Dorothy Dehner, one of American modernism's most singular sculptors.
The Artist
Dorothy Dehner, 1901–1994
Dorothy Dehner was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1901 and came to New York to study at the Art Students League, where she encountered the currents of European modernism that would shape her vision. There she met sculptor David Smith, whom she married in 1927. The two pursued their work together in New York and, from 1929, at a farmhouse they purchased in Bolton Landing in upstate New York — spending summers there before moving permanently in 1940. Dehner maintained her studio practice throughout these years, exhibiting drawings, watercolors, and paintings, but occupied an increasingly secondary position as Smith's career advanced rapidly.
After leaving Smith and relocating to New York City, she studied engraving at Atelier 17, the avant-garde printmaking workshop Stanley William Hayter had founded in Paris and moved to New York in 1940. The workshop brought together many of the leading abstract and Surrealist artists of the mid-twentieth century. Printmaking at Atelier 17 reignited her early attraction to three-dimensional work, sparking her turn to sculpture — her exclusive focus thereafter.
She developed a language of totemic, welded, and cast-bronze forms charged with archaic energy — forms that drew on myth, memory, and the natural world. A solo exhibition at the Jewish Museum in 1965, Dorothy Dehner: Ten Years of Sculpture (1955–1965), brought her work major critical recognition. She died in New York in 1994, leaving behind a body of work — sculpture, drawing, and prints — that forms the basis of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation for the Visual Arts.
What We Do
Mission & Stewardship
The Foundation stewards Dorothy Dehner's artworks and archives, works to make them accessible to the public through museum placements and scholarly attention, and supports the broader community of visual artists and arts educators. We believe that Dehner's life and work — her originality, her resilience, her insistence on artistic independence — continue to speak to artists, students, and audiences today.
Our activities include gifts of Dehner's sculpture, prints, and drawings to museum permanent collections; grants to visual-arts education programs; and the ongoing effort to ensure that Dehner's place in the history of American art is fully recognized.
The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit private foundation incorporated in New York. EIN: 13-3830526.
Our History
Established in 1995
The Dorothy Dehner Foundation for the Visual Arts was established in 1995, the year after Dehner's death, to honor the intentions of her estate and her charitable wishes. From its founding, the Foundation was guided by Joan Marter, professor emerita at Rutgers University, a close friend of the artist, and one of the foremost scholars of Dehner's sculpture. As president for three decades, Marter shaped the Foundation's core programs: placing Dehner's work in major public collections, supporting scholarship and exhibitions about Dehner, ensuring that Dehner's papers and archives remain accessible to researchers, and providing grants to visual arts organizations.
The Foundation has supported landmark exhibitions of Dehner's work, funded scholarly publications, and made significant gifts of Dehner's artwork to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and other institutions.
Leadership & Board
Board of Directors
Christina Weyl
President
Aliza Edelman
Secretary
Sophie Lachowsky
Director
David Levy
Director
Joan Marter
Director
Julia Marter Collison
Director