Hedda Sterne was included in many major exhibitions of the New York School in the 1940s and 1950s, including Stable Gallery's "Third Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture". During the 1950s, Sterne's notable contribution to Abstract Expressionism came in the form of her use of commercial spray paint to depict motion and light in her abstract renderings of roads, highways, and cityscapes. 1950, Sterne was a key participant in the "Artists' Sessions at Studio 35," a discussion about the modern art scene in New York and the aims of the artists. In addition to Sterne, speakers included Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, Adolph Gottlieb, David Hare, Louise Bourgeois, and David Smith, among others. Following the two-day session, on May 20, 1950, Sterne was among 18 painters and ten sculptors who signed an open letter to the president of The Metropolitan Museum of Art to protest aesthetically conservative group-exhibition juries.