Whitney Chadwick

Whitney Chadwick (July 28, 1943 – August 6, 2026) was an American art historian and educator, who published on contemporary art, modernism, Surrealism, and gender and sexuality. Her book Women, Art and Society was first published by Thames and Hudson in 1990 and revised in 1997; it is in its fifth edition. Chadwick became Professor Emerita at San Francisco State University from the School of Art in 2009.

Life and career Whitney Chadwick was born on July 28, 1943. Her undergraduate degree was a B.A. degree in Fine Arts from Middlebury College in 1965. She received her doctorate from Pennsylvania State University.

She taught at San Francisco State University in the school of art starting in 1978, and became a professor emerita in 2009. Additionally she taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley.

Chadwick died of Alzheimer's disease on August 6, 2026, at the age of 83.

Publications In addition to Women, Art and Society (1990), Chadwick published Leonora Carrington: la realidad de la imaginacion; Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement; Myth in Surrealist Painting; Amazons in the Drawing Room: The Art of Romaine Brooks; and contributed to the book authored by Liz Rideal, Mirror Images: Women Surrealism, and Self-Representation. Chadwick edited with Isabelle de Courtivron, Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership; and with Tirza True Latimer edited The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris between the Wars. Her only novel, 1998's Framed, was a work of historical crime fiction. In 1999 she was given the Award of Distinction by the National Council of Arts Administrators.