Whitney Chadwick: key obituary facts
Is Whitney Chadwick dead? Yes. Whitney Chadwick died on August 6, 2026, at age 83.
Cause of death: Whitney Chadwick's cause of death has not been publicly confirmed.
What was Whitney Chadwick known for?
She was an American art historian and educator.
More about Whitney Chadwick
Born: 28 July 1943.
Place of death: Berkeley.
Gender: female.
Occupation: historian, art historian, author.
Education: Pennsylvania State University, Middlebury College.
Employer: San Francisco State University.
Notable work: Women, Art, and Society, Women, Art, and Society (World of Art, 1997), Women, Art, and Society (World of Art, 2020).
Awards: Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award.
Spouse: Robert Bechtle.
Whitney Chadwick, the American art historian and educator whose work examined contemporary art, modernism, Surrealism and questions of gender and sexuality, died on August 6, 2026, aged 83.
She taught in the School of Art at San Francisco State University from 1978 and became professor emerita in 2009. Chadwick’s book Women, Art and Society, first published in 1990 and revised in 1997, became a standard reference on women in art and reached a fifth edition.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Middlebury College in 1965 and later received her doctorate from Pennsylvania State University. Her career also included teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, and she received the Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award.