Kaufman began her career in the early 1970s as a minimalist painter of large canvases.[1][2] She had a solo show at the Whitney museum in 1971[2] and took part in the 1973 Whitney Biennial, drawing praise from critic Hilton Kramer.[3] She went on to work with decorative motifs in her work as well as decorative materials such as embroidery and other forms of sewing, feathers, and beads.[1] As part of this process, she shifted to making screens, wall hangings, and quilts. Her pattern vocabulary drew inspiration from American quilting traditions as well as from Persian and Japanese textiles and North African mosaics.[1][4]
Unlike some artists in what became known as the Pattern and Decoration movement, Kaufman's pioneering work in this genre often had a feminist edginess.[1] In 2010 she created an embroidery that galleries did not choose to exhibit - its central message was "Abstinence makes the church grow fondlers".[1] She was a member of the Second Wave feminist art group Guerrilla Girls and was one of the few members of that group to use her own name rather than remain anonymous.[1][2]
In 1978, Kaufman curated the first Pattern and Decoration group exhibition at Alessandra Gallery in New York.[1] Although the work fell out of prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, the Hudson River Museum held a retrospective in 2008, and another retrospective was mounted by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2019.[1][4]
Kaufman was awarded both the prestigious Guggenheim fellowship (1974) and grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1989).
Among Kaufman's public commissions is the sculpture Crystal Hanging in the Tip O’Neill Federal Building in Boston.
Kaufman's work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art,[5] the Whitney Museum,[6] and the Smithsonian Institution,[7] among others.
Her image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.[8]
