New York-based gallerist, curator, and writer Amy Lipton (Art BFA 79) passed away on Dec. 6, 2020. She was 64.

In 1986, Lipton opened Loughelton, her first commercial gallery, in SoHo with artist Barbara Broughel. Upon becoming the sole proprietor in 1990, it was renamed the Amy Lipton Gallery, which later evolved into Lipton/Owens Gallery. For over a decade, the gallery ran programming that introduced visitors to artists such as Polly Apfelbaum, Mel Chin, Karen Finley, Amy Sillman, and others. 

Upon the gallery’s closing, Lipton co-founded ecoartspace, a nonprofit that supports artists whose work addresses environmental issues, with curator Patricia Watts in 1996. Through ecoartspace, according to Artforum, Lipton and Watts organized “activist-artist interventions into sites of ecological trauma,” as well as public programming and exhibitions.

Around this time, Lipton served as assistant director at Chelsea’s Tony Shafrazi Gallery. She subsequently served as a curator at the Abington Art Center and Sculpture Park in Jenkintown, Pa. from 2004-08, and later assumed the role of director of the Fields Sculpture Park at the Omni International Arts Center in Ghent, NY, for two years. 

In 2014, Lipton resumed her independent curatorial practice under the moniker LiptonArts. Exhibitions she curated include Ecovention at the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, with Sue Spaid (2002); Imagining the River at the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, with Watts (2003); and Body Line Motion at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, NY (2010).

“Through her curatorial practice, she helped make visible to the larger public the unique artistic approaches in the fields of environmental art, ecological art, art for nature, enabling them to flourish, as such innovative practices gained traction across the globe,” reads ecoartspace’s tribute to Lipton. “The art and ecology community will be forever grateful for her pioneering contributions.”