About Ruth E. Fine

Curator. Art Historian. Printmaker. Professor. Artist Foundation Chair.

Ruth Fine taught studio art at the college level from 1964 through 1972, at Philadelphia College of Art (now shuttered), Beaver College (now Arcadia University) and the University of Vermont. She then was a curator for the National Gallery of Art for four decades, first for the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection in Jenkintown PA (1972-1980, then Curator of Modern Prints and Drawings (1980-2003), followed by Curator of Special Projects in Modern Art. In Washington she curated dozens of exhibitions -- studies of the art of Romare Bearden, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jasper Johns, and several printmaking workshops. She conceived and oversaw the Herbert and Dorothy Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States.

Returning to Philadelphia in 2010, she organized Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (2015), the catalogue for which received the College Art Association’s Alfred H. Barr Award for Museum Scholarship. In 2023 Fine received the Archives of American Art’s Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History; and the Print Center New York’s Award for Curatorial Practice. Fine chairs the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and is a consultant to the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.

Throughout her curatorial career, Fine has continued her studio work. She had residencies at the Vermont Studio Center (1992), Harvey Littleton Studios (1999), the Albers Foundation (2000), and the Ballinglen Art Foundation (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020).