PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Abstract Expressionism and its Discontents, a new installation at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) on view through August 28, 2011, revisits the post-World War II art movement to include artists historically not associated with Abstract Expressionism. When in 1946 New Yorker critic Robert Coates identified an expressive, gestural and subjective approach towards abstract painting in American art, he inadvertently gave the name to a style popularly known as “Abstract Expressionism.” Although it has come to describe spontaneously-composed abstract painting, the label encompassed an extraordinarily diverse array of approaches, ranging from Jackson Pollock’s dizzying high-energy poured paintings to Mark Rothko’s hovering rectangles of meditative color. While critics celebrated Abstract Expressionism’s stylistic diversity, its written history remained that of a “boys’ club”