Ann Leda Shapiro

Ann Leda Shapiro is an American artist based in the scenic Pacific Northwest of the U.S.A. Shapiro, however, grew up in New York City, next door to the Museum of Natural History and across the park from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

She drew daily inspiration from the Museum of Natural History’s cross-cultural collection of totem poles, masks, shamanic objects, stuffed birds and animals, trees, plants, skeletons, giant whales, and tiny shells. This environment served as a microcosm of the world, planting seeds that would guide her life’s work.

Her other home was the Met, where she fell in love with art and, during these her formative years, drew extensively, thus preparing her for her future artistic explorations of the body and its relationship with the environment. The inspiration that these institutions provided, combined with her involvement in the countercultural movements of the late 1960s, deeply informed her artistic practice as well as her commitment to social change and the broader questions of identity, power, and transformation.

Shapiro later attended the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (earning a BFA in 1969), and the University of California, Davis, California, U.S.A. (earning her MFA in 1971), where she created psychedelic backdrops for bands, protested against the Vietnam War, and embraced feminism. One of the few women serving as a university art instructor at the time, Shapiro lived a nomadic life, residing on a desert ranch in Arizona, in a miner’s cabin in the Colorado mountains, and aboard a ship that sailed around the world for the Institute for Shipboard Education semester-at-sea programme.

In the 1970s, Shapiro emerged as a pioneering voice in the feminist art movement, challenging conventional representations of gender and sexuality. A solo exhibition at the prestigious Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, in 1973 marked a critical moment in her career, even though it also revealed the limitations of institutional acceptance. The exhibited works, depicting gender non-conforming bodies, questioned the division between maleness and femaleness, pointing toward a unity that surfaces throughout her production. Shapiro was shocked, however, when her more sexually explicit works, like Two Sides (1971, watercolour on paper, 50.8 x 35.6 cm), depicting two hermaphroditic mermaids, and Woman Landing on Man in the Moon (1971, watercolour on paper, 50.8 x 36.5 cm), were excluded from the show. This scandalous affair was eventually brought to a satisfactory conclusion some forty years later when the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., acquired the two censored paintings for their permanent collection in 2015.

Throughout the 1980s, Shapiro’s activism deepened as she worked with the Guerrilla Girls, the feminist collective that sought to disrupt the gender imbalances in the art world. This period of intense political engagement added further layers to her art, which is often imbued with a sense of healing and renewal.

Shapiro has spent several years teaching art at North American institutions like San Francisco State College, San Francisco, California; the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona; the University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado; and the University of Texas, Austin, Texas. While teaching at the University of Texas in Austin, Shapiro also volunteered at a Chinese medical clinic for people with AIDS and was introduced to Chinese medicine.

Inspired to research and illustrate East Asian medical history and visual case studies, she later relocated to Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., where she enrolled in acupuncture school, became a board-certified acupuncturist (Northwest Institute of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, NIAOM) and has been in private practice on a small island in Puget Sound since 1991. After having moved around the country, Shapiro, thus, eventually left academia after fourteen years of teaching and settled on Vashon Island, a ferry ride from Seattle, where she, to this day, maintains an acupuncture clinic and an art studio. The healing practice, related to her lifelong contemplation of the body, the environment and how our inner and outer worlds interconnect, constitutes a critical influence on her art.

Shapiro is also the author of a picture book, My Island, published in 2009, and Art Notes of an Acupuncturist, published in 2015 as a comic book in the style of a graphic novel.

In recent years Shapiro has been the recipient of the Farrington Foundation Conservation Award for Books that Matter, Washington State Librarian’s number one choice for Summer Reads (2010), the Twining Humber Award (2017) and the MAC Fellowship McMillen Foundation Pollock-Krasner Grant (2019).

When MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, opened the group exhibition Vital Signs: Artists and the Body in November 2024, it included Shapiro’s Out of the Web (1976, watercolour on paper, 50.8 x 35.6 cm) as a new acquisition in their permanent collection.

Shapiro’s work is represented in the following prestigious public collections: MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, U.S.A.; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.; 4Culture, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.; University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A.; University of Colorado, Boulder Art Museum, Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A. and University of California, Davis, California, U.S.A.

Shapiro has shown her work in the following solo exhibitions: Recent Paintings, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, NY, U.S.A. (1973); Paintings, Candy Store Gallery, Folsom, California, U.S.A. (1974); Paintings, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A. (1978); Watercolors, Institute for Shipboard Education/Fort Collins, Colorado, U.S.A., ’Semester at Sea’, study-abroad programme, on board SS Universe, circumnavigating the world (1979); Transformations, Spark Gallery, Denver, Colorado, U.S.A. (1980); Dark Works, Visual Arts Gallery, SUNY, Purchase, New York, NY, U.S.A. (1982); Paintings, Rancho Linda Vista Gallery, Oracle, Arizona, U.S.A. (1984); Works On Paper, Women & Their Work Gallery, Austin, Texas, U.S.A. (1986); New Works, Arts Warehouse, Austin, Texas, U.S.A. (1988); Bodies, Quan Yin Clinic, San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (1989); Art and Healing, NIAOM Gallery, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (1990); Energy References, Seattle Pacific University Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (1993); Paintings, Blue Heron Art Center, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (1994); Body, Spirit, Energy, Kirkland Arts Center, Kirkland, Washington, U.S.A. (1995); Herons, Blue Heron Art Center, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (1998); Syndromes, Pioneer Square Healing Arts Gallery, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (1999); Watercolors, Za Zen Gallery, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2000); Disharmonies, Pioneer Square Healing Arts Gallery, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2001); Body As Landscape, Banff Art Center, Banff, Canada (2002); Balance/Imbalance, Cancer Lifeline Gallery, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2003); Acupuncture Drawings, Open Studio, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2004); Narrative Paintings, Heron’s Nest Gallery, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2005); Visual Case Studies, Two Walls Gallery, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2006); Vashon Views, Vashon Tea Shop, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2007); My Island, Vashon Bookshop, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2008); My Island, Elliott Bay Books, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2009); My Island, King County Library, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2010); Island Tour, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2011); My Island, My Home, Credit Union, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2012); Healing Scrolls, Vashon Healing Arts, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2013); Natural History Memories, Credit Union, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2014); My Natural History, Aljoya Place, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2015); Diagnosing Disasters, 4Culture Gallery, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2019); New Works, Credit Union, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2020); Inner Cosmologies, Olympic Sculpture Park, SAM, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2020); Bodies of Land, ArtXchange Gallery, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2022) Light Within Darkness, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. (2024); Diagnosing Disturbances, François Ghebaly, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2024) and Interconnected Worlds, Axel Vervoordt, Antwerp, Belgium (2025).

To this could be added the following group exhibitions: Faculty Show, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, U.S.A. (1987); Expressions, Oregon Art Institute, Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. (1989); Homeless, Alternative Museum, New York City, NY, U.S.A. (1990); Heart to Art, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (1991); Plum Tree, 911 Media Arts Center, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (1992); Flyways, Women’s Art Center, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (1993); Body and Soul, De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts, U.S.A. (1994); Agents of Change, Convention Center, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (1995); Blue Heron Art Center, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (1996); Barnworks, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (1997); Implosions and Essence, Sunspace Gallery, Duvall, Washington, U.S.A. (1998); Healing Art, Museum of Fine Art, Missoula, Montana, U.S.A. (1998); Heart of the Matter, Silverwood Gallery, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (1999); Art And Healing, Blue Heron Art Center, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (1999); Likeness of Being, DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2000); Elbows & Tea Leaves, Boulder Museum of Art, Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A. (2000); Helen, La Mama, New York, City NY, U.S.A. (2003); Art of Resistance, Rainier Brewery, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2004); Art of Resistance, Capital Hill Arts Center, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2005); Nests, Silverwood Gallery, Vashon, Washington, U.S.A. (2007); Reunion, Gallery Rancho Linda Vista, Oracle, Arizona, U.S.A. (2008); Open Studio, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2009); Homelands, Autry Museum, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. (2010); Lights of Women, Women Arts Exhibition, Gwangju, South Korea (2012); Expressions, International Women Arts Exhibition, Gwangju, South Korea (2014); Who Did She Think She Was, Toshiro Kaplan Arts, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2014); Cut-Outs, ArtXchange gallery, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2015); Rebel, Rebel, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2015); Magical Worlds, Ida Culver House, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2016); American Painting, REI, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2016); Drawing Practice, Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A. (2017); Out of Sight, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2017); Catch Us, O Space Gallery, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2018); I Say Radical You Say Feminist, Archer Gallery, Clark College, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (2018); Group Therapy, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2018); Girlfriends of the Guerrilla Girls, CoCa, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2019); Girlfriends of the Guerrilla Girls, Gallery One, Ellensburg, Washington, U.S.A. (2020); Animal Instincts, Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. (2021); Candy Store, Manetti Shrem Museum, University of California, Davis, California, U.S.A. (2021); Stories We Tell, Confluence Gallery, Twisp, Washington, U.S.A. (2021); Resilient Trees, Café Vinolio, Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.A. (2022); Reproductive Agents, Madre Museum, Naples, Italy (2023); A Living Legacy, Recent Acquisitions, Frye Museum, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. (2023); Green Snake: Women-Centred Ecologies, Tai Kwun, Hong Kong, China (2023); Vital Signs: Artists and the Body, MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY, U.S.A. (2024) and Mother Me Meanly, Chez Max et Dorothea, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. (2025).

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