CAA News Today

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions, panel discussion, and academic conference 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.

October 2010

Lee Krasner, Self-Portrait, ca. 1930, oil on linen, 30 1/8 x 25 1/8 in. The Jewish Museum, New York. Purchase: Esther Leah Ritz Bequest; B. Gerald Cantor, Lady Kathleen Epstein, and Louis E. and Rosalyn M. Shecter Gifts, by exchange; Fine Arts Acquisitions Committee Fund; and Miriam Handler Fund, 2008-32 (photograph © The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York)

Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism
Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10129
September 12, 2010–January 30, 2011

In Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism, such established twentieth-century figures as Louise Nevelson, Eva Hesse, Leon Golub, and Audrey Flack take the stage with more recent practitioners, among them Amy Sillman, Nicole Eisenman, and Dana Schutz. Curated by Daniel Belasco and drawn primarily from the Jewish Museum’s permanent collection, the show presents works from twenty-seven American artists that demonstrate the undeniable influence of feminism on painting from the last fifty years. Relatedly, Anna-Sophia Zingarelli’s essay “A Dynamic Presence: Women Artists at The Jewish Museum, New York, 1947–2010” provides an overview of research into the exhibition history of women at the Jewish Museum since 1947, and an online index catalogues these findings. And don’t miss upcoming talks by Belasco (October 18) and two of the included artists, Deborah Kass (October 25) and Robert Kushner (November 1).

American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s
Neuberger Museum of Art
Purchase College, State University of New York, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10577
September 11–December 19, 2010

Faith Ringgold is best known for starting the African American story quilt revival in the late 1970s, sometimes at the expense of her earlier, more politically charged art. American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s offers another look at her important output from the previous decade. Curated by Thom Collins and Tracy Fitzpatrick with Purchase College students, the exhibition includes Ringgold’s landmark American People paintings (1963–67), which she describes as “super realism,” and her Black Light (1967–71) series, originally shown at Spectrum Gallery in New York. Along with related murals and political posters, American People, Black Light gives a fuller picture of Ringgold’s powerful artistic explorations of race, gender, and class during one of America’s most tumultuous decades.

Loïs Mailou Jones, Ubi Girl from Tai Region, 1972, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 43¾ in. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Hayden Collection—Charles Hayden Fund (artwork © Loïs Mailou Jones Pierre-Noël Trust; photograph provided by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005
October 9, 2010–January 9, 2011

The African American artist and teacher Loïs Mailou Jones (1905–1998) spent seventy-five years producing a diverse body of work in painting, drawing, and textile design. Organized by Carla M. Hanzal of the Mint Museum of Art, Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color gathers more than seventy works for a touring show with a current stop in Washington, DC, the city in which she lived and worked. A professor at Howard University for nearly fifty years, Jones had David Driskell, Elizabeth Catlett, and Robert Freeman as students, and she contributed to several Corcoran Gallery of Art biennials and had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. To read more about the artist, download a companion guide to A Life in Vibrant Color, which includes her biography, images of work, and more.

Books without Words: The Visual Poetry of Elisabetta Gut
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005
September 10, 2010–January 16, 2011

The first solo exhibition in the United States of the artist Elisabetta Gut, born in Rome in 1934, presents twenty-two mixed-media works from 1979 to 2000, with a particular focus on the 1980s. Using humble materials such as thread, sheet music, dried seeds, wood, wire, and wax, Gut creates sculptural collages—or collaged sculptures—inspired by dreams, memories, and her love of music and poetry. Krystyna Wasserman, curator of book arts at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, explains, “Her visual poetry is accessible, and her books do not require reading and the time consumed by reading. Their messages are compressed and universal, expressing love for nature or another person, fascination with music, or a sense of loss.”

Marjorie Strider, Green Triptych, 1963, acrylic paint and laminated pine on masonite panels, 72 x 105 in. Collection of Michael T Chutko (artwork © Marjorie Strider; photograph by Randal Bye)

“So Different, So Appealing: Women and the Pop Art Movement”
Brooklyn Museum
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, Third Floor, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
October 30, 2010, 2:00–4:00 PM

The cleverly titled “So Different, So Appealing: Women and the Pop Art Movement” is a panel discussion to be held in conjunction with the traveling exhibition Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968, which lands this month at the Brooklyn Museum (see September’s CWA Picks). Moderated by Catherine Morris, curator of the museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the discussion will feature artists from the show as well as the original cocurators, Sid Sachs and Kalliopi Minioudaki of University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Feminist Art History Conference 2010
Katzen Arts Center
American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20016
November 5–6, 2010

It’s been nearly ten years since the last major academic gathering dedicated to feminist research in the discipline, and the first annual Feminist Art History Conference picks up where the Barnard College Feminist Art History Conference—a crucial forum for scholars in the 1990s—left off. Titled “Continuing the Legacy: Honoring the Work of Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard,” the event also celebrates over four decades of work by two pioneering feminist art historians who are both professors at American University. Forty speakers in ten sessions will explore topics ranging from antiquity to contemporary art, and Anna Chave will deliver the keynote address, evocatively called “High Tide: Deploying Fluids in Women’s Art Practice.” The conference is free and open to the public, but advance registration by 5:00 PM on Friday, October 22, is recommended. Download the conference program for a peek at all the events.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following conference and four exhibitions should not be missed. Check the CWA Picks archive at the bottom of the page, as several exhibitions listed there are still on view.

September 2010

“Heritage and Hope: Women’s Education in a Global Context”
Bryn Mawr College
101 North Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
September 23–25, 2010

As part of its 125th anniversary celebration, Bryn Mawr College is hosting an international conference to celebrate the empowering heritage of women’s education and to chart a course for its future. The conference will examine issues of educational access, equity, and opportunity in secondary schools and universities in the United States and around the world. Session topics will include: “Leveling the Academic Playing Field”; “Enhancing Global Networks,” a discussion of current and future collaborative connections among women’s colleges around the world; and “Partnering for Global Justice,” an exploration of potential partnerships among schools, colleges, and international NGOs to promote women’s rights and educational opportunities.

Pauline Boty, With Love to Jean Paul Belmondo, 1962, oil on canvas, 48 x 59 7/8 in. Collection of Nadia Fakhoury, Paris (artwork © Pauline Boty)

Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968
Sheldon Museum of Art
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 12th and R Streets, Lincoln, NE 68588
July 30–September 24, 2010

Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968 turns on its head the notion that male artists largely dominated this twentieth-century movement. The first major exhibition of its kind, Seductive Subversion features paintings and sculptures by an international group of artists—including Vija Celmins, Rosalyn Drexler, Niki de Saint Phalle, Joyce Wieland, Marisol, Faith Ringgold, and Martha Rosler—that expand the Pop canon as most know it. Sid Sachs, director of exhibitions at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where the exhibition originated, will deliver a lecture about the exhibition on September 14 at 5:30 PM in the Sheldon’s Ethel S. Abbott Auditorium.

Catherine Opie: Figure and Landscape
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036
July 25–October 17, 2010

Catherine Opie explores issues of masculinity, community, and national identity in her current exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A Southern California–based photographer whose diverse body of work includes images of Alaskan landscapes, challenging self-portraits, and urban street scenes, Opie has visited and documented high school football games, players, and fans in seven states across America since 2007. “The high capture, dramatic tenebrism, vivid colour and density of the landscapes are entirely consonant with commercial sports photography,” wrote Christopher Bedford in Frieze, “but Opie’s insistence on recording the endless passages of tedium and readiness that punctuate the experience of a football game makes these images aniconic and elusive.” A second exhibition at the museum, Manly Pursuits: The Sporting Images of Thomas Eakins, is shown in conjunction with Catherine Opie: Figure and Landscape.

Susie (Sarah) Barstow, Landscape, 1865, oil on canvas, 30 x 22 in. Collection of Elizabeth and Alfred Scott (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site)

Remember the Ladies: Women of the Hudson River School
Thomas Cole National Historical Site
218 Spring Street, Catskill, NY 12414
May 2–October 31, 2010

Focusing on nineteenth-century America, Remember the Ladies: Women of the Hudson River School highlights female artists who were contemporary to figures like Asher Durand and Frederic Edwin Church. Curated by Nancy Siegel and Jennifer Krieger, the exhibition features twenty-five works in painting, photography, and drawing manuals by Julia Hart Beers (sister of William and James Hart), Evelina Mount (niece of William Sidney Mount), Susie Barstow, Eliza Greatorex, Harriet Cany Peale, Josephine Walters, and Sarah and Emily Cole (sister and daughter, respectively, of Thomas Cole).

Experimental Women in Flux
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
August 4–November 8, 2010

Organized by Sheelagh Bevan with David Senior, both of the Museum of Modern Art Library, Experimental Women in Flux focuses on artists’ books, event scores, performance instructions, catalogues, periodicals, and other printed matter from the recently acquired Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Reference Library. Documents of live, ephemeral, and durational work by such artists and performers as Alison Knowles, Charlotte Moorman, Shigeko Kubota, Yoko Ono, and Simone Forti are included. Presented in conjunction with the museum’s publication of Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition boasts a full website with images and descriptions, as well as audio selections from Mieko Shiomi’s musical portraits of her Fluxus associates.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and panel discussion should not be missed. Check the CWA Picks archive at the bottom of the page, as several exhibitions listed there are still on view.

August 2010

Hilla Rebay, photographed by Eugene Hutchinson in her Carnegie Hall studio in 1935. Hilla von Rebay Foundation Archive, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Archives, New York (photograph by Eugene Hutchinson and provided by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum)

Hilla Rebay: Art Educator
Sackler Center for Arts Education
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128
January 29–August 22, 2010

Hilla Rebay (1890–1967) was not only an accomplished artist whose work was exhibited across Europe, but she also served as the first director and curator of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in New York, which then became the Guggenheim Museum. The exhibition Hilla Rebay: Art Educator, fittingly appearing at the museum she once led, highlights her underrecognized role as an innovative art and museum educator. With missionary zeal, Rebay gave talks in the museum and trained her staff on how to interpret the kind of abstract art the museum presented for diverse audiences. On view in the Sackler Center, the Guggenheim’s branch for arts education, are examples and documentation of her approach to pedagogy.

Women Only: Folk Art by Female Hands
American Folk Art Museum
45 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019-5401
April 6–September 19, 2010

Curated by Stacey C. Hollander, Women Only: Folk Art by Female Hands “evokes a girls’ club, a parallel and self-contained art world,” according to Karen Rosenberg in the New York Times. The exhibition, culled from the museum’s permanent collection, features painting, drawing, samplers, quilts, and more by American women of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Artists range from anonymous younger women from colonial and revolutionary times, whose creativity prepared them for life in the home, to the portraitist Deborah Goldsmith, one of the few female painters in the 1800s making a living from her art. The subject matter in Women Only is just as diverse, covering ornamentation and commemoration as well as religion and politics.

“3G Summit: The Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender”
Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media
Columbia College Chicago, Media Production Center Soundstage, 1600 South State Street, Chicago, IL 60605
August 12, 2010

Columbia College Chicago hosts a public forum on Thursday, August 12, 6:00–8:00 PM, as part of “3G Summit: The Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender,” a four-day program of workshops and discussions that will connect fifty teenage girls from the Chicago area with game designers and scholars for intensive dialogue, inquiry, game play, and mentorship. Moderated by the college’s Janell Baxter and Brendan Riley, this free panel features five women at the forefront of gaming theory and practice. Through talks and conversation, they will address intersections of gender equity, technology, digital platforms, and more. Speakers are: Mary Flanagan: artist, scholar, and author of Critical Play; Tracy Fullerton: game designer (Cloud, flOw, The Night Journey), writer, and educator (University of Southern California); Jennifer Jenson: scholar of gender and technology (York University) and game designer (Epidemic and Tafelmusik); Erin Robinson: game designer (Puzzle Bots, Little Girl in Underland, Nanobots); and Susana Ruiz: media artist and game designer (Darfur is Dying, Finding Zoe).

Empowering Women: Artisan Cooperatives That Transform Communities
Museum of International Folk Art
706 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill, Santa Fe, NM 87504
July 4, 2010–January 2, 2011

Empowering Women: Artisan Cooperatives That Transform Communities, guest curated by Suzanne K. Seriff, is the inaugural exhibition at the Museum of International Folk Art’s Gallery of Conscience. Visitors can examine weaving, beadwork, painting, baskets, embroidery, and other traditional folk arts from artists and artisans living and working in Africa, South America, and South and Southeast Asia. The new Gallery of Conscience, according to the museum director Marsha Bol, is “devoted to the examination of issues that threaten the survival of the traditional arts, bringing them to the attention of our visitors.” Empowering Women appears in conjunction with the three-day Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, which took place last month.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts singles out the best in feminist art and scholarship from North America and around the world. CWA Picks may include exhibitions, conferences, symposia, panels, lectures, and other events. The following selections should not be missed.

July 2010

June Wayne, The Chicago Territory, 1977, from The Dorothy Series (1975–79), lithograph on paper, 20 5/8 x 17 3/8 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts. Gift of the artist (artwork © June Wayne; photograph provided by National Museum of Women in the Arts)

June Wayne’s “Dorothy Series”
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005
June 25, 2010–September 13, 2010

The Dorothy Series (1975–79) by June Wayne was created in a hyperrealist style using photographs, documents, and scrapbook memorabilia. The artist created the set of lithographs to narrate the life of her mother, Dorothy, who raised her as a single parent, had a successful sales career, and staunchly campaigned for women’s rights. The Dorothy Series was created in collaboration with Ed Hamilton of Hamilton Press.

Born in 1918 in Chicago, Wayne had her first solo exhibition in 1935. A participant in the Works Progress Administration Easel Project in Chicago, she later moved to California where she studied lithography and founded the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1960. The CWA honored Wayne with an Annual Recognition Award in 2002.

Film Exhibition: Sally Potter
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
July 7–21, 2010

In the early 1970s, Sally Potter made avant-garde short films before moving on to experimental dramatic features that incorporate music, literature, dance, theater, and performance. She typically works on multiple elements of her films, from script and direction to sound design, editing, performance, and production. Potter’s films elegantly blend poetry and politics, give voice to women’s stories and romantic liaisons, and explore themes of desire and passion, self-expression, and the role of the individual in society. Films included in the program are her low-budget short, Thriller (1979); her first feature, The Gold Diggers (1983); Potter’s most critically acclaimed film, Orlando (1992); and RAGE (2009), her most recent project.

Jaroslava Brychtovà at the Glass Art Society in Seattle, 1990 (photograph by Russell Johnson and provided by the Pratt Fine Arts Center)

The Brychtovà Forum – Women Artists Working in Glass: Celebrating Innovation and Vision Across Generations
Seattle Art Museum and Pratt Fine Arts Center
1300 First Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101; and 1902 South Main Street, Seattle, WA 98144
July 15–18, 2010

Several prominent organizations from Seattle’s glass art community are collaborating to present “The Brychtovà Forum – Women Artists Working in Glass: Celebrating Innovation and Vision Across Generations,” a four-day series of free lectures, panel discussions, and events to be held July 15–18, 2010. The forum was conceived to celebrate the rich tradition of women working in glass while also recognizing the life and work of one of the most important artists in the history of the glass movement.

Jaroslava Brychtovà’s lecture, the cornerstone of the Brychtovà Forum, will be presented at the Seattle Art Museum on Thursday, July 15, accompanied by a new documentary by the Czech filmmaker Jiri Malek. The lecture will be followed by a reception and special exhibition curated by Sarah Traver opening across the street at the Traver Gallery. Panel discussions organized by three generations of leading glass artists—including Flora Mace, Shelley Muzylowski Allen, and Rebecca Chernow—will be presented at Seattle Art Museum throughout the day on Friday and on Saturday morning, all of which will be free and open to the public on Saturday afternoon. Also on Saturday afternoon, a glassblowing demonstration will take place at the Pratt Fine Arts Center (1902 South Main Street, Seattle, WA 98144; 206-328-2200; info@pratt.org). Admission to forum events is free but seating is limited; tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis upon registration.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts singles out the best in feminist art and scholarship from North America and around the world. CWA Picks may include exhibitions, conferences, symposia, panels, lectures, and other events. The following selections should not be missed.

June 2010

Maude Kerns, Composition #85 (In and Out of Space), 1951, oil on canvas, 28 × 22 in. Gift of the Estate of Maude I. Kerns, collection of Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene (1969:8.7). (photograph provided by the Whatcom Museum)

Show of Hands: Northwest Women Artists 1880–2010
Whatcom Museum
121 Prospect Street, Bellingham, WA 98225
April 24–August 8, 2010

The exhibition coincides with centennial of women’s suffrage in Washington State. Featuring more than ninety works of art by sixty-three women artists from Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia, Show of Hands celebrates women’s contributions to the legacy of Northwestern art and examines the myriad talents women of the Northwest have displayed since 1880 through painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video, and installation.

Lil Picard and Counterculture New York
Grey Art Gallery
New York University, 100 Washington Square East, New York, NY 10003
April 20–July 10, 2010

Lil Picard and Counterculture New York features over seventy works by a pioneering feminist artist who played varied and acknowledged roles in the New York art world from the 1950s through the 1970s. This first comprehensive exhibition presents paintings, sculptures, drawings, collages, and several landmark installations and performances, as well as photographs, writings, and films. All works are drawn from the collections of the University of Iowa Museum of Art, which organized the show, and from the University of Iowa Libraries, which houses the artist’s extensive papers.

Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
May 7, 2010–March 21, 2011

Women have expanded the roles of photography during its 170-year history by experimenting with every aspect of the medium. Organized by Roxana Marcoci and Eva Respini, Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography presents a selection of outstanding photographs by women artists, charting the medium’s history from the dawn of the modern period to the present day. Including more than two hundred works, the exhibition features celebrated masterworks and new acquisitions by Diane Arbus, Berenice Abbott, Claude Cahun, Imogen Cunningham, Rineke Dijkstra, Florence Henri, Roni Horn, Nan Goldin, Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, Lucia Moholy, Tina Modotti, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems, among many others. The exhibition also highlights works drawn from a variety of curatorial departments, including Bottoms, a large-scale Fluxus wallpaper by Yoko Ono.

In Praise of America: Selections from the Sellars Collection of Art by American Women
Huntsville Museum of Art
300 Church Street South, Huntsville, AL 35801
June 13–August 29, 2010

Selected from the museum’s recent acquisition of over four hundred nineteenth- and twentieth-century works of art by American women, this exhibition presents accomplished landscapes, portraits, and genre scenes that celebrate the dramatic scenery, diverse people, and distinctive spirit of our great nation. Bringing a previously unseen facet of art history to life, the Sellars Collection offers a unique opportunity to discover contributions of women artists forged during a period of struggle and little recognition. The largest public collection of its kind, many of the artists represented in the collection studied at major academies, received accolades and awards, and pioneered the way for those who would follow. In Praise of America features approximately forty paintings, sculptures, and works on paper and includes engaging florals, still lifes, portraits, genre scenes, and landscapes reflecting different regions of the United States.

Ayumi Shigematsu, Circuit Tree, 2006, stoneware (artwork © Ayumi Shigematsu; photograph © Hideya Amemiya and provided by International Arts and Artists)

Soaring Voices: Recent Ceramics by Women from Japan
American University Museum
Katzen Arts Center at American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20016
June 15–August 15, 2010

Through eighty-six works by twenty-five women artists, this exhibition, organized by International Art and Artists, showcases contemporary interpretations of a traditional art form through a range of motifs inspired from the natural world: plants, shells, mountains, rivers, and the play of light and shadow. Other sources of inspiration for these ceramic vessels can be found in the Noh Theater and kimono patterns of the Edo Period.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts singles out the best in feminist art and scholarship from North America and around the world. CWA Picks may include exhibitions, conferences, symposia, panels, lectures, and other events. The following selections should not be missed.

May 2010

Carolee Schneemann: Within and Beyond the Premises
Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art
State University of New York at New Paltz, 1 Hawk Drive, New Paltz, NY 12561
February 26–July 25, 2010

Over forty works spanning the career of pioneering painter, filmmaker, writer, performance, and installation artist Carolee Schneemann are featured in this edition of the Dorsky Museum’s Hudson Valley Masters exhibition series. Schneemann has lived in New Paltz, New York, for nearly fifty years while sustaining an international career. This selective but extensive overview of her entire career, organized to highlight connections between the artist’s life and art, includes paintings, drawings, photography, installation work, video projections, and writings.

Nicole Ianuzelli, Envelope 2, 2007, latex and oil on canvas, 32 x 36 in. (artwork © Nicole Ianuzelli)

Illusive Balance: Transcendental Pattern and Layered Surface
Mabel Smith Douglass Library Galleries
Rutgers University, 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
March 17–June 7, 2010

This Mary H. Dana Women Artist Series exhibition showcases abstract paintings and drawings by four New York– and New Jersey–based artists—Marsha Goldberg, Nicole Ianuzelli, Lisa Pressman, and Debra Ramsay—who were selected by a jury of visual-arts professionals. Goldberg and Ianuzelli work in oil and acylic, while Pressman and Ramsay primarily use encaustic. For more details, download the press release and catalogue (posted later this month).

“Making Ourselves Visible”
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
May 22, 2010, 11:00 AM–5:00 PM

This interactive program, organized by the feminist artist Liz Linden and the writer Jen Kennedy, explores the question “What does feminism look like today?” and encourages visitors to take part by voicing their ideas and questions.