docfiles.Linda_Lee_Alter Maven / Gradle / Ivy

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Linda Lee Alter is an American visual artist who is primarily known as an art collector and philanthropist. In 2010 Alter donated nearly five hundred artworks by female artists to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[1][2]Alter graduated from Olney High School in 1957. She studied at the Philadelphia College of Art.[3] Alter began collecting art by women artists in the 1980s when she noticed that much of the art shown by museums were predominantly created by men. In 1993, she started the Leeway Foundation to support women artists, particularly artists in the Philadelphia area.[4] Her collection was intended to "correct the woeful under-representation of female artists in museums and galleries."[5]In 2010 Alter donated her collection of 500 art works by female artists to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.[4] In 2012, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts exhibited Alter's collection in an exhibition entitled The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World.[6] Artists in this exhibition included Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, Joan Brown, Viola Frey, Ana Mendieta, Christina Ramberg, Beatrice Wood, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, Gertrude Abercrombie, Edna Andrade, and Sue Coe, amongst many others.[6]In 2008, Linda Lee Alter won a Robin Hood Was Right Award.[7] In 2012, she won a Bebe Benoliel Founder’s Award for an Outstanding Arts Contributor.[8]