The mid-20th century witnessed a seismic shift in the landscape of American art, with the emergence of Abstract Expressionism marking a departure from European traditions and establishing New York as a new global art center. At the heart of this transformative period were two towering figures: Clement Greenberg, a highly influential art critic whose formalist aesthetic shaped the discourse around modern art, and Jackson Pollock, an artistic innovator who revolutionized painting with his energetic "drip" technique

MK:  When you were a child did you go to museums?  Pay attention to the art in your home?

LP:   When I was very young I used to pour over my parents’ two art books. One was Fifty Centuries of Art from the Metropolitan Museum, and the other was a survey of American art. What I felt when looking through those books was that I wanted to live inside a painting. We lived just outside of New York City, and my mother took me to my first museum exhibition when I was nine or so. It was a retrospective of Turner at the Modern. I remember feeling when I walked through the rooms that I wanted to know everything about what I was seeing, but I wanted to get that information directly from the paintings. I was not one to read labels.