Jennifer Bartlett (1941-2022) was born in Long Beach, CA and studied at Mills College, Oakland, CA and the Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT. The first major museum survey exhibition of Bartlett’s work was organised in 1985 – it travelled from Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN to Brooklyn Museum, NY and Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA. Bartlett’s first institutional solo exhibition in the UK was mounted at Tate, London in 1982. In 2006, her early enamelled steel plate paintings were surveyed at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA. In 2013 and 2014, a second survey of Bartlett’s work—Jennifer Bartlett: History of the Universe, curated by Klaus Ottmann – travelled to Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, PA and Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY.
Her work is featured in numerous institutional collections, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Tate, London; Bennese House Museum, Naoshima; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, amongst many others.