CAA News Today

Participants in the 100 Years | 100 Women initiative, left to right: Paola Prestini (National Sawdust), Lisa Coleman (NYU), Ciaran Escoffery (Juilliard), Ellyn Toscano (NYU), Warrington Hudlin (Museum of the Moving Image), Deborah Willis (NYU), Kemi Ilesanmi (Laundromat Project), Avery Willis Hoffman (Park Avenue Armory), Jonathan McCrory (National Black Theatre), Marie Cisco (The Apollo), Cheri Stokes (Urban Bush Women), Mia Yoo (La MaMa), Amy Rox Surratt (La MaMa), Rebecca Robertson (Park Avenue Armory). Not pictured: Sade Lythcott (National Black Theatre) and Suhaly Bautista-Carolina (The Metropolitan Museum of Art).

August picks by the Committee on Women in the Arts include virtual exhibitions and programs, gallery exhibitions, a new podcast series, and a call for papers. This month, we recognize the US suffrage centennial, while acknowledging  the reality of continued voter suppression tactics. The Feminist Art Coalition documents an extensive list of exhibitions worldwide dedicated to women in conjunction with this anniversary. 

• Strength in Suffrage: Tracing one hundred years and one hundred stories of women’s history, a live broadcast, August 26th at 7pm (CDT), featuring artists Ginny Sykes on her photography project and Carron Little performing poetry from her Spare Rib Revisited public engagement project. A Q&A follows with both artists. Co-sponsored by the Chicago Women’s History Center, this virtual event addresses individual emancipation of one hundred women through image and one hundred years of lived experience transformed into lyrical poetry. [Link]  
• Meaning of Life: Performance and artist discussion by Out of Site Chicago with Irina Danilova. In collaboration with the Ukrainian Museum of Modern Art, the artist discussion, August 29th, will be moderated by Joanna Matuszak, a scholar in Post-Soviet Performance Art avant-garde practices; performance, August 31st, both available online. [Link]
• 100 Years | 100 Women Project Archive: a collaborative and ongoing collection of work by students, activists, artists, scholars, and community leaders, around the complex legacy of the 19th amendment to the US Constitution. [Link]  
• Between You and Me at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin (August 5, 2020 – January 24, 2021): group show of contemporary artists whose work featuring everyday objects engages in acts of connection and care, part of the Center’s On Being Here (and There) series of exhibitions highlighting the roles cultural organizations and artists perform as community members, potentially divided by public discourse or isolation. Exhibition website offers an interactive online zine and printable postcards. [Link]
• The War Outside My Door, virtual film screening, Evanstan Experimental Film Showcase (August 13, 2020): a film by Kristin Anahit Cass, from The New Freedom Fighters: Women And Nonviolent Resistance project, which explores hope and determination in a province of war-torn Tavush to bring about peace during a global pandemic. [Link]
• Barbara London Calling: a new podcast series by the founding and now emeritus video and media curator at Museum of Modern Art New York and author of VIDEO ART: The First Fifty Years (Phaidon Press, 2020), just launched a podcast featuring interviews with twelve artists working with media technology. [Link]
• Margaret Mee: Portraits of Plants, an online exhibit by Dembarton Oaks Library and Collection in Washington, DC, features paintings of Amazonian flora by the artist, explorer, and environmentalist Margaret Mee (1909–1988) from the rare book collection, along with a devoted section, Visualizing Knowledge, around the role of women artists, botanical knowledge and aesthetics from the early 17th through the mid-19th centuries. [Link]
• A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists from the Collection is an online and gallery exhibition by Brigham Young University Museum of Art, featuring 112 works by 60 artists in various styles and types of art, including painting, textiles, prints, photographs, mixed media, and digital work. Available through September 12, 2020. [Link]
• Return to Nature: an exhibition by the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) featuring twenty photographs by eleven artists from the collection themed around the outdoors, on view through January 3, 2021. [Link]
• Call for papers: Reclaim: Narratives of African Women Artists, a symposium by AWARE association : Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions in the framework of the Africa2020 Season, April 15-16, 2021, at the École du Louvre, Paris. The event enters into the programs of the pan-African and multidisciplinary project Africa2020 taking place in France from December 2020 to mid-July 2021, at an invitation by N’Goné Fall, General Commissioner, to look at and understand the world from an African perspective. Deadline: October 15, 2020. [Link] 
• Undefeated: Canvas(s)ing the Politics Around Voter Suppression Since Women’s Suffrage by West Virginia University Libraries, online exhibit including artwork and educational content on view now, with a print exhibit forthcoming in the fall. [Link]