Jean Krasno: The Painted Garden

On display in The Meetinghouse Gallery

The Painted Garden

Recent Work by Jean Krasno

December 7, 2025 – January 11, 2026

An opening reception will be held Sunday, December 7, 2025 from 2-4 pm.

The Gallery is open Tuesdays – Sundays 8:00 am – 4:00 pm for viewing. (Closed Mondays).

Artist’s Biography

Jean E. Cullander Krasno was born in Evanston, Illinois on July 5, 1943, and graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1961. She has a BFA from the University of Illinois with a major in painting (1965) where she graduated summa cum laude; an MFA from Stanford University in Art with an emphasis on painting and printmaking (1967); and a PhD in international politics from the City University of New York Graduate Center (1994). She made the switch into international relations because of her concern over the spread of nuclear weapons and the danger they presented to her own children and people around the world. Her dissertation is on Brazil’s secret nuclear weapons program that was ended in 1991. She is a full-time, tenured member of the faculty as a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the City College of New York (CCNY). She is also a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University.

Exhibition Highlights: Recent: 2025: Solo show of Jazz Collages, Westport Library; One Person show, Canal Street Gallery, Bellows Falls, Vermont, an eclectic exhibition of oil paintings on canvas, Jazz Collages, bronze sculptures and a large wood installation; 2024: Curated group show, Atlantic Gallery, New York City; Silvermine Gallery juried show: Every Picture Tells a Story; Ridgefield Guild of Artists Sculpture Show, exhibited three bronze pieces, Ridgefield Guild of Artists Juried Members Show, prize winner for “Spirits of the House: The Guardian”; 2023: Westport Collective Show, Music to My Eyes, Collage, “Billie Holiday: Some Other Spring”; 2022 Ridgefield Guild of Artist 45th Annual Juried exhibition, “Chattanooga Choo Choo; 2021 Ridgefield Guild of Artists Juried Members show: bronze and wood, “Balkan Refugee”; 2019: Gallery Avenue B, Curated Group Exhibition, 170 Avenue B, New York City; Ridgefield Guild of Artists Juried Exhibition 2019, First Prize for collage, “Isn’t This a Lovely Day”; CUNY Biennial Exhibition, Aaron Davis Hall, City College of New York, 2019; “Women Make Art” City College of New York, 2019; One person show “Art Meets Jazz” a show of Lithograph Collages that depict Jazz lyrics, H&M Gallery, Harlem, New York, 2018; Ridgefield Artist Guild Juried Show 2017 work called “Billie Holiday” in the Jazz series; One person show at Wanderlust, Vermont, 2015 and 2016; Earlier: “Stanford Artists in New York” group show 1987; Art of the Northeast Juried show 1987; “Secrets, Stirrings of the Subconscious” group show with Alice Neel, Silvermine Gallery, New Canaan, CT 1983; One Woman Show, van Straaten Gallery, Chicago 1972, Fourth Annual Printmaking Exhibition, Lytton Center, Los Angeles, CA 1967.

Collections: Art Institute of Chicago Permanent Collection, Drawing and Prints; Kemper Insurance Company Collection; San Francisco Art Commission Collection; Mills College Collection; Stanford University Collection; University of Texas Collection (Austin); Miami Dade Junior College Collection; Charles Clark Collection; Sandy Dennis Collection.

Publications: She has published academic books with Greenwood Praeger and Lynne Rienner Publishers. Her most recent book, The United Nations: Policy and Practice, was published by Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2023; Banning the Bomb: the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, was published in 2021, and in 2012, she released a five volume set of the Collected Papers of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, also with Lynne Rienner Publishers. She worked for over six years with Kofi Annan on organizing and selecting his papers. In 2022, she published online UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s papers through JSTOR. She has a chapter “Namibia, A UN Success” in Shapiro and Lampert, The U.N. Charter, Yale University Press, 2014. In 2015, she published a book, Personality, Political Leadership, and Decision Making: A Global Perspective, with Sean LaPides, Praeger Publishers. She also has written a mystery novel called, The Train to Skeleton Coast: A Tale of Murder and the Struggle for Freedom, with McNally Jackson, now available on Amazon. The cover of the novel is her artwork. It won a prize for best novel in the area of historical Fiction in 2021. Her most recent novel was published by Austin Macauley on December 6, 2024, entitled “Secrets and the Disappeared: A Tale of Brazil.”