WATTS INDEXThe canonical database of visual culture

Artists›May Stevens

May Stevens

Artist

WA-00034131

Painting

Representation

None documented

Institutional Exhibitions

Works in Collection

Assets Indexed

Authority-backed Facts

Publications Referenced

70%

Profile Completeness

Cultural Positioning

Influence Graph

No influence edges encoded yet.

Authority Records (3)

WikidataQ6796587 ULAN500005241

MoMA

Selected Institutional Exhibitions

View all exhibitions →

No image

Committed to Print

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1988

Source Registry (1)

MoMA bulk 2026-05-04https://www.moma.org/artists/38015
Tier 1 · Institutional92%

About

Why this artist matters now

May Stevens was an American painter and printmaker whose practice spanned abstraction, figuration, and political activism across seven decades. Working primarily in acrylic and mixed media, she created large-scale works that interrogated domesticity, labor, and historical erasure, often incorporating found materials and archival imagery. Stevens's commitment to feminist and leftist aesthetics shaped her output from the 1950s onward, producing work that refused easy categorization between formal experiment and social engagement.

Source: Moma Bulk 2026 05 04 · Trust score: 92% · Updated 29d ago

Graph relationships

Taste overlap and adjacency

Movement

—

Medium

Painting

Related Artists

6 in graph

Institutional

Museum Collections

Museum of Modern ArtNew York Whitney Museum of American Art

Canonical record

Artworks (6)

The Band Played On from Femfolio

2009 · Digital print with lithograph and gold dusting from a portfolio of nineteen digital prints (twelve with lithograph, one with pochoir, one with hand coloring, and one with gold dusting) and one lithograph

composition: 11 15/16 x 12" (30.4 x 30.5 cm); sheet: 11 15/16 x 12" (30.4 x 30.5 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

WattsOS

Untitled

2008 · acrylic and metallic ink over lithograph

Sheet: 55.9 x 76.1 cm (22 x 29 15/16 in.)

Cleveland Museum of Art

WattsOS

River Run

1994 · color lithograph

Image: 56.4 x 75 cm (22 3/16 x 29 1/2 in.)

Cleveland Museum of Art

WattsOS

Big Daddy and George Jackson

1972 · collage

Sheet: 56 x 69.8 cm (22 1/16 x 27 1/2 in.)

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Couple

1971 · Cut-and-pasted printed paper, pencil, ink, and chalk on paper

22 1/4 × 29 7/8" (56.5 × 75.9 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Big Daddy (Beach Scene)

1970 · Gouache, felt-tip pen, and pencil on paper

22 × 30" (55.9 × 76.2 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Artwork sources (3)

6 published of 10 catalogued · 6 with image

MoMA
3 publishedof 6 catalogued6 img
Cleveland Museum of Art
3 published
+ 1 more source · 1 catalogued, not yet published

Per-Artwork Provenance Chains (top 3)

3 entries · 1 sources

River Run
1994 · Cleveland · 1 prov
Url Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number
Big Daddy and George Jackson
1972 · Cleveland · 1 prov
Url Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number
Untitled
2008 · Cleveland · 1 prov
Url Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number

Record

Images

Artsy

Relationships

Collections2

Museum of Modern Art Whitney Museum of American Art

Institutional

Representation & Collections

In collection

Museum of Modern Art

New York, US

In collection

Whitney Museum of American Art

Record

Exhibitions and timeline

Group Exhibition Committed to Print

New York · 1988