Paula Harper


Paula Hays Harper was an American art historian, credited as "one of the first art historians to bring a feminist perspective to the study of painting and sculpture". She co-authored a biography on the French impressionist Camille Pissarro and was a well-known contemporary art critic.

Life and work

Paula Fish was an only child, born in Scituate, Massachusetts, who grew up in Philadelphia. In her 20s she moved to New York City, where she was a dancer with the modern dance company Munt-Brooks. After a dance-related injury she decided to study art history at Hunter College in New York and earned her bachelor's and master's degree. In 1976 she earned her PhD in art history from Stanford University. Harper was married twice and never had children; she preferred using her two married names "Hays Harper" because of a dislike of her maiden name.
Harper was "instrumental" in the establishment of the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts in the early 1970s. Harper is credited with conceiving Womanhouse, a 1972 art installation and "one of the biggest and most celebrated exhibitions of art by and about women ever assembled".
In 1981 Paula Hays Harper collaborated with Ralph E. Shikes on a comprehensive biography of the 19th-century French Impressionist Camille Pissarro.
She taught at the University of Miami from 1983 until her retirement in 2011. She helped shape the Miami art scene and was a regular contributor and art critic in Art in America magazine and The Miami News.
Harper died at age 81 in Miami, Florida, from complications of a rare skin cancer.

Publications

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