PHILLIPS TO PRESENT ALICE BABER: SACRED SPACES, A LANDMARK SELLING EXHIBITION TRACING THE ARTIST'S VISION FROM 1959-1981

Presented in Partnership with Jody Klotz Fine Art

On view at Phillips New York from 6-26 March

NEW YORK, Feb. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- PhillipsX is proud to announce Alice Baber: Sacred Spaces, a major selling exhibition dedicated to the pioneering American Abstract Expressionist and Color Field painter. Presented in partnership with Jody Klotz Fine Art, the exhibition will be on view at Phillips New York from 6-26 March, with a highlights preview open from 20-28 February. Featuring nearly 30 works spanning 1959 to 1981, the exhibition offers the most comprehensive market-facing presentation of Baber's artistic evolution to date, coinciding with the publication of Gail Levin's groundbreaking new biography, Alice Baber: An Artist's Triumph Over Tragedy.

Covering more than two decades of Baber's career, Alice Baber: Sacred Spaces presents exceptional examples of the artist's early and mature styles, underscoring the full arc of her development before her life was tragically cut short at age 54 in 1982. The show includes rare early watercolors and oils from the early 1960s, seldom seen in the market and crucial to understanding Baber's stylistic transformation. Collectors will also have the opportunity to see works such as the 1965 oil painting Bright Safe and the 1965 watercolor Yellow and Red Support, which closely relate to her major painting Noble Numbers (1964–65) in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Important early highlights from her career can also be seen, including Piper's Message and Where They Meet, rarely exhibited and newly contextualized within Baber's broader practice. This rich survey allows audiences to experience Baber's evolution with unprecedented clarity, revealing the breadth of her experimentation with color, movement, light, and the "sacred space" of the canvas.

This timely selling exhibition coincides with the publication of Gail Levin's authoritative new biography, Alice Baber: An Artist's Triumph Over Tragedy—a major scholarly reassessment that traces Baber's journey from the 1950s New York art scene and the transatlantic Paris milieu to her role in key feminist exhibitions of the 1970s and her global travels as a U.S. State Department cultural emissary. Simultaneously, the show aligns with the museum exhibition Exploring the Collection: Alice Baber at the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette in Indiana, where Baber studied and where a significant trove of her work is held, underscoring a broader institutional and scholarly momentum restoring her place within the postwar American canon.

Jody Klotz, Art Dealer, Owner of Jody Klotz Fine Art, Texas, said, "Partnering with PhillipsX in presenting this exhibition on Alice Baber is a dream come true.  A heartfelt mission to elevate Baber from obscurity started with the first painting I purchased by the artist several years ago. It was a "coup de foudre" — love at first sight! Personally acquiring enough work to put on a first major exhibition, in my gallery in Texas, and then in New York, of this historically important and forgotten artist, accompanied by serious scholarship by Gail Levin, was the next step in 2024.   Hard-fought further acquisitions with the plan of a second expansive exhibition on a global stage to celebrate the publication of the forthcoming biography on the artist by Levin, was my dream, here realized in partnership with Phillips. As an art dealer of 45 years, discoveries of great paintings, and great artists, has been a lifelong quest.  I hope this exhibition will allow people to fall in love with this extraordinary artist's work, as I have. Somewhere, Alice is smiling."

Robert Manley, Phillips' Chairman, Modern & Contemporary Art, said, "Phillips is honored to host this important exhibition. Alice Baber's work is represented in nearly 50 museums worldwide, yet her contributions were long overshadowed until recent scholarship and collector rediscovery began restoring her rightful place in the Post-War art historical narrative. This moment of renewed visibility—across scholarship, museums, and the market—underscores why Alice Baber: Sacred Spaces is both overdue and essential. We look forward to welcoming collectors through our doors this Spring, so they can experience Alice Baber's work anew."

A symposium featuring Gail Levin, Jody Klotz, and Danielle Johnson, Curator of the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, will take place on 17 February at the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette as part of the institution's programming to support their own Alice Baber exhibition. A panel discussion featuring Jody Klotz, Gail Levin, and Jessica Case of Pegasus Publishing, publisher of Levin's highly anticipated biography of Alice Baber, will take place at Phillips on 16 March. These events will offer further insight into Baber's life, work, and renewed cultural relevance.

SOURCE PHILLIPS