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April Kingsley (February 16, 1941 – June 13, 2023) was an American art critic and curator known for her support of abstract expressionism in New York City, her work on the catalogue raisonné of Franz Kline, and her book about the rise of abstract expressionism, The Turning Point. In addition to her work as an art critic, art historian, and author, Kingsley was an educator and a curator especially of figurative- and abstract-expressionist work.
Kingsley graduated from Flushing High School in 1958. Beginning in 1960, she attended Queens College School of Nursing, after which she worked as a nurse in Manhattan for a short time. Later, she attended New York University, where she studied with H. W. Janson, and earned her Master of Fine Arts from the Institute of Fine Arts in 1966. Kingsley eventually earned a PhD in art history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Kingsley contributed to the catalogs of more than 75 artists and wrote major on several artists, including Jean Miotte and Alice Dalton Bown. In 1989, her essay "Abstract Expressionism in Context" was included in the book Three Hundred Years of American Paintings from the Montclair Art Museum Collection. In 1992, she published her first book, titled The Turning Point. In 2013, she published Emotional Impact, which discussed her involvement with the traveling exhibitions hosted by the Western Association of Art Museums during the 1970s.
In addition to her early support for the abstract- and figurative-expressionism movements, Kingsley launched a major traveling exhibition called “ Afro-American Abstraction” which turned the spotlight on a number of African-American artists including Jack Whitten, Melvin Edwards, and Edward Clark, among others. Her writing on African-American art was cited by fellow critics and featured in Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, the book accompanying at the Tate Modern. Her presence in and influence on the art worlds in New York City and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, impacted the careers and legacies of many notable artists, such as Mary Shaffer, Sandy Skoglund, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Michael Loew, Arturo Alonzo Sandoval, and Boaz Vaadia.
The artist Pat Lasch referred to Kingsley as "a visionary" who "promoted artists of color and women when no one would touch them," and James Little cited her impact as having "helped change the course and conversation forever."
Kingsley's papers from the 1960s until 2017 are stored at the Archives of American Art research centre within the Smithsonian Institution.
Kingsley's first marriage was to Walter McMenamin in 1961, though the couple later divorced. She was briefly married to composer Max Schubel. In 1973, she married painter and author Budd Hopkins. The marriage produced Kingsley's only child, the artist Grace Hopkins. Kingsley and Hopkins divorced in 1991. She later married Donald Spyke, who died in 2020.
Kingsley died from Alzheimer's disease in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on June 13, 2023, at the age of 82.
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