CAA News Today

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

October 2011

Wendy Stayman, Chairs, 2007, Swiss pear, macassor ebony, bent laminated plywood, and chrome-tanned calfskin (photograph by David Stansbury and provided by the artist and the Fuller Craft Museum)

Furniture Divas: Recent Work by Contemporary Makers
Fuller Craft Museum
455 Oak Street, Brockton, MA 02301
February 19–October 30, 2011

This exhibition celebrates the contributions of fifteen women—Vivian Beer, Polly Cassel, Gail Fredell, Jenna Goldberg, Barbara Holmes, Kristina Madsen, Sarah Martin, Wendy Maruyama, Judy Kensley McKie, Alison McLennan, Sylvie Rosenthal, Rosanne Somerson, Wendy Stayman, Leah Woods, and Yoko Zeltserman-Miyaji—to studio furniture and provides a snapshot of contemporary developments in the field.

Call and Response: From Artemisia to Frida
Koehnline Museum of Art
Oakton Community College, 1600 East Golf Road, Des Plaines, IL 60016
October 6–28, 2011

This annual juried exhibition of works by artists who identify themselves as women is sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program of Oakton Community College and the Koehnline Museum of Art. The artists in Call and Response have created works that honor, critique, or expand on the techniques and/or content of a groundbreaking female artist.

Charline von Heyl
Institute of Contemporary Art
University of Pennsylvania, 118 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104
September 7, 2011–February 19, 2012

This exhibition is a survey of a decade of productivity by Charline von Heyl, a German-born, New York–based painter of vibrant, enigmatic works. Organized by Jenelle Porter, senior curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the presentation includes collage-based works on paper and eighteen paintings.

Real Time
Douglass Library Galleries
Rutgers University, 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
September 1–December 9, 2011

The Brainstormers art collective was formed in 2005 by a group of women who chose to use public performance, exhibitions, publications, the internet, and video as a means of forcing a discussion about gender inequities in the contemporary New York art world. For Real Time, the group invited artists from across the country to anonymously share intimate details of their daily lives through whatever format they preferred.

Cecil Beaton, Gertrude Stein, 1935, gelatin-silver print. Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s. CM3794 (photograph provided by the Contemporary Jewish Museum)

Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Eighth and F Streets NW, Washington, DC 20001
October 14, 2011–January 22, 2012

With more than fifty artifacts from Gertrude Stein’s life and one hundred works by artists from Europe and the United States, the exhibition focuses on her life and work as an artist, collector, and style maker. The exhibition was previously mounted at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, California, and was a CWA Pick in July–August 2011.

Dana Schutz: If the Face Had Wheels
Neuberger Museum of Art
Purchase College, State University of New York, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10577
September 25–December 18, 2011

As the recipient of the 2011 Roy R. Neuberger Exhibition Prize, the Brooklyn-based artist Dana Schutz was awarded an early career survey and monographic catalogue at the Neuberger Museum of Art. The show includes thirty paintings and twelve drawings created since 2001.

Doin’ It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building
Ben Maltz Gallery
Otis College of Art and Design, 9045 Lincoln Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90045
October 1, 2011–January 28, 2012

As part of the sweeping Pacific Standard Time, a series of exhibitions and events that surveys the history of art in southern California since the end of World War II, Doin’ It in Public focuses on the contributions of feminist artists who came from the women’s liberation movement to found the Woman’s Building, which in the 1970s and 1980s was the center of feminist art and activism in southern California. Otis College of Art and Design is also sponsoring a symposium, “Still Doin’ It: Fanning the Flames of the Woman’s Building,” on October 15–16, which will bring together participants from the Woman’s Building and emerging feminists to instigate dialogue concerning its history and influence.

A Different Temporality: Aspects of Feminist Art Practice in Australia, 1975–1985
Monash University Museum of Art
Monash University, Caulfield Campus, 900 Dandenong Road, Building F, Ground Floor, Caulfield East, VIC 3145, Australia
October 13–December 17, 2011

This exhibition, curated by Kyra McFarlane, revisits the recent history of Australian feminism to focus on dominant modes of creative practice among a generation of feminist artists. Presented in association with the Melbourne Festival, A Different Temporality is organized around the principle of feminist “forms and ideas which continue to resonate in the present.”

Harmony Hammond: Against Seamlessness
Dwight Hackett Projects
2879 All Trades Road, Santa Fe, NM 87507
October 15–November 26, 2011

The legendary artist Harmony Hammond shows her latest work, a series of monumental abstract paintings that explore in new ways what many consider her signature, sculptural sensuality. An accompanying catalogue with essays by Tirza True Latimer and Julia Bryan-Wilson addresses the artist’s relationship with Minimalism, abstraction, feminism, craft, and process.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

September 2011

Tracey Snelling, “Woman on the Run,” 2008–11, mixed media, dimensions variable (artwork © Tracey Snelling; photograph by Etienne Frossard)

Tracey Snelling’s “Woman on the Run”
Frist Center for the Visual Arts
919 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203-3822
September 9, 2011–February 5, 2012

Describing her work, the American artist Tracey Snelling has said that she creates new realities that change with her audience’s perception. She gives her impression of a place, its people and their experience, and allows the viewer to extrapolate his or her own meaning. “Woman on the Run,” an installation previously mounted at 21c Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, combines video, photography, and sculpture to tell the story of a mysterious woman sought for questioning in a murder.

“2011 Purdue Conference for Pre-Tenure Women”
Purdue University
155 South Grant Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2114
September 22–23, 2011

This second annual meeting on issues facing pretenure women in academia features plenary speeches by Sara Laschever, a researcher on women’s life and career obstacles; Mary Dankoski, a dean, administrator, and professor of family medicine at Purdue University; and Caroline S. Turner, a professor at California State University, Sacramento, and Arizona State University. Sessions include “Promotion and Tenure Document Review,” “Your Plan to Tenure,” and “From Graduate Student to Faculty Member.”

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, ca. 1613–14, oil on canvas, 162½ x 100 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (artwork in the public domain)

Artemisia Gentileschi: Story of a Passion
Palazzo Reale
Piazza Duomo, 12 – 20122 Milan, Italy
September 22, 2011–January 29, 2012

Organized by Roberto Contini, curator of late Italian and Spanish paintings at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, Germany, this exhibition is the first solo survey in Italy of works by Artemisia Gentileschi. Story of a Passion comprises the majority of her oeuvre arranged chronologically in an installation designed by Emma Dante, an internationally renowned Italian director and playwright.

Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972
Wiels
Avenue Van Volxemlaan 354, 1190 Brussels, Belgium
September 10, 2011–January 8, 2012

Weils, a contemporary art center in Brussels, Belgium, will show the work of the late Polish sculptor Alina Szapocznikow (1926–1973). For Sculpture Undone: 1955–1972, Elena Filipovic and Joanna Mytkowska has organized a survey of this long-overlooked, Surrealist-inspired artist whose work addressing the female body has become increasingly influential to young feminist artists in the twenty-first century.

Zaha Hadid, WMF Flatware, 2007, stainless steel, dinner fork, 8¾ in.; salad fork, 6⅝ in.; dinner knife, 9⅛ in.; teaspoon, 5⅞ in.; soup spoon, 8⅞ in. Made by Württembergische Metallwarenfabrik AG, Geislingen, Germany (photograph provided by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Zaha Hadid Architects)

Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion
Philadelphia Museum of Art
26th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19130
September 17, 2011–March 25, 2012

The architect Zaha Hadid has designed buildings, interiors, and furniture. Organized by Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger, curator of European decorative arts after 1700 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion is the first presentation in the United States devoted to her furniture, objects, and footwear. The exhibition is also mounted in a setting that she designed.

Thin Black Line(s)
Tate Britain
Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
August 22, 2011–March 18, 2012

This exhibition explores the role of British women artists of African and Asian descent. Inspired by a series of thought-provoking shows curated by the artist Lubaina Himid in the 1980s, Thin Black Line(s) returns to many artists and works seen back then in order to revisit their place in current debates in contemporary art in the United Kingdom in the decades since.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

July–August 2011

Pablo Picasso, Woman with Bangs, 1902, oil on canvas, 24⅛ x 20¼ in. Cone Collection, Baltimore Museum of Art. BMA 1950.268 (artwork © 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York; photograph provided by the Jewish Museum)

Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore
Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128
May 6–September 25, 2011

The Cone sisters of Baltimore, Claribel and Etta, were a beacon of taste through their collection of modern art. The Jewish Museum has extracted fifty works from a collection of approximately three thousand that blossomed from purchases of works by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse—as early as 1905. After an introduction to the Parisian avant-garde by Gertrude and Leo Stein, the Cone Sisters accrued and displayed modernist treasures alongside an elegant collection of textiles and furniture from Africa, Asia, and Europe. The exhibition will gather these works, photographs, and archival material, allowing the public to ascertain their unrelenting appreciation of art objects.

Dara Birnbaum: Arabesque
Marian Goodman Gallery
24 West 57th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10019
June 28–August 26, 2011

This summer, Marian Goodman Gallery will exhibit Dara Birnbaum’s new multichannel video piece Arabesque (2011) alongside a miniretrospective of early work such as the rarely seen Attack Piece, Mirroring, and Everything’s Gonna Be Alright. Arabesque, a meditation on the recurring “power struggle between male and female” that Birnbaum recognizes in her work, is inspired by the composer Clara Schumann’s work, life, and relationship with her much more famous husband, the composer Robert Schumann. This struggle arguably connects the work to her otherwise dissimilar video work from 1975–76, in which Birnbaum confronted gender inequality in the media, pop culture, and even her relationships with her male collaborators.

Cecil Beaton, Gertrude Stein, 1935, gelatin-silver print. Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s. CM3794 (photograph provided by the Contemporary Jewish Museum)

Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories
Contemporary Jewish Museum
736 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
May 12–September 6, 2011

The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is spearheading an exploration of Gertrude Stein’s colossal creative ambitions and the legacy of her involvement in the arts. The exhibition mingles personal and acquired artifacts among five “stories,” or subcategories, of her life. The first, “Picturing Gertrude,” documents the writer’s transformations in appearance and her interpersonal magnetism through portraits by Man Ray, Cecil Beaton, and other artists. “Domestic Stein” uncovers the intimate relationship between Stein and her life-long partner, Alice B. Toklas, while presenting details from their eccentric homes in Paris and the south of France. “The Art of Friendship” reveals Stein’s influence on a younger generation of queer artists and writers through her collaborations with dance and opera. “Celebrity Stein”concentrates on Stein’s lecture tour across the United States in 1934–35, documented extensively by the media, and also her experience during both World Wars. Last, “Legacies” spotlights the impact of her undisguised sexuality, brash experimentation, and charm on artists such as Andy Warhol and Glenn Ligon. The exhibition will travel to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, from October 14, 2011, to January 22, 2012. Check the website of the Contemporary Jewish Museum for a number of lectures, performances, and events pertaining to the exhibition.

Claude Cahun
Jeu de Paume
1 place de la Concorde, Paris, France
May 24–September 25, 2011

Claude Cahun, born Lucy Renée Mathilde Schwob, was a vanguard French artist interested in bending the social perception of gender. Her androgynous photographic self-portraits from the 1920s not only fluctuated fluidly between male and female personae, they also presented innovative visual techniques like staging and montage. Although she was affiliated with the Surrealists in the 1930s, her theatrical emphasis on exposing predesigned assumptions about contemporary women inflamed their confrontations with reality. Despite this antagonism, Cahun’s photocollages and slew of writings—much of which is on display at Jeu de Paume—contributed to the momentum of the movement. Performance is inescapable in her photographs, which underscores her influence on photographers such as Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin. This exhibition—the first large-scale presentation of her work in her native France in sixteen years—will travel to the Art Institute of Chicago and La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona during 2011–12.

Guerrilla Girls, Erase Discrimination, 1999, ink on rubber, 1⅛ x 2½ x ¼ in. each. Collection of the Akron Museum of Art (artwork © Guerrilla Girls; photograph provided by the National Museum of Women in the Arts)

The Guerrilla Girls Talk Back
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington DC 20005
June 17–October 17, 2011

Since 1985 the legendary, gorilla-masked feminist collective the Guerrilla Girls have, in their own words, been “fighting discrimination with facts, humor, and fake fur.” The National Museum of Women in the Arts is celebrating more than twenty-five years of the group’s “guerrilla tactics” in fighting sexism and racism in the art world with the exhibition The Guerrilla Girls Talk Back. The show includes examples and documentation of the anonymous collective’s posters, stickers, billboards, books, and performances, which combine snarky satire with disturbing statistics to demonstrate the institutional exclusion of women and artists of color from both art history and contemporary art exhibitions.

Modern Women: Single Channel
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, NY 11101
January 23–August 8, 2011

Alexandra Schwartz, curator of contemporary art at the Montclair Art Museum, gathered this group of single-channel videos by eleven female artists from the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. Spanning from the 1960s to the late 1990s, the international selection offers the technical experiments of artists such as Pipilotti Rist and Kristin Lucas as well as conceptually groundbreaking precedents set by Joan Jonas and VALIE EXPORT. As a whole, the exhibition challenges the limitations of narrative, documentation, and popular culture. Although gender and sexuality are imminant concepts in the work, Modern Women: Single Channel emphasizes how the female gaze has evolved over the last forty years in the singular medium of video.

Ruth Gruber, Children playing chess aboard the Henry Gibbins, 1944 (artwork © Ruth Gruber; photograph provided by the International Center of Photography)

Ruth Gruber, Photojournalist
International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036
May 20–August 28, 2011

The Brooklyn-born Ruth Gruber is a famed photojournalist who began her career in the Soviet Arctic and Siberian Gulag in 1935. She continued to conquer unchartered territory in Alaska, capturing some of the first color images of the terrain and its natives in the early 1940s. Gruber activated her humanitarian inklings during World War II, documenting the migration of one thousand Jewish refugees to the United States from Europe in 1944 and later recording the difficulties of Jewish emigration into Palestine. The exhibition will include never-before-seen color photographs and vintage prints as well as contemporary prints from original negatives taken from Gruber’s personal archives.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

June 2011

“Women and the Arts: Dialogues in Female Creativity in the U.S. and Beyond”
June 15–17, 2011
University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies
Centro de Saúde de Sete Rios, Lisbon, Portugal 1600-214

This three-day international gathering, organized by the American Studies Group of the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies, will promote a reflection on women’s artistic production, contrasting the US context with other cultures. Featured sessions address such topics as “Dreaming, Doing, Being, & Seeing: The Woman Artist as Seen, Invisible, Witnessed and Observer”; “Women and the Crafts”; “Performance Arts”; “Art and Gender Politics”; “Portraits of the Artist as Woman”; “Women in Contemporary Art in the U.S. and Beyond”; and “Boundaries and Crossings in Theory and Art.”

!Women Art Revolution
Various locations across the United States

This eight-three-minute documentary film, directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson (and a CWA Pick in January 2011), relates the feminist art movement to the 1960s antiwar and civil rights causes and explains how historical events sparked feminist actions against major cultural institutions. Detailing major developments in women’s art of the 1970s, the film looks at early feminist art-education programs, political organizations and protests, and alternative art spaces such as A.I.R. Gallery and Franklin Furnace in New York and the Women’s Building in Los Angeles. Leeson also turns her attention to publications such as Chrysalis and Heresies and to landmark exhibitions, performances, and installations of public art that changed the direction of contemporary art.

In June, the following theaters and cultural institutions will screen the film:

• June 1–8: IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10014
• June 2: Manhasset Cinemas, Gold Coast International Film Festival, 430 Plandome Road, Manhasset, NY 11030
• June 2–9: West End Cinema, 1 M Street NW, Washington, DC
• June 3: New Hyde Park Cinemas, Gold Coast International Film Festival, 3324 Hillside Avenue, New Hyde Park, NY 11040
• June 10: Institute of Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Avenue, Boston, MA 02210
• June 10: The Screen, Santa Fe University of Art and Design, 100 Saint Michaels Drive, Santa Fe, NM 87505
• June 14: Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024
• June 15–19: Museum of Fine Arts, 100 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02116
• June 17–23: Laemmle’s Music Hall 3, 9036 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90211
• June 17–23: Northwest Film Forum, 1515 Twelfth Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122
• June 23–26: Noble Theater, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive, Oklahoma City, OK 73102
• June 24–27: Northwest Film Center, 1119 Southwest Park Avenue, Portland, OR 97205
• June 24–30: Denver FilmCenter, Denver Film Society, 2601 Blake Street, Denver, CO 80205
• June 24–30: Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor Street, Hartford, CT 67401
• June 24–30: Salina Art Center, 150 South Santa Fe, Salina, KS 67401

Talks by the director and guest speakers—such as Howardena Pindell and Carey Lovelace in New York, Carrie Brownstein in Portland—and other special events will accompany selected screenings.

Guerrilla Girls, Untitled, from the series Guerrilla Girls Talk Back: The First Five Years, 1985–1990, 1986, color photolithograph on paper, 17 x 22 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore, in honor of Wilhelmina Cole Holladay (artwork © Guerrilla Girls; photograph provided by the National Museum of Women in the Arts)

The Guerrilla Girls Talk Back
June 17–October 2, 2011
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington DC 20005

The Guerrilla Girls—anonymous females who take the names of dead women artists and appear in public wearing gorilla masks—use humor to expose sexism and racism in the art world, film, politics, and culture at large. This exhibition presents posters and ephemera from the group, including works from two portfolios, Guerrilla Girls Talk Back: The First Five Years, 1985–1990 and Guerrilla Girls Talk Back: Portfolio 2.

Tracey Emin: Love Is What You Want
May 18–August 29, 2011
Hayward Gallery
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, England

The first major survey in London of Tracey Emin’s work occupies both floors and two outdoor sculpture terraces at the Southbank Centre. Works from every period of her career and in diverse media—painting, textiles, work on paper, photography, neon, film, and sculpture—will accompany a new series of outdoor sculptures made especially for the Hayward Gallery installation.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

May 2011

Poster for a Mahalia Jackson concert in Topeka, Kansas, 1962 (photograph provided by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum)

Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
1100 Rock and Roll Boulevard, Cleveland, OH 44114
May 13, 2011–February 26, 2012

The eight sections of Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power will highlight how women have driven the engines of creation and change in popular music since the early twentieth century. Blues women from the 1920s such as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith set the stage for those who followed: Brenda Lee, the Ronettes, Janis Joplin, Carol King, Donna Summer, Siouxsie Sioux, Madonna, Bikini Kill, Queen Latifah, and Lady Gaga. In addition to displays of artifacts and memorabilia, as well as videos and listening stations, the interactive exhibition will set up a recording booth where visitors can record a short story or moment of inspiration related to women in rock.

“From Portraits to Pinups: Women in Art and Popular Culture”
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
May 14, 2011

On Saturday, May 14, the Brooklyn Museum will hold a daylong symposium in conjunction with the exhibition Lorna Simpson: Gathered (a CWA Pick from February). Graduate students will present their research on topics such as the implications of women artists using images of women in their work, the connections between women’s history and contemporary art, and perceptions of race and gender. In addition, Wendy Steiner, an English professor and the founding director of the Penn Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania, will speak about concepts of beauty, while a panel discussion will feature the comedian Erica Watson, the drag king Shelly Mars, and the illustrator Molly Crabapple.

Uta Barth
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60603
May 14–September 14, 2011

The photographer Uta Barth once intriguingly said that her contemplative images of domestic scenes devoid of action “are really not of anything in that sense, they register only that which is incidental and peripheral implied.” Curated by Elizabeth Siegel of the Art Institute of Chicago, this exhibition presents her latest series, called … and to draw a bright white line with light, alongside two earlier bodies of work: white blind (bright red) from 2002 and Sundial from 2007.

“Illustrated Lecture and Book Signing: Dr. Gail Levin”
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
May 15, 2011

On Sunday, May 15, the art historian Gail Levin, who teaches at Baruch College and the Graduate Center in New York, will discuss her most recent book, Lee Krasner: A Biography (New York: William Morrow, 2011), which looks beyond Krasner’s relationship with her husband Jackson Pollock to detail her own brilliant career as a painter in New York. A book signing will follow the 2:00 PM talk.

Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color
Women’s Museum
3800 Parry Avenue, Dallas, TX 75226
May 21–July 23, 2011

This traveling exhibition surveys Loïs Mailou Jones’s seventy-five years as a painter, tracing the development of her work from her early career into her signature mixture of African, Caribbean, American, and African American iconography, design, and thematic elements. Comprised of over sixty paintings, drawings, and textile designs from public and private collections, Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color also includes, for the first time, major holdings from the late artist’s estate for public presentation. A CWA Pick in October 2010, the exhibition originated at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following conversation and three exhibitions should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

April 2011

Diane Burko

“Global Warming: Women in Science and Art Discuss Climate Issues and Activism”
Rutgers University
Center Hall Auditorium, Busch Campus Center, 604 Bartholomew Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854
April 20, 2011

A discussion between the artist Diane Burko and Åsa Rennermalm, assistant professor in the Geography Department at Rutgers University, takes place on Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 7:15–8:30 PM. Kathryn Uhrich, a professor and dean of Math and Physical Sciences at Rutgers, is the moderator.

Sheila Hicks: 50 Years
Institute of Contemporary Art
University of Pennsylvania, 118 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104
March 24–August 7, 2011

A student of Joseph Albers at Yale University, Sheila Hicks was inspired by the Bauhaus principle of ignoring traditional boundaries separating art, craft, and design. Her work with fabric, fiber, and found objects came to prominence in the 1950s, and this retrospective, first mounted at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts, features more than ninety of her most important pieces, including a major installation on loan from Target’s headquarters in Minneapolis. Sheila Hicks: 50 Years offers insights into the artist’s thinking and her approach to materials.

Lynda Benglis, The Graces, 2003–5, cast polyurethane, lead, and stainless steel, dimensions from left to right: 103 x 26 x 26 in.; 113 x 21½ x 23 in.; 95 x 30 x 27 in. (artwork © Lynda Benglis, DACS, London/VAGA, New York)

Lynda Benglis
New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002
February 9–June 19, 2011

This exhibition, Lynda Benglis’s first retrospective in New York and her first solo show in the city in twenty years, spans the range of her career. The survey covers her early wax paintings and brightly colored poured latex works, the Torsos and Knots series from the 1970s, and her recent experiments with plastics, cast glass, paper, and gold leaf. Lynda Benglis also contains a number of rarely exhibited works, such as Phantom (1971), an installation consisting of five monumental sculptures that glow in the dark, and Primary Structures (Paula’s Props), an installation first shown in 1975. Because throughout her career Benglis was constantly experimenting with materials and techniques, some of which were ephemeral or less than permanent, a few of the works exhibited are the only survivors of some series of works.

Reviewing the show for the New York Times, Roberta Smith wrote, “This exhibition stresses Ms. Benglis’s dual role as innovator and commentator, adept at extending ideas of her mostly male contemporaries while also skewing and skewering them with her own implicitly libidinous sensibility.”

Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster 1964–1966
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036
March 13–June 5, 2011

Vija Celmins is best known as a painter of soft, monochromatic images of stars and spider webs. However, as a young artist in Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, she created a series of brightly colored works with violent themes such as crashing warplanes, smoking handguns, and other images of death and disaster influenced by the violence of the era and mass media representations of it. Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster 1964–1966 is the first exhibition to concentrate on these paintings and sculptures made during this brief period.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following artists’ conversation and three exhibitions should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

March 2011

Margarita Cabrera, contents of Backpack (Green), 2006, vinyl, thread, fabric, and mixed media, 16 x 13 x 4 in. (artwork © Margarita Cabrera; photograph provided by the artist, Walter Maciel Gallery, and the Sweeney Art Gallery)

Margarita Cabrera: Pulso y Martillo (Pulse and Hammer)
Sweeney Art Gallery
Culver Center of the Arts, University of California, Riverside, 3834 Main Street, Riverside, CA 92501
February 5–April 2, 2011

For years, Margarita Cabrera has worked on a number of collaborative projects that combine contemporary art practices, indigenous Mexican folk art and craft traditions, and relations between the United States and Mexico. These projects have actively investigated the creation of fair working conditions and the protection of immigrant rights. This exhibition includes a survey of past works from 2003 to 2008; a performance, called Florezca Board of Directors: Performance; and a new installation, Pulse and Hammer.

Taking place on Saturday, March 5, Florezca Board of Directors: Performance will be the first meeting of the “leaders” of Florezca Inc., a multinational corporation founded by Cabrera for undocumented people in the US. Consisting of Cabrera, students, and others, the performance will mix rehearsed statements with improvisation. Also a collaboration with Juan Felipe Herrera, a creative-writing professor at Riverside, Florezca Board of Directors: Performance is part of daylong series of events exploring issues around the border, undocumented workers, and a maquiladora-based economy.

For Pulse and Hammer, Cabrera will install approximately one thousand copper butterflies in Culver Center’s North Atrium Gallery, creating a swarmlike environment that represents the manic transformation of the Mexican economy.

Yoko Ono and Kara Walker in Conversation
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019
March 8, 2011

In conjunction with the exhibition Contemporary Art from the Collection, the artists Yoko Ono and Kara Walker will discuss their art and how social, political, and gender issues inform their work. Glenn Lowry, director of the museum, will moderate the conversation, which takes place on Tuesday, March 8, at 6:30 PM.

Maira Kalman and Rick Meyerowitz’s cover of the New Yorker

Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World)
Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128
March 11–July 31, 2011

The illustrator, author, and designer Maira Kalma is perhaps best known for the cartoon map of New York City that she created with Rick Meyerowitz for a New Yorker cover from December 10, 2001. Organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, this retrospective exhibition includes works on paper from a thirty-year period and highlights lesser-known photographs, textiles, and performances.

Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution
2 East 91st Street, New York, NY 10128
March 18–June 5, 2011

With her husband Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay founded the early-twentieth-century movement, Orphism. This exhibition focuses on her work with fashion and textiles that display the same strong colors and geometric shapes as her paintings. Included are designs from her fashion line, Atelier Simultané, created in Paris during the 1920s, and textiles she designed in the 1930s for the Metz & Co., a department store in Amsterdam.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following panels and exhibitions should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.

February 2011

Lorna Simpson: Gathered
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
January 28–August 14, 2011

Lorna Simpson first received critical recognition in the mid-1980s for a series of large-scale works using photography and text to confront and challenge conventional interpretations of gender, identity, culture, history, and memory. Her most recent museum show, Lorna Simpson: Gathered, continues this approach with a series of photographs and a photographic installation created since her retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2007.

TFAP@CAA Day of Panels
Feminist Art Project
Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10019
February 12, 2011

For the sixth year in a row, the Feminist Art Project has organized a series of special events in conjunction with CAA’s Annual Conference. Free and open to the public, the TFAP@CAA Day of Panels will bring together artists, art historians, curators, and critics for dialogues on four topics: “The Problem of Feminist Form,” “Institutions and their Feminist Discontents,” “The Erotics of Feminism,” and “Feminism, Art, and War.” Also on the agenda are two conversations: the artist Zoe Leonard talks to Huey Copeland of Northwestern University; and Ayreen Anastas of Pratt Institute will converse with Jaleh Mansoor of Ohio University.

“Sonic Art and Activism: Exploring the Ties between Feminist Art and Popular Music”
Feminist Art Project
Soho20 Chelsea Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, Suite 301, New York, NY 10001
February 13, 2011

Taking place on Sunday afternoon, 1:00–3:00 PM, this Feminist Art Project–sponsored panel comprises artists and musicians who will discuss the myriad connections between contemporary feminist art and popular music. Organized and moderated by Kat Griefen and Maria Elena Buszek, member of CAA’ Committee on Women in the Arts, the panel features Damali Abrams, Kathleen Hanna, Lorraine O’Grady, and Shizu Saldamando.

Invitation card for Joan Snyder/Intimate Works showing Study for Ancient Night Sounds (1984–85) and Lovers (1989)

Joan Snyder/Intimate Works
Mabel Smith Douglass Library Galleries
Rutgers University, 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
January 17, 2011–June 5, 2011

As the 2010–11 Estelle Lebowitz Visiting Artist in Residence, Joan Snyder has spent the last few months at Rutgers University giving classes and public lectures. The forty-five small paintings in this exhibition, mounted in the Rutgers University Library, show how her work has developed over the past four decades. The New Jersey State Council on the Arts has selected Joan Snyder/Intimate Works as part of the American Masterpieces Series in New Jersey. The exhibition also runs concurrently with Dancing with the Dark: Joan Snyder Prints 1963–2010 (January 29–May 29, 2011) at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers.

Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women, and Art
Chicago Cultural Center
78 East Washington Street, Chicago, IL 60602
January 22–April 13, 2011

Organized by Art Works for Change and curated by Randy Jayne Rosenberg, Off the Beaten Path contains works by thirty-two artists—including Marina Abramović, Laylah Ali, and Yoko Ono—that address violence against women and the right of girls and women to have safe and secure lives. The exhibition was first shown in 2009 in Oslo, Norway, and will travel internationally through 2014

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following symposium, conference sessions, and exhibitions should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view.

January 2011

Women and the Word: Muslim Women Artists Explore Spirit, Form, and Text
Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California
1433 Madison Street, Oakland CA 94612
January 3–March 30, 2011

The art gallery of the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California is the first San Francisco Bay Area space to specialize in Muslim artists and Islamic art. From January to March 2011, the gallery will mount three one-woman shows of work by local artists who explore the Islamic tradition of calligraphy and abstract forms. The artists’s names and dates of presentations are: Rubina Kaz, January 3–February 2; Rabea Chaudhry, February 4–March 2; and Salma Arastu, March 4–30.

!Women Art Revolution
New Frontier at the Sundance Film Festival
Historic Miners Hospital, 1354 Park Avenue, Park City, UT 84060; and Salt Lake Art Center, 20 South West Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
January 20–30, 2011

!Women Art Revolution is a documentary film exploring the feminist art movement in the United States from 1968 to the present. The filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson includes interviews with artists, innovators, art historians, and critics taken over a forty-year period, asking why so many female artists are little known and why museums fill their walls with the works of men. Accompanying the film is RAW/WAR, an interactive, community-curated video collection that allows users to access archival footage about the achievements and practices of women artists and to share their own stories through text, images, video clips, and links.

Hand, Voice & Vision: Artists’ Books from Women’s Studio Workshop
Grollier Club
47 East 60th Street, New York, NY 10022
December 8, 2010–February 5, 2011

Curated by Kathleen Walkup, Hand, Voice & Vision: Artists’ Books from Women’s Studio Workshop features forty books by thirty-six artists created over a thirty-year period. The four artists who founded the workshop—Ann Kalmbach, Tatana Kellner, Anita Wetzel, and Barbara Leoff Burge—wanted to operate and maintain a workspace that would encourage the visions of individual women artists, provide professional opportunities for them, and promote programs designed to stimulate public involvement with and support for the visual arts.

The Grollier Club also presents two tandem events. On Tuesday, January 25, three of the exhibition’s artists (Clarissa Sligh, Susan Mills, and Emily Speed) will talk about their work from 2:00 to 4:00 PM. Jae Jennifer Rossman, assistant director for special collections at Yale University, will moderate the panel. On the following day, Walkup will speak on “Women Making Art: Artists’ Books from Women’s Studio Workshop” from 2:00 to 3:00 PM.

Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women
Cartoon Art Museum
655 Mission Street, San Francisco CA 94105
October 1, 2010–January 30, 2011

The history of women in comics is well documented, and the Jewish contribution to the art form is widely acknowledged. Curated by Michael Kaminer and Sarah Lightman, Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women is the first museum exhibition to combine both groups in a single exhibition. Many of the original artworks on display have never before been shown in public. Among the eighteen American, European, and Israeli artists are Sharon Rudahl of Wimmen’s Comix and Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Diane Noomin of Twisted Sisters—all pioneers from the 1970s and 1980s—alongside younger artists. The exhibition catalogue was designed and published as an eight-page newspaper broadsheet.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following symposium, conference sessions, and exhibitions should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view.

November 2010

Lynda Benglis, The Graces, 2003–5, cast polyurethane, lead, and stainless steel, dimensions from left to right: 103 x 26 x 26 in.; 113 x 21½ x 23 in.; 95 x 30 x 27 in. (artwork © Lynda Benglis, DACS, London/VAGA, New York)

Lynda Benglis
Rhode Island School of Design Museum
224 Benefit Street, Providence, RI 02903
October 1, 2010–January 9, 2011

Most people know Lynda Benglis from her infamous advertisement in the November 1974 Artforum, in which she stood completely nude holding a dildo at her crotch, but her career spans more than forty years. The traveling exhibition Lynda Benglis, now at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, presents the extraordinary creative output of an important but often overlooked artist, offering key and representative works: wax paintings and poured latex and polyurethane foam sculptures from the late 1960s; innovative videos, installations, and “knots” from the 1970s; metalized, pleated wall pieces of the next two decades; and twenty-first-century works such as The Graces, three monumental mixed-media sculptures. The exhibitionalso features documentary material underscoring the artist’s interest in performance and self-promotion through magazines and invitation cards.

“Difficult Dialogues II”
National Women’s Studies Association Conference
Sheraton Hotel, 1550 Court Place, Denver, CO 80202
November 10–14, 2010

Two sessions at this year’s National Women’s Studies Association Conference, both held on Friday, November 12, explore contemporary art and issues. Kryn Freehling-Burton of Oregon State University will moderate the morning panel, “Women and Public Art,” which offers presentations on Kara Walker and Lynda Benglis, and on “yarn bombing” and “knit graffiti” (8:00–9:15 AM). In the afternoon, four panelists will discuss “Rethinking Documentary and Experiment in Feminist Art from the 1970s,” moderated by Michael Eng of John Carroll University (5:10–6:25 PM). There, two papers cover Mary Kelly and Marina Abramović, with two more addressing broader themes.

Untitled portrait attributed to Jonas Holman, ca. 1830–35, oil on canvas, 28 x 24 in. American Folk Art Museum, Gift of Jacqueline Loewe Fowler. 1995.17.1 (artwork in the public domain)

“Fall Symposium: Focus on Women in Art”
American Folk Art Museum
45 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
November 13, 2010

This full-day symposium at the American Folk Art Museum, taking place 9:30 AM–5:00 PM, examines the changing roles of women in culture as seen through artworks of and by women. General topics for discussion include Renaissance women as art patrons and female artists in ancient Greece and Rome, along with specific focuses on American folk art by and about women, the artists Ruth Henshaw Bascom and Orra White Hitchcock, and American masterwork quilts. After the symposium, which is organized by Lee Kogana, the museum will present a theorem painting demonstration and a panel discussion.

Connecticut Needlework: Women, Art, and Family, 1740–1840
Connecticut Historical Society Museum and Library
1 Elizabeth Street, Hartford, CT 06105
October 5, 2010–March 26, 2011

Curated by Susan P. Schoelwer, Connecticut Needlework: Women, Art, and Family, 1740–1840 presents about seventy-five examples of rare, colorful, and imaginatively designed needlework by early American women and girls. Their shoes, purses, bedspreads, and fire screens depict farmsteads, family gatherings, furnished rooms, and flora. Resisting a strictly quaint presentation, the Connecticut Historical Society exhibition at the demonstrates that, in the words of a New York Times reviewer, “Young embroiderers … did not learn much at their mothers’ knees by the fireside, nor did they diligently copy designs that were fed to them.”

Chandler Family, canvas work with pastoral scene, 1758, wool and silk on linen, 15¾ x 22 7/8 in. Woodstock, Connecticut. Private Collection (artwork in the public domain)

With Needle and Brush: Schoolgirl Embroidery from the Connecticut River Valley
Florence Griswold Museum
96 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, CT 06371
October 2, 2010–January 30, 2011

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Connecticut River Valley produced an abundance of needlework artists—especially girls and young women in private academies. As the first exhibition to extensively examine the subject, With Needle and Brush contributes to the understanding of needlework traditions and provides insight into the nature of women’s schooling before widespread public education. Curated by Carol and Stephen Huber, the exhibition features about seventy works in embroidery and related mediums drawn extensively from private collections—many never before seen publicly.

Sally Mann: The Flesh and the Spirit
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
200 North Boulevard, Richmond, VA 23220
November 13, 2010–January 24, 2011

The American photographer Sally Mann specializes in obsolete film and darkroom processes, and her recent work at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which includes abstracted self-portraits, pushes the limits of her medium to dig deeper into themes of mortality and vulnerability. Curated by John B. Ravenal, Sally Mann: The Flesh and the Spirit consists primarily of new photographs, but the museum will also present several early series that have rarely been seen. On Saturday, November 13, Vince Aletti of the New Yorker, Melissa Harris of Aperture, and Brian Wallis from the International Center of Photography will join Mann to discuss her work and the current state of photography. The conversation will take place 10:00 AM–1:00 PM on the show’s opening day, preceded by a book signing and coffee at 9:30 AM.