Edie McKee Harper: Modernist at Play

Cincinnati artist Edie McKee Harper (American, 1922–2010) developed a distinctive modernist vision across a wide variety of media, including photographs, paintings, enamels, weavings, illustrations, and prints. Edie McKee Harper: Modernist at Play highlights Harper’s exploration of these diverse materials through more than 100 works of art, re-examining her minimalist—and often playful—style to reveal a sophisticated artist who expanded the possibilities of mid-20th-century art and design. Recent shows and publications have looked at Harper’s accomplishments in tandem with those of her husband, artist and illustrator Charley Harper (American, 1922–2007), but this will be the first museum exhibition, with accompanying catalogue, to closely study the full range of her work on its own terms. The show will trace the evolution of Harper’s 60-year-long career through themes she revisited often—the American landscape, abstraction, storytelling, and the animal world—revealing a creative life infused with wit, whimsy, and wonder.

This exhibition is organized by the Taft Museum of Art in partnership with the Charley and Edie Harper Art Studio.