The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women represents three decades of collecting by philanthropist and political activist Barbara Lee. It brings together painting, sculpture, and photography by iconic modern and contemporary artists whose work and ideas have changed the course of art history. Ranging from portraiture to performance, abstraction and representation, conceptual and craft-based work, the art in the Collection presents personal and political explorations of identity; feminism; materiality; and the body as the site of pleasure, violence, repression and expression.
Barbara Lee’s extraordinary gifts deepen the ICA’s holdings of works by Louise Bourgeois, Tara Donovan, Marlene Dumas, Mona Hatoum, Cindy Sherman, and Lorna Simpson, and adds important works by artists who are part of the ICA’s exhibition history including Sandra Cinto, Ellen Gallagher, Rachel Harrison, Eva Hesse, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Louise Lawler, Ana Mendieta, Doris Salcedo, Joan Semmel, Amy Sillman, Kiki Smith, Shelburne Thurber, Kara Walker, and Lisa Yuskavage.