Beverly Fishman

Beverly Fishman is a Detroit-based artist and was the Artist-in-Residence and Head of the Painting Department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art for 26 years. She received her MFA degree from Yale University in 1980. Fishman presents research that stems from an evolving investigation over 20 years on the topics of science, imagery and the advertising of pharmaceutical industries. The artist uses hue and texture along with intense color to cause optical confusion in her viewer, and reliefs from her Big Pharma series leave a hovering glow on the gallery wall. Her work has been included in many thematic exhibitions addressing abstraction, technology, medicine, and the body.


Fishman’s exhibitions include those with the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, and the Toledo Museum of Art. Her work may be found in more than two dozen museum and corporate collections, including: the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University; the Miami Art Museum, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art; the Detroit Institute of Arts; Cranbrook Art Museum; and the United Nations Embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, among others.


Born in Philadelphia, PA in 1955
Lives and works in Detroit, MI

Beverly Fishman — undefined

Beverly Fishman

Untitled (high blood pressure, depression, antipsychotic, depression, anxiety), 2021
Urethane on wood panel
48h x 113w in

All the shapes of my wall reliefs with are appropriated from actual pills that I have found images of online, and the cuts in their surfaces correspond to the score marks that allow these drugs to be divided into smaller doses. Their forms connect them to the social problems of today.

— BEVERLY FISHMAN

Selected Work

Beverly Fishman — undefined

Beverly Fishman

Untitled(Pain, opioid addiction, pain, pain, migraine), 2022
Urethane paint on wood
46h x 91w in

Beverly Fishman — undefined

Beverly Fishman

Untitled(Bipolar, pain, sleepiness, two opioid addiction), 2021
Urethane paint on wood
44h x 85.5w in

Beverly Fishman — undefined

Beverly Fishman

Untitled (insomnia, parkinsons, depression, depressions, gerd), 2021
Urethane on wood panel
48h x 118.5w in

Beverly Fishman — undefined

Beverly Fishman

Untitled, 1985-87
Pastel and charcoal on archival paper
45.75h x 88.25w in