Nancy Graves

Nancy Graves was an American artist who worked across various media, including sculpture, painting, printing, and filmmaking. Her work shows the formative influence of the natural sciences, history, art, and cultural studies that she encountered as a child. After majoring in English Literature at Vassar, Graves studied painting at Yale with Jack Tworkov, Alex Katz, and Al Held, among other artists and traveled extensively, spending time in Paris and Florence.

In 1969, Graves became the first woman to receive a solo retrospective at the Whitney Museum, where she displayed her famous Camels, sculptures made of burlap, wax, fiberglass, and animal skin. She is also known for her aerial landscapes based on maps of the moon.