The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), in New York City, has acquired Ann Leda Shapiro’s 1976 painting “Out of the Web.”

The acquisition was announced by Los Angeles and New York art dealer François Ghebaly.

In an artistic practice of nearly six decades, Leda Shapiro, who was born in 1946 in New York City, entwines themes of life, death, gender, and the body with sensitive meditations on the natural world.

Leda Shapiro is a long-time islander who maintains an acupuncture clinic as well as an art studio — unifying her practices of healing and art making.

As an early member of the Guerrilla Girls, in the 1980s, she used humor and data to critique the art world’s gender imbalances through political action and her art.

“Out of the Web,” which depicts a cosmic feminine figure, ringed in light and inside a spiral reminiscent of DNA, is an early example of the artist’s melding of scientific, psychological and spiritual observations.

“I was a few years out of graduate school at the time of “Out of the Web,” and had the realization that in my entire art school education I never had one woman teacher,” Leda Shapiro said. “I was on the verge of embracing and embodying feminism, and so it’s a painting about emergence and emancipation.”

A solo exhibition by Leda Shapiro will open at François Ghebaly New York this fall. Additionally, “Out of the Web” will be on view at MoMA in the exhibition “Vital Signs: Artists and the Body,” from November 2024 through February 2025.