Nancy Graves (1939-1995) was a New York sculptor, painter, and filmmaker who used natural history as a reference for dealing with the relationships between time, space, and form. Her work shows the formative influence of the natural sciences, history, art, and cultural studies that she encountered as a child. After majoring in English Literature at Vassar, Graves studied painting at Yale with Jack Tworkov, Alex Katz, and Al Held, among other artists and traveled extensively, spending time in Paris and Florence.