In 1984, Marcia Tucker, Director of The New Museum of Contemporary Art, was appointed U.S. Commissioner of the Venice Biennale, one of the most prestigious international art festivals of its kind. The resultant exhibition, Paradise Lost / Paradise Regained: American Visions of the New Decade, was organized by Ms. Tucker and New Museum Curators Lynn Gumpert and Ned Rifkin.  It was displayed at the American Pavilion in Venice, Italy.¹  Paradise Lost / Paradise Regained consisted of forty-eight paintings by twenty-four American artists, and was formulated to reflect the diversity and energy of contemporary American painting. It was therefore not intended to be a comprehensive survey of then-current American art in all its aspects, but rather focused on substantive issues that the exhibit’s curators felt many artists were addressing in their work.²

Said the curators of the exhibition’s title: “The notion of Earthly Paradise, of the Golden Age, of a Utopian existence, is important to an understanding of much contemporary painting in America today because it symbolizes a national longing for peace and security at a time when artists are seeking to reinvest the world with meaning.”³