Curated by Karen Wilkin, Joseph Marioni: Artist’s Choice presents a focused look at the works on paper made by the celebrated painter known for his explorations of color and perception.

Join us for a special panel discussion featuring curator Karen Wilkin, Harry Cooper, art historian Timothy Rub, and Bonnie Leal, as they discuss Marioni’s artistic legacy and the significance of the works on display.

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Harry Cooper is the Bunny Mellon Curator of Modern Art at the National Gallery of Art. He studied American literature at Harvard College and studio art at the Corcoran School, then earned an M.A. in art history from Johns Hopkins and a Ph.D. from Harvard with a dissertation on Piet Mondrian. After working at the Harvard Art Museums for a decade, he joined the National Gallery in 2008 as head of its modern and contemporary art department. He has organized or co-organized exhibitions on the work of Mondrian, Medardo Rosso, Frank Stella, Stuart Davis, Oliver Lee Jackson, Philip Guston, and others. On the academic side, he has taught at Harvard, Columbia, NYU, and Johns Hopkins, and he edited The Cubism Seminars for the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. He is currently working on a Helen Frankenthaler retrospective.

Bonnie Leal first met Joseph Marioni in 1963, when Marioni was 20 years old. Both were students at the time: Leal at the University of Cincinnati and Marioni at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Afterward, Leal, who was born in New York, returned home, while Marioni moved to the San Francisco Art Institute to pursue a Master’s degree. He left the program shortly before completing it. Between 1964 and 1972, Leal and Marioni corresponded sporadically, until Marioni moved to New York in 1972, where their friendship deepened.

In 1976, when one of Marioni’s housemates moved out, he invited Leal to take the vacant third-floor apartment. She agreed, and the two lived as neighbors until Marioni’s death, 48 years later. 

Reflecting on their long relationship, Leal says:

“As far as I know, I am the only person who had this long of a continuous connection with him. I also seem to be the only one he consistently allowed to watch him work. This gave me an intimate understanding of the roots of his art, including his love of music and his years in art school, and his methods and materials.”

Director Emeritus of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Timothy Rub served as the Director of that institution from 2009 to 2022. Prior to this appointment, he served for three years as Director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, for for six years as the Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum, and for nine years as Director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.  

He graduated from Middlebury College in 1974 with a B.A. and highest honors in Art History and then enrolled in the doctoral program at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts where he earned an M.A. and a Certificate in Curatorial Studies.  Later, he received an M.B.A. from the Yale University School of Management and participated in the Harvard University program for Art Museum Directors.  Mr. Rub, who is a specialist in architectural history and modern and contemporary art, began his curatorial career as a Ford Foundation Fellow at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York.

Karen Wilkin is a New York-based curator and critic. Educated at Barnard College and Columbia University, she is the author of monographs on Stuart Davis, David Smith, Anthony Caro, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Giorgio Morandi, Georges Braque, and Hans Hofmann, among others, and has organized exhibitions of their work internationally. She was a juror for the American Pavilion of the 2009 Venice Biennale and a contributing editor of the Stuart Davis and Hans Hofmann Paintings Catalogues Raisonné. A regular contributor to The New Criterion,  Hudson Review, Hopkins Review, and the Wall Street Journal, she is a member of the Arshile Gorky Catalogue Raisonné review committee. Ms. Wilkin teaches in the New York Studio School’s MFA program. Recent projects include a Larry Poons retrospective for the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, scheduled for March 2027.