IT’S THE KIND OF soupy late-summer day in New York City that finds the vast majority of acclaimed contemporary artists happily decamped to their cool, breezy studios on Long Island or in Connecticut. But 79-year-old Pat Steir, a floral scarf draped around her, is in her Chelsea studio, surrounded by 28 towering panels. Propped against the walls, each nine-foot-tall canvas is a different color, from bumblebee yellow to deep purple. Steir is spending the final weeks of summer finishing the suite before it heads to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., where it will be installed in order of the spectrum, from red to violet, in a solo exhibition, opening October 24.
When the museum approached her about a show, Steir, who calls herself a conceptual painter,…
