Kathy Muehlemann

Kathy Muehlemann

Kathy Muehlemann, painter and teacher, died peacefully in her studio on Thursday, July 9, 2026 with her husband by her side.

She was 76 and lived in Lynchburg, Virginia. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer.

Kathy spent 20 formative years, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, living and painting in New York City, becoming part of a diverse community of artists. In 1994 Kathy was invited to have a one-person exhibition at the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (now Randolph College) in Lynchburg. That same year she was invited to apply for a faculty position in studio art at the College and was hired as an assistant professor of art. In January 1995, Astray in a Dark Wood: Works by Kathy Muehlemann opened at the Maier.

Over the course of her 27-year tenure at the College, Kathy rose to full Professor of Art. She also curated or co-curated numerous exhibitions for the Maier including, on six occasions, its Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art, an uninterrupted series initiated in 1911. Unerring in the high quality of her vision, the exhibitions Kathy organized, artworks she advised the Museum to purchase, and artists she brought to campus stand among the most seminal contributions to the Maier and to the College.

Kathy’s gentle spirit as well as the quietude and small scale of her paintings belie the enormous impact her art and teaching had on her students, both in her commitment to the practice of art and in the seriousness of her studio pedagogy. Equally significant is the respect and high regard Kathy earned from her faculty peers.

In 2014, the College presented Kathy with the Kathryn Graves Davidson Scholarship Award to honor her work in bringing distinction to the College by curating the 103rd Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art, A Menagerie of Metaphors. Kathy retired as Professor Emeritus in 2021.

In January 2026, an exhibition of selected works representing 40 years of Kathy’s paintings and drawings was held at the Maier. The Moon and Reverie: Works by Kathy Muehlemann was installed in the same gallery in which her one-person exhibition had been displayed 31 years earlier, a life in art come full circle. The accompanying exhibition catalogue essay by Randolph College Professor of English Laura-Gray Street closes with:

“Each moon, each drawn or painted gesture is a portal, a punch hole, a placeholder for what is missing, for something or someone missed. Until we realize that what appears to be void, blank, a spare button in space, is in fact also the piercingly contemplative eye of a dragon.”

In 1979, Kathy graduated from the State University of New York. Subsequently, her work was represented and shown in one-person exhibitions, including Pamela Auchincloss Gallery, Virginia Zabriske Gallery, Oscarsson Siegeletuch Gallery, and Oscarsson Hood Gallery, all in New York City.

Kathy had one-person exhibitions at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri; Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaii; the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art in Iowa; the Lannan Museum in Lakeworth, Florida; the Hyde Collection in Glen Falls, New York, and the Maier Museum of Art. Internationally, her work was exhibited in Australia, China, Finland, and Italy.

Reviews of Kathy’s paintings and works on paper appeared in The New York Times, ArtForum, Art in America, Art News, and Arts Magazine among other publications.

Kathy’s work is in museum collections across the United States including the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery), New York; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; the Grey Art Museum, New York University, New York City; the Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaii; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida; and in private collections in the United States and abroad.

Awards and honors Kathy received include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1987), a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome (1987—1988), and a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship Grant (1994). In 2017, Kathy was honored with a Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Kathy was born on February 9, 1950, in Austin, Texas, daughter of the late William Skinner and Kathryn King Skinner. She is survived by her husband of 57 years, Jim Muehlemann; sister Anne Wythington and nephew Jason Johnson of Eugene, Oregon; sister-in-law and brother-in-law Lynn and Tim McCarthy, nieces Kerry, Kathy, Sally, and Kacey, all of St Louis, Missouri; and niece Kelly of Nashville, Illinois.

A memorial service will be held at a later date.

In lieu of flowers, please consider making memorial contributions to the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College.

Tharp Funeral Home & Crematory, Lynchburg is assisting the family.