Edwin Dickinson - Later Years

Later Years

Dickinson remained active as a teacher into the 1960s, by which time his painting output had sharply diminished following the removal of a tubercular lung in 1959 and the increased demands imposed by his growing reputation. These included participation in numerous one-person and group shows, the most important of which were a large retrospective of his work in Boston in 1959, another in New York in 1961 that included 157 works and was reviewed by thirteen critics, followed by an exhibition of his work organized by the Museum of Modern Art that traveled to twelve venues in eleven states, another retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1965, covered by nine critics, and inclusion in the American exhibition at the 34th Venice Biennale, where he was the featured painter. Various honors, awards, interviews, and lecture requests followed. There is no record of his having painted after 1963. By 1970 he was displaying symptoms indicative of Alzheimer's Disease and died in Provincetown on December 1, 1978.