Lee Hall

Lee Hall (December 15, 1934 – April 17, 2017) was an American painter, writer, educator, and a university president. She was an abstract landscape painter. She served as the 13th president of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). In 1993, Hall wrote a controversial book on the artists Willem de Kooning and Elaine de Kooning. Early life and education Lee Hall was born on December 15, 1934, in Lexington, North Carolina. Her parents divorced when she was young and her early childhood was spent in Florida. She attended the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina, in Greensboro (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) and received a BFA degree in 1955. She had studied under painter John Opper. She continued her studies at New York University and received a MA degree in art education in 1959, followed by a PhD in creative arts in 1965. She did postdoctoral work at Warburg Institute. Art career Hall was an abstract landscape painter. Early in her career she formed relationships with painters Elaine and Willem de Kooning, and art dealer Betty Parsons. She had exhibited her paintings alongside Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell. For many years she had maintained her painting studio on a farm in Lyme, Connecticut.