After Gatch's death in 1968, Driggs returned to New York City. Over the next two decades, she experimented with mixed media constructions and figurative paintings in pastels and oils. The rise of feminist art history brought her renewed attention, and she was the subject of a one-woman show at the Martin Diamond Gallery in 1980 and a retrospective at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton in 1990. Curated by Thomas Folk, the retrospective exhibition, titled "Elsie Driggs, A Woman of Genius," traveled to the Phillips Collection in Washington DC. And Driggs created two final oil paintings in her Precissionist style, "The Javits Center" in 1986 (private collection) and "Hoboken" of the same year (private collection). She was included in many historical surveys of Precisionism. She continued to follow the contemporary art scene, admiring in particular the work of Helen Frankenthaler and Francis Bacon. She also sided with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe during his controversy at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC. At the time of her death in 1992 at the age of ninety-four, Driggs was considered the most underrated as well as the most long-lived of the Precisionist painters. Thomas Folk, organized a memorial service and symposium which was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art on August 25, 2002. "Pittsburgh" was proudly displayed on the rear wall of the auditorium.