Sally Michel exhibition removes her from famous husband’s shadow

Sally Michel, Brilliant Legacy will bring a fresh and innovative look at the work of Sally Michel (1902-2003), a talented and previously under-recognized female painter connected to the New York-centered Abstract Expressionist movement. The exhibition, which includes over 40 paintings created between the 1930s and the 1990s, showcases her distinctive use of color, abstraction, and form. The project at the Morris Museum (Morristown, NJ) will be on view from January 29 through May 4, 2025.

“Her paintings capture intimate moments of domestic life, captivating landscapes, and even examples of her 1950s illustration work for The New York Times,” Thomas J. Loughman, Morris Museum President & CEO, said. “We are thrilled to partner with our colleagues from the Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando, FL, and bring their groundbreaking project to eager audiences here in the New York metropolitan area.”

Emerging from New York’s art scene of the Great Depression was the distinctive style developed by a remarkable couple: Sally Michel and her husband Milton Avery (1885-1965). Variously called Realist-Abstraction or Color Field Realism, their idiosyncratic look combined a fidelity to the observed world with geometric simplicity as they painted quotidian vignettes of people and nature in unexpected swaths of vivid color.

Michel worked through the 1940s as a commercial artist to support their family and, even after Avery’s death in 1965, she saw her role as the greatest champion of her husband’s work. All the while—from the moment of their first meeting in Gloucester, MA during the summer of 1924 and through their four decades together through Avery’s death in 1965—they painted together and thought critically about the art of their time amid an incredible circle of painter friends such as Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, and Barnet Newman.

Their shared approach to art underpinned Michel’s work through a very active period that stretched into the 1990s.

Organized by the Mennello Museum of American Art (Orlando, FL; and originally presented as Sally Michel, Abstracting Tonalism), this exhibition and catalog form the first major monographic project on Sally Michel’s work prepared in the new millennium. Mennello curator Katherine Page selected over fifty works from the late 1930s to the early 1990s to propel a comprehensive exploration of her artistic production, career arc, and critical legacy. A catalog essay by Eleanor Heartney, “Sally Michel and the Artist/Wife Problem,” questioned how seeing the artist’s work has always been challenged due to Avery’s outsized reputation and the realities of the art world’s tendency to celebrate male accomplishment.

Comprehensive in scope—and following the couple’s working sojourns away from New York to the Gaspe Peninsula, western Connecticut, the Gulf of Maine, and Woodstock, as well as a few of her commercial illustrations—this exhibition reintroduces New Jersey to her artistic accomplishment and her story.

This exhibition was organized by the Mennello Museum of American Art. Sally Michel: Abstracting Tonalism was curated by Katherine Page, Curator, Art and Education, Mennello Museum of American Art. Generous funding for this exhibition and the publication is provided by The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation. Additional funding for the Morris Museum presentation courtesy of The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation and other donors. 

About the Morris Museum

The Morris Museum—founded in 1913 and located on 8.5 acres in Morris Township, New Jersey since the mid-1960s—draws visitors from across the region to its dynamic and acclaimed art exhibitions program and performing arts events. Its 45,000+ object collection of art and material culture from around the world joins the art of our time in displays throughout the Museum’s purpose-built spaces and within the historic Twin Oaks mansion, designed by McKim, Mead & White.