Karen Wilkin is an independent curator and critic.  She was previously the curator of "American Vanguards," on view at the Neuberger Museum, SUNY Purchase and a faculty member at the New York Studio School. She is an art historian, curator, and critic, educated at the High School of Music and Art, Barnard College, and Columbia University. After living and working in Italy and Canada for some years, Ms. Wilkin returned to her native Manhattan in 1985. She lives near the Empire State Building with her architect husband and two Maine Coon cats. A specialist in 20th century modernism, Ms. Wilkin has organized numerous exhibitions internationally and written monographs on David Smith, Helen Frankenthaler, Anthony Caro, Kenneth Noland, Stuart Davis, Giorgio Morandi, and George Braque, and is the co-author, with Clifford Ross, of The World of Edward Gorey. She contributes regularly to The New Criterion, Partisan Review, and Hudson Review. Her recent projects include a study of Clement Greenberg's personal collection for the Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, and "David Smith: Two into Three Dimensions", the first exhibition to examine Smith's reliefs as a coherent body of work, in relation to his drawings, paintings, and free-standing sculptures, which will be seen at the New York Academy Museum at the end of 2001.