Rest in Peace, Ann Wilson (1931–2023)

Visual artist Ann Wilson passed away earlier this month, according to Tuesday’s obituary in the New York Times. She was 91.

Wilson was the last surviving member of the circa-1950s Coenties Slip Group, the venerable collective of artists and intellectuals who lived and worked within the two blocks of Pearl Street and South Street. Along with Wilson, other prominent figures in the cadre included Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin and Robert Indiana.

Per Art in America: 

The artists who gathered at the Slip were drawn by its low rents, spacious lofts and river view, as well as––not least––because it was an area entirely dissociated from the locales of Abstract Expressionism, which reigned, with somewhat oppressive exclusivity, further uptown.

A fixture in New York City’s galleries for more than five decades, Wilson is best known for her critically acclaimed quilt paintings, such as 1955’s “Moby Dick.” Selections of her work are featured in collections at the Whitney Museum as well as the Museum of Arts and Design and serve as a reminder of the creative hub that once flourished along a tiny strip just south of Hanover Square.  

photo: William Niederkorn