Betty Woodman


Elizabeth "Betty" Woodman was an American ceramic artist.

Early life and education

Betty Woodman was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, to Minnie and Henry Abrahams. Her parents were progressive socialists and her mother promoted a feminist viewpoint. Betty started pottery classes at age 16 and immediately took to clay. She attended the School for American Craftsmen at Alfred University in New York from 1948 until 1950.

Career

Woodman began her career in the 1950s as a production potter. Her career moved from functional pottery to fresh and exuberant art culminating in a retrospective show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2006, the first such retrospective for a living, female ceramicist, and a solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 2016 with the title Theatre of the Domestic. She was a professor of art at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1978-1998. She received an honorary doctorate from CU in 2007. Woodman convinced city of Boulder officials in the 1950s to fund the Pottery Lab, making it one of the first recreational pottery programs in the U.S. Her vision was to have students make pottery for fun but also develop their craft into a career. The Pottery Lab's creation resulted in around 100 kilns being constructed in the Boulder area.

Family

Betty Woodman met George Woodman in a pottery class she was teaching in Boston in 1950. They married in 1953. George Woodman was a painter and photographer. He headed the University of Colorado Boulder art department. He died in March 2017. Betty and George Woodman had two children. Their daughter, Francesa Woodman, was an acclaimed photographer who took her life in 1981 at age 22. Their son, Charles Woodman, is an artist.

Awards and honors

Woodman's awards and honors include:
Woodman exhibited at museums and galleries in the US and internationally, including:
Woodman's work is included in public collections, including:
In the 1991 documentary Thinking Out Loud, Woodman is interviewed by curator and painter John Perreault. In 2006 the monograph, Betty Woodman, was produced in conjunction with her retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it includes curatorial essays by Janet Koplos, Barry Schwabsky, and Arthur Danto.