SUMMER 2014
DIRECTOR’S LETTER
Dear Members and Friends, It is a pleasure to introduce you to Total Art: Contemporary Video and Meret Oppenheim: Tender Friendships, which you will enjoy learning about in this issue. Total Art is our first major exhibition at NMWA solely focusing on video art and is something to celebrate! Created by NMWA Chief Curator Kathryn Wat, it begins with a work from the 1970s, when the medium was young and women were among its most ambitious pioneers. It culminates in new and inventive works from today by women at the forefront of the genre. As part of this groundbreaking exhibition, we are proud to introduce a new feature on NMWA’s website: a mini-site complete with video clips, interviews, and other art by the ten terrific women in Total Art. Find this must-see part of the show at nmwa.org/total-art-videos. It will enable each of you to experience our video show in your own special way. Our other new exhibition, in the Teresa Lozano Long Gallery, focuses on Surrealist Meret Oppenheim. Friendship is the byword and the genesis of this wonderful project. As you will discover, the artworks included are inspired by the friendship between two eighteenthcentury poets, Bettine Brentano and Karoline von Günderode. Equally important, the exhibition arose from NMWA Curator of Book Arts Krystyna Wasserman’s friendships with the late librarian of the Walker Art Center Rosemary Furtak and Vassar College art librarian Thomas Hill. Many of the works on view are recent donations by Mr. Hill to NMWA, hence the title “tender friendships.” We thank other friends as well for their generosity, including the artist’s niece Lisa Wenger and an anonymous collector. Finally, it is my privilege to announce one more exhibition you may visit at any time from anywhere—Selections from NMWA’s Collection created in partnership with the Google Art Project. This March 8, on International Women’s Day, the museum made fifty-nine artworks available online to visitors worldwide, including historical paintings, sculptures, pastels, rare prints, silver, and more. Read more on page twenty-six, then visit the site to tour the museum, see our Ruysch in high definition, and experience the collection from afar. Thank you for supporting these important projects, developed by your one and only museum in the world solely dedicated to women’s creative accomplishments.
Susan Fisher Sterling Alice West Director, NMWA
The National Museum of Women in the Arts brings recognition to the achievements of women artists of all periods and nationalities by exhibiting, preserving, acquiring, and researching art by women and by teaching the public about their accomplishments. MUSEUM INFORMATION Location: 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20005 Public transportation: Take metrorail to Metro Center station, 13th Street exit; walk two blocks north to corner of New York Avenue and 13th Street Website: http://nmwa.org womeninthearts.wordpress.com Main: 202-783-5000 Toll free: 800-222-7270 Member Services: 866-875-4627 Shop: 877-226-5294 Tours: 202-783-7996 Mezzanine Café: 202-628-1068 Library and Research Center: 202-783-7365 Magazine subscriptions: 866-875-4627 Hours: Monday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Sunday, noon–5 p.m. Closed Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day Admission: NMWA Members free, Adults $10, Visitors over 65 $8, Students $8, Youth under 18 free. Free Community Day is the first Sunday of every month. Admission for special exhibitions may vary; for information check www.nmwa.org.
Women in the Arts Summer 2014 (Volume 32, no. 2) Women in the Arts is a publication of the NATIONAL MUSEUM of WOMEN in the ARTS® Director | Susan Fisher Sterling Editor | Elizabeth Lynch Editorial Interns | Kyla Crisostomo, Shannon Weiss Design | Studio A, Alexandria, Virginia For advertising rates and information, call 202-266-2814 or email elynch@nmwa.org.
Women in the Arts is published three times a year as a benefit for museum members by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20005-3970. Copyright © 2014 National Museum of Women in the Arts. National Museum of Women in the Arts®, The Women’s Museum®, and Women in the Arts® are registered trademarks of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
On the cover: Alex Prager, La Petite Mort, 2012; Film HD, shot on Red Epic camera, with color and sound; Work and image courtesy of the artist, M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York and Hong Kong DIRECTOR’S PHOTO: © MICHELE MATTEI
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Cover Story
Features
Departments
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Arts News
Total Art: Contemporary Video
Meret Oppenheim: Tender Friendships
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Culture Watch
Video artists create immersive, experiential works—designing elaborate stage sets, filming at remote locations, incorporating digital technology and animation, and meticulously planning viewing spaces. Total Art highlights women artists’ position at the vanguard of video and reflects the medium’s global scope. Kathryn Wat and J. Rachel Gustafson
This exhibition explores friendship— a source of inspiration and support— in the art and life of Meret Oppenheim, a versatile and prolific artist whose work is often associated with Surrealism. Krystyna Wasserman
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Spring Report
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Dedicated Donor Jo Stribling
26 Shrinking the Digital Divide Through the Google Art Project and Wikipedia Edit-a-thons, NMWA is helping to bring work by women artists to a wider online audience. Laura Hoffman and J. Rachel Gustafson
16 Calendar 24 Recent Acquisitions Paintings by Anna Ancher and Helga Ancher 28 Museum News and Events 32 Supporting Roles 33 Museum Shop
SUMMER 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS
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ARTS NEWS
Arts News In Memoriam Maria Lassnig, an Austrian painter famous for her expressive self-portraiture, died May 6 at age ninety-four. A survey exhibition of her work is now on view at MoMA PS1, New York; it presents a wide range of work from throughout her career, described as “bravely exposing personal traumas, fantasies, and nightmares.” The artist endeavored to paint her immediate sensations—what she called “body awareness”—featuring expressive brushwork, showing herself exposed or stifled, and omitting or exaggerating body parts.Lassnig’s style, according to New Yorker writer Andrea Scott, “can suggest an Alice Neel portrait of an extraterrestrial.” Lassnig was born in Carinthia, Austria, in 1919, and attended the Academy for Applied Arts in Vienna. After spending time in Paris and
New York City, she returned to Vienna to teach at the Academy for Applied Arts—at that point she was the first female professor of painting at a German-speaking university. She studied animation in the early 1970s and created films, but she predominately continued to focus on painting, even while her figurative style was not in vogue. Lassnig achieved recognition only late in her career, exhibiting her work widely in Europe and the U.S.
“Celluloid Ceiling” Persists In a set of annual reports published by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, at San Diego State University, researchers found a dispiriting lack of progress in on-screen depictions of women characters in film, as well as in women’s behind-the-scenes leadership roles. As they
describe, surveying 300 of the year’s largest films in 2013, female characters were featured as protagonists of just 15%. Additionally, women accounted for just 16% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors. This represents a slight decrease from 1998, when the center started tracking these figures.
Winners’ Circle Donna Tartt won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her bestselling novel The Goldfinch (Little, Brown), which explores art’s power to captivate. Following a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that kills his mother, the protagonist of this coming-of-age story, Theo, finds himself the accidental thief of a small, famous painting and an inhabitant of a difficult world. Through his voice and the novel’s other characters, the story reflects on beauty, death, and the complexity of people’s interaction with art: “Isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?”
A Monumental “Subtlety” The first large-scale public art project by prominent artist Kara Walker, sited in Brooklyn in a Domino Sugar Factory, is elaborately titled A Subtlety; or the Marvelous Sugar Baby: an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant. Walker’s work has long confronted racial stereotypes by depicting, often in cut paper, disturbing scenes of racial oppression and cruelty. This work shows a monumental, sphinxlike black woman sculpted in refined white sugar, surrounded by smaller figures of smiling boys with baskets. These figures are overt caricatures, pushing viewers to consider the sugar industry’s fraught racial history. Funded by Creative Time, and on view through July 6, this project also includes poetry, prose, and illustration responses from five renowned contributors. An essay by HaitianAmerican author Edwidge Danticat, The Price of Sugar, describes contemporary sugar
Maria Lassnig, Selbstporträt expressive, 1945; Oil and charcoal on fiberboard, 23 ¾ x 19 in.; Courtesy of the artist and MoMA PS1
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Left: Kara Walker, A Subtlety, 2014; Photography by Jason Wyche, Courtesy Creative Time Above: Judy Chicago, Virginia Woolf (test plate for The Dinner Party), 1978; Glazed porcelain, 14 in. diameter; NMWA, Gift of Elizabeth A. Sackler in honor of Wilhelmina Cole Holladay and the 20th Anniversary of the National Museum of Women in the Arts
workers: “Recruited under false pretenses and sometimes trafficked from Haiti, many of these men and women (and children too) work in Dominican sugarcane villages, or bateyes, in conditions that barely differ from those of their 18th-century forebears.” Walker’s art, and the programs surrounding the installation, emphasize that, in Danticat’s words, “a much higher price is being paid for sugar than the few dollars we hand over at the supermarket counter.”
In Memoriam The American artist Sturtevant, who gained fame for appropriating and mimicking other
artists’ styles, died on May 7. She constantly reinvented herself and her art, exploring issues of authorship and originality by creating fascinating, ever-changing work in formats that were better known as the signature styles of other artists—for example, a Jasper Johnsesque flag painting, and a silk-screened image of Marilyn Monroe in the style of Andy Warhol. She mastered a wide range of mediums in order to continue her dialogue with other artists in painting, film, installation, and more. Sturtevant, who preferred to be known solely by her last name, was at the forefront of the exploration of uniqueness that prevails in today’s art world.
Correction In “Judy Chicago: Circa ’75” in the winter/ spring issue, an image caption for Virginia Woolf (test plate for The Dinner Party) displayed incorrect information. The work was donated to the museum by Elizabeth A. Sackler in honor of Wilhelmina Cole Holladay and the 20th Anniversary of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
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SUMMER 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS
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Alabama
COURTESY OF DC MOORE GALLERY, NEW YORK; © JANET FISH/LICENSED BY VAGA, NEW YORK
Janet Fish, Anderson’s Fairy Tales, 1999; On view at the Huntsville Museum of Art
elasticity and durability of the human body, projecting into space in unexpected ways. This exhibition, the first museum show to examine these works together, includes pieces from the 1970s to the present.
Rose Cabat, Feelies; On view at the Tucson Museum of Art
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND THE TUCSON MUSEUM OF ART
Janet Fish: Master of Light & Shadow Huntsville Museum of Art On view through July 27, 2014
Georgia Helen Levitt: In the Street Telfair Museums: Jepson Center, Savannah On view through September 21, 2014
who is best known for her innovative glazes— ranging from organic to jewel tones—on small porcelain pots called “feelies,” often resembling onions or figs, which she developed in the 1960s.
Colorado
Arizona Rose Cabat at 100: A Retrospective Exhibition of Ceramics Tuscon Museum of Art On view through September 14, 2014 This exhibition celebrates the hundredth birthday of Cabat, a studio ceramicist,
Senga Nengudi: The Material Body Museum of Contemporary Art Denver On view through July 13, 2014 Senga Nengudi, Untitled, 2011; On view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver
KHANNA FAMILY COLLECTION, INDIA
Fish is renowned for invigorating the genre of still life through her vibrant painting style and the witty combinations of objects she depicts. Glass bowls overflowing with fruit, exotic vases, sumptuous textiles, and appetizing treats are arranged and rendered in forty-four paintings.
Stretched and twisted, Nengudi’s sculptures made of everyday materials evoke the
© ESTATE OF HELEN LEVITT
C U LT U R E WAT C H
Culture Watch | Exhibitions
Helen Levitt, New York, c. 1940; On view at the Telfair Museums
For more than seventy years, Levitt (1913–2009) photographed life on the streets of New York City. Roaming through the Lower East Side, Spanish Harlem, and other urban neighborhoods, she created revealing work that observes people of every age, race, and class, without attempting to impose social commentary.
Books Siri Hustvedt’s novel The Blazing World (Simon & Schuster, 2014) is a compilation of statements, interviews, articles, and journal entries surrounding the story of Harriet Burden, a neglected artist and the widow of a renowned art collector, who finds herself and her work largely ignored by the art world. Believing that this is an issue of gender, Burden devises a series of experiments she calls Maskings, in which she presents her artwork under the identities of her male “masks.” Yet controversy ensues upon Burden’s revelation of the hoax, when she receives backlash from critics who believe the final piece, Beneath, was in fact the creation of admired artist Rune, Burden’s third and final “mask,” who himself denies her allegations. By presenting the different perspectives of those involved, Hustvedt does not aim to resolve any issues nor disclose objective truths, but to explore the misunderstandings and complexities of the characters’ stories and psyches. The Blazing World addresses the hierarchical nature of Burden’s art world and layers fiction with reality, producing a stimulating novel that stretches both emotion and intellect. —Kyla Crisostomo 4
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Cristina Iglesias: Metonymy (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and DelMonico Books, 2013), published for the artist’s 2013 retrospective in Madrid, catalogues Iglesias’s large-scale sculptural installations, which explore the “relationship between viewer, art, and landscape.” Born in San Sebastián, Spain, Iglesias creates art influenced by Islamic architecture, the natural world, and the written word, which she often directly integrates into her work. Her sculptural pavilions, doors, screens, fountains, caves, and corridors—spaces that activate environments—often feature latticed walls and botanical-motif relief sculptures. The book delves into several of her installations and public commissions, with preparatory drawings and statements from the artist. Themes of access and wonderment resonate in her work, particularly a labyrinthine pavilion in Brazil and a fountain in Antwerp that appears to follow tidal rhythms. For an underwater installation off the Mexican coast, which will become an artificial reef, she created a lattice that incorporates a sixteenthcentury text about the mythical island of Atlantis. The volume’s essays and images present Iglesias’s work in depth and detail, evoking the exploration that inspires the artist.—Elizabeth Lynch
Texas
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Beili Liu: Chine Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont On view through August 31, 2014 Beili Liu, Chine, 2014; On view at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas
Melanie Smith with Rafael Ortega, Bulto—School Sequence, 2011; On view at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
This exhibition of work by England-born, Mexico City-based Smith focuses on three video-based installation works: Xilitla: Dismantled 1 (2010); Bulto: Fragments (2011); and Elevator (2012). Working in cinematic installations since the late 1990s, Smith’s recent work is increasingly poetic, sensual, and surreal.
Amy Sillman: one lump or two (Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and DelMonico Books, 2013) accompanies a museum survey, organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art/ Boston (ICA) in late 2013, that traverses the length of Sillman’s twenty-fiveyear career. The opening pages of the catalogue set the tone for the brightly colored and boldly written monograph, featuring a series of the artist’s witty cartoons and graphics. A sparse cartoon, for example, shows a woman dancing on a table with a record player and mouse at her feet. It reads, “There are too few parties, and no wild ones.” However, Sillman’s work suggests just the opposite—the images in the catalogue show a riotous romp of audacious expressions, colors, lines, verse, abstractions, and figures that appear to simultaneously oppose and marry. Helen Molesworth, the Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the ICA, curated the exhibition and served as the catalogue’s editor. Her introductory essay speaks to these juxtapositions and suggests that the recurring representations of “interjection and
Annette Messager Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney July 24–October 26, 2014 Annette Messager, Cones noirs/ Black cones, 2009; On view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
IMAGE COURTESY THE ARTIST AND MARIAN GOODMAN, GALLERY, PARIS AND NEW YORK, © THE ARTIST
Melanie Smith Contemporary Arts Museum Houston On view through June 15, 2014 COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GALERIE PETER KILCHMANN, ZURICH
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND THE MISSOULA ART MUSEUM
Alison Reintjes, DoubleColumn, 2014; On view at the Missoula Art Museum
Reintjes created DoubleColumn, a site-specific installation, from powdercoated aluminum, departing from her familiar ceramic medium. It features repeated polygon shapes that call to mind the pattern and decoration movement, reframe the space, and move viewers to feel both stimulated and peaceful.
International Australia
Liu’s site-specific installation, comprising materials delicately suspended from the gallery ceiling, strikes a balance between old-school emotion and progressive innovation, while blending Eastern and Western aesthetics. The exhibition also features the museum’s film of her installation process.
Alison Reintjes: DoubleColumn Missoula Art Museum On view through July 27, 2014
At once playful and disturbing, the oeuvre of renowned French artist Messager encompasses drawing, artist’s books, photography, sculpture, and installation, often incorporating everyday materials. Featuring works from the late 1970s to the present, this retrospective includes her large kinetic installations.
displacement amplify the contradictory affective states of neurosis and happiness, loneliness and sociability, which typify [Sillman’s] career.” The publication features more than one hundred illustrated images of Sillman’s early drawings; petite, black-and-white cartoon figures; multicolored bust portraits; text-based satirical charts; monumental abstract paintings; comic book-like “‘zines”; and more recent iPhone-assisted digital animations. In addition to Molesworth, the publication includes essays from New York-based artist Thomas Eggerer, Harvard University Professor of Fine Arts Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, and University of California, Berkeley PhD candidate Daniel Marcus. After closing at the ICA and traveling to the Aspen Art Museum, Amy Sillman: one lump or two is on view at Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies in New York from June 28 to September 21, 2014. —J. Rachel Gustafson
Amy Sillman, Black Doorway, 2011; On view at Bard College June 28– September 21, 2014
SUMMER 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS
COURTESY OF THE CENTER FOR CURATORIAL STUDIES, BARD COLLEGE, ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY; PHOTO: NICK ASH
Montana
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SPRING REPORT
Spring Report
Clockwise from left: Janneken Smucker (center) with Quilt Alliance board member Lisa Ellis, members Le Rowell and Alan Jabbour, and board member Amy Henderson; A group from the Daughters of Dorcas and Sons; A workshop participant experiments with sashiko embroidery
It’s Been “Quilt” the Spring The special exhibition “Workt by Hand”: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts attracted droves of visitors during its December 2013–April 2014 run. Exhibition programming—including gallery talks, in-gallery demonstrations, and hands-on workshops—encouraged visitors to reflect on their own associations with this art form and to establish new ones. Museum staff and visiting speakers presented gallery talks to more than 450 enthusiastic visitors. Particularly popular were the hour-long talks led by visiting quilt experts Alden O’Brien, curator of costume and textiles at DAR Museum; Catherine Morris, Sackler Family Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum and curator of “Workt by Hand”; and Janneken Smucker, assistant professor of history at West Chester University (Pennsylvania) and author of the 2013 book Amish Quilts: Crafting an American Icon. These experts illuminated the history of quilting in America and discussed ongoing scholarship.
Demonstrations & Workshops Left Everyone in “Stitches” In-gallery demonstrations provided visitors with opportunities to observe first-hand the effort and time that go into creating quilts. Talented members of the D.C. Modern Quilt Guild, Daughters of Dorcas and Sons, and the McLean Chapter of Quilters Unlimited highlighted hand-quilting techniques, offered advice and assistance, and shared their treasures and creations. These guild members transformed the museum’s galleries into 6
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modern-day quilting frolics, enlivening the space and educating more than 200 visitors while contributing to an age-old tradition. Guest teaching artists and textile specialists Jennifer Lindsay and Alice Abrash taught three hands-on workshops that introduced visitors ages ten and older to the techniques and traditions of yo-yo quilts, crazy quilts, and sashiko embroidery. The first workshop explored yo-yo quilts, which are visually dynamic textiles comprising small circles of fabric gathered into individual rosettes and sewn together. This quilting tradition became popular in the years surrounding the Great Depression and proves that objects
of beauty can be made of humble materials. Workshop participants learned several methods for forming yo-yos and incorporated their creations into wearable art. Crazy quilts, the focus of the second workshop, are ornamental textiles made with luxurious silks and velvets arranged asymmetrically. Crazy quilts borrow visual cues from the crazed glazes of Japanese pottery and the detailed decorative stitching of English embroidery, both of which were introduced to American audiences at the Centennial International Exposition of 1876. Participants learned about the history of crazy quilts and created lavender sachets by piecing, embroidering, and embellishing their own crazy quilt squares. In conjunction with the 2014 National Cherry Blossom Festival, participants explored sashiko embroidery during the final workshop. “Sashiko,” meaning “little stabs” in Japanese, was developed for both function and beauty. Traditionally, running stitches sewn into patterns were added to garments to reinforce well-worn areas. Today, sashiko stitches embellish attire, bedclothes, and linens. Participants experimented with this embroidery tradition to make teapot trivets. During each of these workshops, participants explored first-hand the challenges and rewards of quiltmaking. One workshop attendee said that the series provided “terrific opportunities to sit with grand women, learn the histories of these techniques, and practice the art of stitchery.”
A Conversation with Three Justices On Sunday, March 16, NMWA partnered with the Embassy of France on Legacies of Women Leaders: A Conversation with Three Justices, convening Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella, Supreme Court of Canada; Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court of the United States; and Chief Justice (Ret.) Dorit Beinisch, Supreme Court of Israel. Judy Woodruff, co-anchor of PBS NewsHour, moderated a lively conversation exploring public assumptions about gender bias, early-career challenges the women faced, and justice systems in the three countries. A dinner and some event costs were supported by the Honorable Mary V. Mochary and Justice Abella, Justice Ginsburg, Chief Justice (Ret.) Susan and Bob Bennett. Dorit Beinisch, and panel moderator Judy Woodruff
D E D I C AT E D D O N O R
Dedicated Donor | Jo Stribling
I’ve had the chance to meet people all over the world and study women artists. It’s just too good to be true.
T
here are so many wonderful stories,” says Jo Stribling, of her involvement with the National Museum of Women in the Arts and its Texas Committee. She met NMWA Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay when Holladay was building support for the museum before its opening. Stribling was able to host the meeting in Texas, which began her longtime support: “I have always loved art, so I was so happy to be able to host the event and learn about the museum. I enjoyed Mrs. Holladay very much immediately. She was just lovely, and the story she told was wonderful.” Stribling became a founding member of the museum, giving her first gift in honor of her mother, Louisa Thatcher Lawrence, who had recently died and who also loved the arts. “I still see her name near the door when I enter the museum,” she says. Stribling has found many other thoughtful ways to support NMWA over the years. She and her husband, Thomas Stribling, were founding members of the Elisabeth A. Kasser Wing, which allowed NMWA to expand its space, they have donated generously to the endowment, and they sponsored the Information Desk from which NMWA staff and volunteers greet museum visitors. “I’m always thinking of something to do for the museum,” she says. She has loved seeing different exhibitions at NMWA, and vividly recalls several of her favorites, including the Lion King costumes in Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire, shown in 2000. Holladay says, “The many kind contributions Jo Stribling has made through the Texas Committee, endowment, NAB, and more are greatly appreciated. I have wonderful memories of our times together.” Those memories include a trip to the home of late NMWA patron Lois Pollard Price in Kyle, Texas, where Price gave the million-dollar gift that would endow the museum’s Lois Pollard Price Acquisition Fund. Stribling remembers that she was worried about getting Holladay to the airport on time, but that Holladay took time visiting and graciously thanking
Price. “As we were leaving,” Stribling recalls, “she looked at me and said, ‘How do you begin to thank someone enough for that kind of gift?’” Stribling relishes the ongoing friendships she has formed through the arts—she has been painting since she was a girl, and fondly remembers receiving her first set of oil paints after her father found her playing with house paint. NMWA’s Texas Committee provided another opportunity to build her circle of art-appreciating friends. The committee has a unique structure—members are spread widely across the state—and as Stribling describes, “We quickly decided that we would have a meeting in each area where we had at least three members. We got to be the best of friends, and it has been so nice to know women from all over Texas.” Elizabeth Stafford Hutchinson, a close friend of Holladay and native Texan, was particularly important to the group. Hutchinson lived in Texas as well as Washington, D.C., and acted as a galvanizing force for the committee and museum. She died in 2010, and last year the Texas Committee took a Mississippi River cruise in her memory. In the process, they raised money for the Elizabeth Stafford Hutchinson Endowed Internship fund, which provides a stipend for a student with ties to Texas to intern full-time at NMWA each summer. Stribling has also been a member of the NMWA Advisory Board since 1996, and has taken several trips with the Endowment Circle, including cruises to Greece and the Baltic Sea. She feels confident in the museum’s future, and looks forward to future exhibitions, programs, and committee meetings. After watching the museum grow and being deeply connected over the years, she says, “I’ve had the chance to meet people from all over the world and to know more and study more about women artists. It’s just too good to be true.”
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TOTAL ART
C ontemporary Video June 6–October 12, 2014 Kathryn Wat and J. Rachel Gustafson
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omen artists were among the pioneers of video art in the 1960s and 1970s. They often used the medium to critique mainstream media and document their performances; many perceived video as a populist tool for political change. Yet even in video’s earliest days, women artists were motivated by its power to illuminate social, psychological, and spiritual issues. Artists today combine multiple mediums to develop immersive video installations. They film on stage sets and at remote locations, incorporate digital animation, and methodically plan viewing spaces. Featuring several recently acquired works in NMWA’s collection, Total Art highlights the inventive processes and compelling subjects that sustain women artists’ position at the forefront of video, a term used to describe a range of moving-image technologies.
Mwangi Hutter, Neger Don't Call Me (installation view), 2000; DVD, speakers, four wood chairs, and Dolby surround sound; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, Washington, D.C., Image courtesy of the artists
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IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, ©MARIKO MORI
ideo artists often use popular media formats, but Dara Birnbaum (b. 1946) was among the first artists to engage critically with television’s structure and content. She developed Technology /Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–79) from footage she appropriated from the 1970s CBS television series starring Lynda Carter. Birnbaum focused on the show’s devices for transfixing viewers, including special effects, and constructed a high-powered new narrative for the super-heroine. Her video features rattling sequences of thunderous and fiery explosions and successive scenes of Carter’s endlessly spinning transformations into Wonder Woman. Birnbaum’s dynamic mashup of Wonder Woman immediately transcended the small screen of then at-home television. In the late 1970s, she screened Technology /Transformation in the window of a hair salon, on cable television in New York (opposite the local CBS station’s airing of Wonder Woman), and across very large walls of video monitors at New York City’s Palladium, a nightclub and major venue for rock bands. Rather than deconstruct the video medium, in her early works Mariko Mori (b. 1967) luxuriated in video’s time-based structure to emphasize the otherworldly content of her art. In Miko no Inori (1996), Mori appears as a space-age Shinto shrine maiden, or miko, wearing a cyborg-style costume. She slowly shifts her gaze between the viewer and the crystal ball she caresses in her hands. The video was filmed in the futuristic Kansai International Airport in Osaka, Japan. As travelers hurry to their destinations, they appear to be oblivious to the “shaman-girl” who sees all in her crystal sphere, perhaps an allusion to modern society’s disconnect with the spiritual realm. Mori began her art career with performances and photographs in which she acted out a range of pop-culture-based personae. As
Mariko Mori, Miko no Inori, 1996; Color video and sound; Collection of Pérez Art Museum Miami, Courtesy of Dennis and Debra Scholl
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By layering visual imagery with motion and sound, artists invite the viewer to participate more actively in the creation of meaning. she transitioned to spiritual subjects, Mori chose to work in video: “Miko no Inori was the first time I used video, so I had to work with time. It was similar to earlier performances . . . and I still felt the same emotions.”1 Performance and video artists understand that by layering visual imagery with motion and sound, they invite the viewer to participate more actively in the creation of meaning. To shape meaning more directly, artists often cast themselves in their videos. Performances and videos by Mwangi Hutter (Ingrid Mwangi [b. 1975] and Robert Hutter [b. 1964]) illuminate the body as a potent medium for expressing the power of history and memory in shaping human experience. In Neger Don’t Call Me (2000), Mwangi appears with her dreadlocks woven into forms resembling masks and animal heads. Through speakers in the installation’s four chairs, she is heard growling, chanting, and recounting her experiences as a person of multiple ethnicities living in Germany, where she moved after her childhood in Kenya. The materiality of Mwangi’s body—and her manipulation of it—heightens the stirring content of the work. “My body is the only thing that I own,” she states. “I react, interpret, and question the clichés and stereotypes with which I am faced.”2 Artists living in new lands often focus on themes of cultural transplantation, yet their art may be equally powerful in its formal and poetic dimensions. Works by Michal Rovner (b. 1957), who lives and works in New York and Israel, her birthplace, are typically interpreted as emblems of Israelis’ experience of exile or displacement, but she intends them to signify the broader human journey. In photographs and videos, Rovner depicts abstracted human figures moving through undefined spaces. Her Data Zone, Cultures Table #3 (2003) is a long table holding what appear to be illuminated petri dishes. Inside each dish is a video showing people clustering and circulating in swarm-like groups. Through extensive digital editing, Rovner multiplied the figures and removed most details so that they are barely recognizable as human, appearing more like microorganisms. “I am not looking to record the information of specific detail. I’m trying to record what is underneath,” she explains.3
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, ELECTRONIC ARTS INTERMIX, NEW YORK, AND MARIAN GOODMAN GALLERY, NEW YORK AND PARIS IMAGE © MICHAL ROVNER, COURTESY OF ARTISTS' RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK; PHOTO ELLEN LABENSKI, COURTESY OF PACE GALLERY
ABOVE Dara Birnbaum, Technology/
Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978–79; Single-channel color video and stereo sound, 5 min. 50 sec.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Elizabeth A. Sackler LEFT Michal Rovner, Data Zone, Cultures
Table #3 (detail), 2003; Steel table, 6 petri dishes, 4 monitors, glass plates, lighting, and digital files, 33 x 118 ½ x 31 ½ in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, Washington, D.C.
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IMAGE COURTESY OF EVE SUSSMAN | RUFUS CORPORATION, PHOTO BY BENEDIKT PARTENHEIMER FOR THE RUFUS CORPORATION
Alex Prager, La Petite Mort, 2012; Film HD, shot on Red Epic camera, with color and sound; Courtesy of the artist, M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York and Hong Kong
Eve Sussman | Rufus Corporation, Erin as María, production still from 89 Seconds at Alcázar, 2004; High-definition video installation; Courtesy of the artists
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Rovner’s spare aesthetic is rare in the video field, and many artists pursue the luxe look of more commercial productions. Los Angeles-based Alex Prager (b. 1979) adapts Hollywood’s cinematic tools to develop her dreamlike films. In addition to using high-definition film technology, she meticulously supervises casting, costuming, hair and makeup, narration, and musical scoring. In La Petite Mort (2012), a woman played by French actress Judith Godrèche is seen standing on a railroad track as a train speeds toward her. As the moment of impact arrives, the screen goes blank, and Godrèche is then seen swimming underwater. She emerges to face a range of figures, including her male “Object of Desire.” As the soundtrack reaches a crescendo, Godrèche collapses to the ground, symbolizing both death and sexual ecstasy, as referenced in the work’s tongue-in-cheek title. “I like to mock up a sort of surreal, more colorful version of the world I live in. In that world, anything can happen,” says Prager.4 The large scale of 89 Seconds at Alcázar (2004), a video installation by Eve Sussman | Rufus Corporation, may echo cinematic projections, but the work’s improvised content and nonlinear narrative are closer in spirit to theater or dance. Sussman (b. 1961) directs Rufus Corporation, a collaborative group of visual, musical, and performing artists. Their 89 Seconds reflects upon Diego Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas (ca. 1656), which depicts members of the family and court of Philip IV of Spain. In the video, exquisitely costumed actors and dancers reimagine the moments leading up to and just after the instant captured in the Baroque-era painting. The video is not a moving-image version of Las Meninas but rather an exploration of how gesture implies meaning and narrative more evocatively than dialogue. “Tone trumps language,” Sussman observes.5 The actors in 89 Seconds improvised all of their movements and dialogue (which Sussman edited down to the barest murmurs) to allude to the complex relationships between the characters they embody. Sussman notes that the varied viewpoints of her camera are part of the distinction between 89 Seconds and Velázquez’s painting. Pipilotti Rist (b. 1962) also uses the moving camera to enrich content. In her video Blauer Leibesbrief (Blue Bodily Letter) (1992/98), she generates a jangly, up-close view of the female nude body using a hand-held camera. The camera pans along the length of a woman’s supine, jewel-adorned figure, and the imagery is notably un-erotic. The woman’s face, torso, legs, and feet all come into view in succession and do not coalesce into a representative whole. Rist thus avoids a voyeuristic view of the female body, preferring to present it as a powerful, wondrous, and surprising creation.
and more erratically until she collapses to the floor in dizziness and exhaustion. Playing on the Victorian-era preoccupation with the idea of female hysteria or emotional instability, Tschäpe looked to nineteenth-century folklore to develop her haunting imagery. “Lacrimacorpus” (Latin for “tear body”) refers to a mystical woodland creature that sobbed continuously because of its ill-fitting, warty skin. When captured by hunters, the being dissolved into tears and bubbles. The inflated latex bubbles visible around the dancer’s neck in Tschäpe’s video emblematize her tears and sadness. Like many video artists, Tschäpe works in multiple mediums. Our postmodern period emphasizes artists’ development of concepts and ideas rather than requiring concentration on a single medium. Kimsooja (b. 1957) creates textile-based sculpture, vid-
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, LUHRING AUGUSTINE, NEW YORK, AND HAUSER & WIRTH
Blauer Leibesbrief was filmed in a forest, and the woman’s body seems to be fused with the earth and twigs on which she rests. It is unclear whether she is sleeping or dead, but, lying perfectly still, she resembles a contemporary Snow White.6 The jewel-like palette of the video (Rist often digitally tweaks color) heightens its surreal quality. A propensity toward reverie and spell-boundedness is often considered a feminine trait.7 Lacrimacorpus (2004) by Janaina Tschäpe (b. 1973) evokes both fantasy and history. She filmed the work in Schloss Ettersburg, an eighteenth-century German castle where the poet Goethe often summered. The video depicts a woman in historical costume spinning like a musicbox dancer in the center of the castle’s parlor. As the video’s piano soundtrack increases in speed, the dancer turns faster
Pipilotti Rist, Blauer Leibesbrief (Blue Bodily Letter), 1992/98; Audio-video installation; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, Washington, D.C.
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IMAGE COURTESY OF KIMSOOJA STUDIO
Contemporary video echoes the nineteenth-century German concept of gesamtkunstwerk (“total artwork”), combining many techniques to form new realities.
ABOVE Kimsooja,
Thread Routes–Chapter 1, 2010; Single-channel video projection, 16-mm film transferred to HD format, and sound; Courtesy of Kimsooja Studio Ninna Nanna, 2007; 3-screen installation of 16-mm films transferred to DVD; Collection of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Museum purchase through the contributions of members of the Contemporary Acquisitions Council and the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund, 2008
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IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND OFFICE BAROQUE, BRUSSELS
RIGHT Margaret Salmon,
Total Art: Contemporary Video is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. The exhibition is made possible by the Weissman Family Foundation and Share Fund. Additional support is provided by the Cowles Charitable Trust and the members of NMWA.
Kathryn Wat is the chief curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. J. Rachel Gustafson is a curatorial fellow at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND TIERNEY GARDARIN GALLERY, NEW YORK
eos, performances, and site-specific installations, many of which relate to the acts of sewing or wrapping. For her, these are rich metaphors for the weaving together of time, memory, and life. Kimsooja’s Thread Routes—Chapter 1 (2010) was shot on location in the communities of Patacancha, Chinchero, and Taquile Island in southern Peru. The video shifts between panoramic scenes of the Andes Mountains and closely cropped images of native weavers at work. Patterns in the terraced landscape reverberate in the textiles’ designs and in the weavers’ rhythmic handwork. Kimsooja’s vision is impassioned but not sentimental. She does not emphasize cultural permanence in Thread Routes, but rather movement, processes, and transitions: “I explore my perspective through the specific communities that perform their passions, desires, and rituals. In a sense, I unwrap their bodies and minds, creating drawings of their movements and life.”8 Margaret Salmon (b. 1975) also focuses on the ritual and rhythm of daily life with highly expressive results. She created Ninna Nanna (2007) during a six-month residency in Italy after being awarded the inaugural Max Mara Art Prize for Women. The threescreen projection presents a trio of young Italian mothers caring for their babies and households. The soundtrack is formed by the mothers’ voices. They each sing a Tuscan lullaby (“ninna nanna” in Italian), their voices often overlapping in a kind of chorus. Strongly influenced by film styles that emerged in the mid-twentieth century, such as Italian neorealism and cinema vérité, Salmon’s video has an earthy quality, with a mix of color and black-and-white footage and lively camera motion. The retro aesthetic of Ninna Nanna forms an intriguing contrast with its venerable iconography. The video’s three-screen format recalls Renaissance triptych paintings featuring the Madonna and Child.9 Early video art countered traditional and more easily commoditized art forms such as painting and sculpture. Because video involves time, movement, and sound, it evolved from an edgy, counter-cultural instrument to an art form centered on the viewer’s experience. Although based in new technologies, contemporary video echoes the nineteenth-century German concept of gesamtkunstwerk (“total artwork”), combining many techniques to form new realities.
Janaina Tschäpe, Lacrimacorpus (Zeitschneide); Production still from Lacrimacorpus, 2004; Single-channel color video with sound; film transferred to DVD; Courtesy of the artist and Tierney Gardarin Gallery, New York Notes 1. Kathryn Hixson, “Future Perfect: An Interview with Mariko Mori,” New Art Examiner, vol. 26 (Dec 1998/Jan 1999), 45. 2. “Body As Art: Ingrid Mwangi Speaks from the Body” in Women, Power and Politics, online exhibition, accessed March 13, 2014, www.imow.org/wpp/stories/ viewStory?storyId=1107. 3. “Peter Gabriel vs. Michal Rovner,” Interview with Peter Gabriel, Black Book (Oct/Nov 2002), 106–108. 4. Claire O’Neill, “Out with the Old and in with the Old-Inspired: Fresh Photos at MoMA,” NPR: The Picture Show, August 26, 2010, accessed on March 10, 2014, http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2010/08/23/129381210/prager. 5. Katerina Gregos, “Eve Sussman: The Rape of the Sabine Women,” Flash Art International, vol. 39 (Jan/Feb 2006), 55. 6. Elisabeth Bronfen, “Pipilotti’s Body Camera” in Stephanie Rosenthal, ed., Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage (London: Hayward Gallery, 2012), 122–23. 7. Nancy Princenthal, “Spellbound” in Eleanor Heartney et al., The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2013), 69. 8. “Kimsooja: Ways of Being—A Conversation between Daina Augaitis and Kimsooja” in Daina Augaitis et al., KIMSOOJA Unfolding (Vancouver and Ostfildern: Vancouver Art Gallery and Hatje Cantz Verlad, 2013), 91. 9. Rebecca Rose, “A Lullaby with Resonance,” Financial Times, January 29, 2007.
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CALENDAR
Calendar 6 | 1–6 | 15
EXHIBITIONS
SUN–SUN
Meret Oppenheim: Tender Friendships On view through September 14, 2014 The First Woman Graphic Novelist: Helena Bocho˘ráková-Dittrichová On view through November 14, 2014, in the Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center; Open Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–12 p.m. and 1–5 p.m.
6 | 4–6 | 18
WED NOON
GALLERY TALK SERIES. Lunchtime Gallery Talks. Looking for some artistic and intellectual nourishment during your lunch break? Visit NMWA on Wednesdays for short gallery talks to explore special exhibitions and NMWA’s collection with museum staff. Free. No reservations required. 6 |4
SUN NOON–5 P.M.
COMMUNITY DAY. First-Sunday-of-theMonth Community Day. Visit NMWA on the first Sunday of the month, when members, guests, and new visitors alike receive free admission. Take this opportunity to explore summer exhibitions and a new rotation of the museum’s collection.
Total Art: Contemporary Video June 6–October 12, 2014
Meret Oppenheim, Table with Bird’s Feet, 1983; On view in Tender Friendships
6 | 1, 7 | 6, 8 |3 & 9| 7
MEMBERS’ DOUBLE DISCOUNT DAYS IN THE MUSEUM SHOP. For two weeks surrounding the opening of Total Art, NMWA members can take advantage of double discounts in the Museum Shop! Find great deals on jewelry, home accents, exhibition catalogues, and more.
6|5
THU 10 A.M.–3 P.M.
MEMBER PREVIEW DAY. Total Art: Contemporary Video. Come for an exciting member preview day to discover Total Art. Contemporary video artists design elaborate sets, film at remote locations, incorporate digital technology, and meticulously plan viewing spaces. The exhibition reflects the medium’s global scope and highlights women artists’ position at its forefront. Members receive double discounts (20%) in the Museum Shop. Visit http:// nmwa.org for a complete schedule. Free admission for members (with a current card) and a guest.
Meret Oppenheim
6 |11 Hand-Picked: Special Selections Margaret Salmon, Ninna Nanna, 2007; On view in Total Art
6 |18 “Daddy’s Little Girl” on selections from the collection 7 |16 Meret Oppenheim 8 |20 Meret Oppenheim
6|5
THU 10 A.M.–3 P.M.
SUMMER SIDEWALK SALE. Cool Bargains, Hot Savings! The Museum Shop will be selling a wide selection of items including books, jewelry, personal accessories, home accents, and global products at great sale prices in the Great Hall. All sales are final and no additional discounts will be extended on purchases. Member discounts will apply only to in-shop purchases.
Visit http://nmwa.org for more information and a complete calendar of events and programs.
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6|6
FRI 5:30–7:30 P.M.
NMWA NIGHTS. Total Art. Join NMWA’s Young pARTners Circle for a happy hour celebrating the opening of Total Art: Contemporary Video. Enjoy tours of the newly-installed exhibition, drinks, bar snacks, and exhibition-themed activities. For more information, visit http://nmwa.org.
6 | 25–10 | 8
WED NOON
GALLERY TALK SERIES. Total Art Conversation Pieces. Video art captures viewers’ attention in ways other mediums cannot. Immersive installations engage multiple senses, requiring time to view and appreciate. During each “Conversation Piece,” view selected videos featured in Total Art, then join NMWA staff in a conversation about what you saw, heard, felt, and thought. 6|25 Conversation Piece: Dara Birnbaum’s Technology/ Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978–79 7|2 Conversation Piece: Pipilotti Rist’s Blauer Leibesbrief (Blue Bodily Letter), 1992/98 7|9 Conversation Piece: Mwangi Hutter’s Neger Don’t Call Me, 2000 7|23 Conversation Piece: Michal Rovner’s Data Zone, Cultures Table #3, 2003 7|30 Conversation Piece: Janaina Tschäpe’s Lacrimacorpus, 2004 8 |6 Conversation Piece: Eve Sussman | Rufus Corporation’s 89 Seconds at Alcázar, 2004 8 |13 Conversation Piece: Margaret Salmon’s Ninna Nanna, 2007
7 | 14–7 | 18
MON–FRI, 9 A.M.–4 P.M.
TEACHER PROGRAM. Art, Books, and Creativity Institute. Empower and inspire your students through art! Join NMWA education staff, professional book artist Carol Barton, and curriculum and literacy specialists for this intensive and fun week centered on NMWA’s Art, Books, and Creativity (ABC) curriculum (www.artbookscreativity. org) and related online resources. No prior art experience is necessary, and classroom teachers are especially encouraged to apply. Participants receive free art materials for their classrooms and can register for graduate credit through Trinity University in Washington, D.C. Free. For more information and to apply, visit http://nmwa.org/ learn/educators.
Education programming is made possible by the Homer and Martha Gudelsky Family Foundation; the New Mexico State Committee of NMWA; Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston, the Shenson Foundation, in memory of Drs. Ben and A. Jess Shenson; the Leo Rosner Foundation; the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities; the Lois Lehrman Grass Foundation; and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Harriet E. McNamee Youth Education Fund; William and Christine Leahy; the Louis J. Kuriansky Foundation, Inc.; and the Junior League of Washington.
8 |27 Conversation Piece: Alex Prager’s La Petite Mort, 2012 9 |3 Conversation Piece: Mariko Mori’s Miko no Inori, 1996 9|10 Conversation Piece: Kimsooja’s Thread Routes— Chapter 1, 2010 9 |17 Conversation Piece: Mwangi Hutter’s Neger Don’t Call Me, 2000, and Janaina Tschäpe’s Lacrimacorpus, 2004 9 |24 Conversation Piece: Eve Sussman | Rufus Corporation’s 89 Seconds at Alcázar, 2004, and Alex Prager’s La Petite Mort, 2012 10 |1 Conversation Piece: Dara Birnbaum’s Technology/ Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978–79, and Margaret Salmon’s Ninna Nanna, 2007 10 |8 Conversation Piece: Pipilotti Rist’s Blauer Leibesbrief (Blue Bodily Letter), 1992/98, and Michal Rovner’s Data Zone, Cultures Table #3, 2003
Mariko Mori, Miko no Inori, 1996; OnView in Total Art
Visit http://nmwa.org for more information and a complete calendar of events and programs.
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Mereπ Oppe≠heim
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Wnder /iends≠ips April 26–September 14, 2014 Krystyna Wasserman
It is a rare occasion that an exhibition celebrates the life and art of one of the most prominent artists of the twentieth century, as well as the life of a librarian who developed a passion and devoted her modest resources to collecting the works of this artist. The heroines of Tender Friendships are Swiss artist Meret Oppenheim (1913–1985) and Rosemary Furtak (1943–2012), library director at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for twenty-nine years. Many of the works on view, including Oppenheim’s art and archival materials, are from Furtak’s collection, recently donated to the National Museum of Women in the Arts by her friend Thomas Hill.
All Oppenheim images courtesy of Lisa Wenger and Martin A. Bühler, Meret Oppenheim Estate Gloves, 1985; From the limited edition of 150 pairs of gloves housed in the Deluxe Edition of Parkett magazine, No. 4, 1985; 8 ¾ x 3 ¼ in. (each glove). Screenprint on goat suede, hand-stitched; Edition 107/150; NMWA; Gift of Thomas Hill in memory of Rosemary Furtak, from her collection; Photograph by Lee Stalsworth
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ppenheim’s life story is threaded with close friendships—with fellow artists, lovers, family, and others—which she said sustained her. She was fascinated by the friendship, poetry, and correspondence of two Romantic German writers, Bettine Brentano, later von Arnim (1785–1859) and Karoline von Günderode (1780–1806). Oppenheim painted two large canvases, For Bettine Brentano and For Karoline von Günderode, after reading Brentano’s memoir, first published in 1839, in which she vividly described her friendship with von Günderode, her teacher. She also created two drawings, Square, Semi-circle to the Right (Bettine Brentano), 1981, and A Few Lofty Spirits Next to the Orange Tree (Bettine Brentano), 1985. The paintings, in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Bern, are part of a major retrospective organized in honor of Oppenheim’s hundredth birthday in 2013; the drawings are on view in Tender Friendships. The friendship of Brentano and von Günderode also inspired Caroline, a volume of Oppenheim’s poetry and etchings published
by Edition Fanal in 1985, the same year the visionary founders of NMWA, Wilhelmina and Wallace Holladay, purchased the book for the collection. It was Oppenheim’s last work; not long after signing each copy of Caroline, Oppenheim died of a heart attack in Basel, at age seventy-two. The poetry and images in Caroline do not refer specifically to the letters of Brentano and von Günderode, but they evoke the atmosphere of excitement and enchantment the two poets and Oppenheim experienced in the presence of nature. Oppenheim’s Surrealist poems and images in Caroline are unlike the Romantic confessions of Brentano and von Günderode—she describes the dew on a rose eating marzipan, roaring lions, and a conversation with a beautiful crocodile. The etchings and embossings that illustrate her verses depict leaves, tree branches, butterfly wings, and sometimes pure, abstract impressions related to the artist’s state of mind. It is possible that Oppenheim titled her book Caroline because she felt emotionally closer to von Günderode—from 1938 to 1954, Oppenheim suffered from severe depression, and
Top: Schoolgirl’s Notebook (Le Cahier d’une Écolière), 1973; Etching on paper, embossed and printed in rust, gray, green, and black; Original blue paper-covered stiff wrappers, 11 x 8 ½ (closed); Edition 41/100; NMWA; Gift of Thomas Hill in memory of Rosemary Furtak, from her collection; Photograph by Lee Stalsworth
Above center: Photograph of Oppenheim by Claude Lê Anh in a paper jacket she created for an Italian designer; Enclosed with letter to Lamia Doumato, October 10, 1978; NMWA, Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center Collection; Gift of Lamia Doumato
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likely related to von Günderode, a brilliant poet and philosopher who committed suicide at age twenty-six. Brentano, generally a happier and more carefree spirit, explored the depths and heights of Romantic passion alongside von Günderode: “I am like one consumed in the fire and unable to bear the water that should extinguish it,” Brentano wrote.1 Works from Furtak’s collection include a limited edition of Schoolgirl’s Notebook, which Oppenheim made for her father in 1930, when she was sixteen years old. She did not like school, and the absurd equation x = hare (or rather an image of a hare) was intended to convince her father that he should allow her to go to Paris to study art. Her strategy worked, and in 1932, Oppenheim and her friend Irène Zurkinden arrived in Paris. After World War II, around 1950, Oppenheim gave Schoolgirl’s Notebook to André Breton, who published it in the magazine Le Surréalisme même in 1957, “virtually as evidence of the Surrealist myth of childhood as the primal state of artistic creativity.”2 After Breton died, his wife Elisa Breton returned the notebook to Oppenheim. It was published in 1973 in a limited edition of one hundred copies by Georges Visat in Paris. A handwritten letter to Elisa in which Oppenheim mentioned the notebook is also on view.
Top left: Genevieve’s Mirror (Der Spiegel der Genoveva), 1967; Debossed print, 10 x 6 ¾ in.; NMWA; Gift of Thomas Hill in memory of Rosemary Furtak, from her collection; Photograph by Lee Stalsworth
Table with Bird’s Feet, 1983; Top: wood, carved and goldplated; feet: bronze, 25 ½ x 27 ½ x 19 ¾ in.; On loan from Daphne Farago Collection, Delray Beach, Florida; Photograph by Suzanne Khalil
Top right: Sansibar (detail), 1981; Artist’s book, letterpress-printed poems, screenprints, serigraphs, and embossing, 11 x 5 ½ in.; Edition 84/200; Edition Fanal, Basel, Switzerland, NMWA; Gift of Thomas Hill in memory of Rosemary Furtak, from her collection
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Hands and gloves have always been part of Oppenheim’s iconography. Hands are the artist’s working tools, and gloves protect them. In 1936, the same year she created Object (her famous fur-lined teacup), Oppenheim made a drawing Design for a Glove as well as Fur Gloves with Wooden Fingers. Kathleen Bühler, curator of the exhibition Meret’s Sparks at the Kunstmuseum Bern in 2013, suggests that Oppenheim was inspired by the glove collection of Elsa Schiaparelli’s Paris fashion house, for which she designed jewelry and gloves between 1934 and 1939.3 In 1985, Oppenheim collaborated with Parkett art magazine—the magazine commissioned a signed, numbered edition of 150 pairs of gloves based on a drawing she made in the 1940s. They were made in Florence from fine gray goat suede, with a red silk-screened network of veins projected on the surface, finished with hand-stitching. A deluxe edition of Parkett, No. 4, 1985, from Furtak’s collection includes a pair of these gloves. A sculptural Table with Bird’s Feet, designed in 1939 for the Drouin Gallery in Paris and later manufactured in limited edition, was originally in Furtak’s collection; the table generously loaned to NMWA for this exhibition comes from the collection of Daphne Farago. Oppenheim’s feelings about man’s symbiotic relationship
with the world of birds, animals, and plants found an imaginative application in many of her works, including this playful and surreal piece of furniture. Matthias Frehner writes, “a stork has left footprints on the soft tabletop and as a punishment has to give it his legs as well.”4 For viewers, the table is a fantasy reflecting Oppenheim’s sense of humor and her interest in the internal (secret) lives of inanimate objects. Oppenheim was devoted to her family and friends, maintaining an extensive correspondence in German and French. A magnificent volume of this correspondence, Meret Oppenheim: Worte nicht in giftige Buchstaben einwickeln (Meret Oppenheim: Not to wrap words in poisonous letters), edited by Oppenheim’s niece Lisa Wenger and scholar Martina Corgnati, was published in 2013. Several of the works on view in Tender Friendships are in the private collections of Oppenheim’s family members, who graciously loaned them for the exhibition. From the late 1950s, Oppenheim enjoyed worldwide recognition, which allowed her to lead a creative and comfortable life among family and friends. In this period of her life, Oppenheim often expressed an interest in the work of young artists. She met, befriended, advised, and corresponded with many of them. Furtak’s
Clockwise from top left: Invitation to the opening of Solitudes Mariées: Dessins, Objets & Peintures, 1930–1973; Galerie Suzanne Visat, Paris, February 21, 1973; Signed by the artist; NMWA, Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center Collection; Gift of Thomas Hill in memory of Rosemary Furtak, from her collection; Caroline,
1985; Artist’s book, letterpress-printed poems, colored etchings, embossing, 11 x 5 ½ in.; Edition 48/89; Edition Fanal, Basel, Switzerland; NMWA; Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay; Photograph by Lee Stalsworth; Oppenheim with Iréne Zurkinden, a friend and fellow artist with whom she went to study in Paris; Café de Dôme, 1932
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Oppenheim and Furtak never met, but they shared characteristics such as Swiss roots, a distinctive sense of style, the need for privacy and occasional solitude, and a strong belief in the importance of personal and intellectual freedom.
collection includes Oppenheim’s correspondence with Trevor Winkfield, an English artist and writer who began writing to Oppenheim as an art student: “I first came across Meret Oppenheim’s fur-cover cup and spoon in 1962, when I realized not only its bizarre erotic power, but also the fact that it proposed sculpture could be a thing or an object, something modest to be held in the hand, and not necessarily a monumental slab.”5 He met Oppenheim when he was twenty-two and she his awe-inspiring, sixtysix-year-old artistic influence. Winkfield, who now lives and works in New York, recalls that their meeting featured an escapade to a London discotheque. Although they did not meet again, they maintained a warm correspondence for several years. Oppenheim and Furtak never met, but they shared characteristics such as Swiss roots, a distinctive sense of style, the need for privacy and occasional solitude, and a strong belief in the importance of personal and intellectual freedom. Both were very beautiful women; Oppenheim had a classical profile, androgynous haircut, and seductive body, preserved by Man Ray’s nude photographs of her at twenty years old, when she posed for him in Paris in 1933 in Louis Marcoussis’s atelier, half-hidden behind a printing press. Furtak’s fragile beauty and sharp intelligence
reminded people of Audrey Hepburn—her large dark eyes projected sweetness and curiosity, and she had fabulous style, with a special predilection for old cars (she drove a vintage Mercedes). There is a third person who was instrumental in making this exhibition possible, by donating art and archival pieces from Rosemary Furtak’s collection to NMWA. Thomas Hill, art librarian at Vassar College, was a close friend of Furtak, and he knew that we shared a love for artists’ books, which she collected at the Walker with the same devotion and passion as I have at NMWA. When Hill learned that she was dying and was worried that her Oppenheim collection might need to be broken up for sale, he decided to buy it himself. Hill said, “When Rosemary found out I intended to give the Oppenheim material to you and your museum, she was elated. She thought it was a fabulous idea. . . . It’s the best possible ending.”6 Meret Oppenheim: Tender Friendships is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The exhibition is made possible by Margaret M. Johnston and the members of NMWA. Further support is provided by the Embassy of Switzerland, Washington, D.C., and the family of Meret Oppenheim.
Krystyna Wasserman is the curator of book arts at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Notes: 1. Bettine Brentano to Karoline von Günderode, Günderode, trans. Margaret Fuller (Boston: E. P. Peabody, 1842), 18–19. 2. Heike Eipeldauer, “Without me anyway without way I came near. . . ” in Meret Oppenheim: Retrospective, ed. Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler and Dominik Imhof (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2013), note 4, 72. 3. Kathleen Bühler, Merets Funken/Meret’s Sparks (Berlin: Kerber Verlag and Kunstmuseum Bern, 2013), 164. 4. Matthias Frehner, “‘Kiss my Ass’: The Early Meret Oppenheim, Switzerland, and her Swiss Contemporaries,” in Meret Oppenheim: Retrospective, 64. 5. Trevor Winkfield, “Meret & Me,” in Meret Oppenheim: Tender Friendships (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of Women in the Arts), 15. 6. From email correspondence with the author, August 2012.
Above: Publication for an Oppenheim exhibition; Gimpel & Hanover Galerie, Zurich, January 1965; NMWA, Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center Collection; Gift of Thomas Hill in memory of Rosemary Furtak, from her collection; Photograph by Lee Stalsworth
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RECENT ACQUISITIONS
Return to Skagen: Paintings by Anna Ancher and Helga Ancher Stephanie Midon
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nspired by their visit to NMWA’s groundbreaking exhibition A World Apart: Anna Ancher and the Skagen Art Colony in spring 2013, Jo Francis and John Fuegi generously donated two paintings by Danish artist Anna Ancher and one by her daughter, Helga. The two canvases by Anna Ancher are currently on view in the collection galleries.
Anna Ancher (1859–1935) was the most prolific of the small group of women who were part of the artist colony in Skagen, Denmark, at the turn of the twentieth century. The only artist in the colony native to Skagen, Ancher was the daughter of Ane and Erik Brøndum, keepers of the town’s inn. Artists began traveling to Skagen in the late 1870s, attracted by the
scenery and quality of light found in the remote town at the northernmost point of Denmark, as well as the lively artistic camaraderie that grew among them. These traveling artists often stayed at Brøndum’s Hotel, which sparked Anna’s interest in art. Visiting artists gave the young Anna Brøndum her first painting lessons, and
Anna Ancher, Study for A Field Sermon, ca. 1903; Oil on canvas, 12 13⁄16 x 18 1⁄8 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Jo Francis and John Fuegi
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before long she earned her rightful place among the Skagen painters. She first showed her work at Copenhagen’s Charlottenborg Palace (a prestigious exhibition venue for the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts) in 1880. In the same year, she married Michael Ancher, and in 1883 she gave birth to their daughter, Helga. Michael and Anna Ancher lived and painted together in Skagen for the rest of their lives. She was a highly successful painter and exhibited her work regularly in Denmark and throughout Europe, as well as in Chicago and New York. Ancher’s work—relatively unknown in recent years outside of her own country—was reintroduced to American audiences last year through NMWA’s exhibition. Study for A Field Sermon is a preparatory oil sketch of a group of figures that Ancher made for her largest and most ambitious painting, A Field Sermon (1903). The finished painting portrays a large gathering of people, mostly women, sitting on a grass-covered dune, listening to a preacher. It depicts the Inner Mission, an evangelical Lutheran church movement, which had a strong presence in Skagen in the late nineteenth century. Followers would gather for open-air services held by traveling preachers. Study for A Field Sermon depicts the three figures appearing closest to the viewer in A Field Sermon. Interestingly, between this sketch and the finished work, Ancher changed the figure on the right, depicting a woman here, but a man in the final version. In both instances, the figures are seen from the back or in profile, lending an enigmatic quality to the composition. Ancher often constructed compositions by juxtaposing planes of color, seen here in the large color fields in the sketch that represent the figures’ clothing. This study is one of many, along with multiple sketches, that Ancher produced for the final painting. Her large investment of time in the painting proved worthwhile; upon its exhibition in 1903, Ancher received a medal for A Field Sermon from the Royal Danish Academy.
Anna Ancher, Fisher Woman in Profile, 1892; Oil on panel, 12 13⁄16 x 9 5⁄8 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Jo Francis and John Fuegi
Helga Ancher, Ane Brøndum (Anna Ancher’s mother), n.d.; Oil on canvas, 19 3⁄8 x 11 7⁄8 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Jo Francis and John Fuegi
Fisher Woman in Profile presents a recurring motif in Ancher’s oeuvre: bust-length portraits of subjects seen in profile. Ancher was particularly influenced by the tenets of Realism, which dictated the importance of direct observation and nonidealized depictions of subjects. Solitary figures set against dark backgrounds are frequently seen in the work of seventeenth-century northern European artists such as Rembrandt, whose work also influenced Ancher. The woman in this image is probably a local resident of Skagen and, characteristically of Ancher’s figures, does not make eye contact with the viewer. Ancher’s depiction of the woman, particularly her clothing and the suggestion of pattern on her headscarf, again demonstrates her style of juxtaposing relatively unblended color fields. Helga Ancher (1883–1964) was the daughter of Michael and Anna Ancher, and like her parents, she worked as an artist. Helga studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen as well as in Paris. Her paintings were rarely exhibited and most of them depict Skagen and its environs. After her parents’ death, Helga spent her life preserving the artistic legacy of Anna and Michael Ancher. She donated her parents’ house and its contents to the
town of Skagen upon her own death, and the home now serves as a museum. Ane Brøndum (Anna Ancher’s mother) is a painting of Helga’s grandmother peeling potatoes. Although it is not dated, it is understood to have been completed before Ane’s death in 1916. Helga’s mother, Anna, was very close to her mother, Ane, and painted her portrait multiple times. As Anna did in so many of her images, Helga focused on a solitary female figure engaged in an absorbing task. The work’s deep, almost monochromatic color palette recalls the Realism that dominated Anna Ancher’s early works. This work is a testament to the continuity of the Skagen artists’ mode of painting as well as the continued influence of revered northern European painters on late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century art. Together, these three gifts from Jo Francis and John Fuegi represent a glimpse into women artists’ contribution to the Skagen art colony. Following the exhibition A World Apart: Anna Ancher and the Skagen Art Colony held just last spring, NMWA is proud to include Anna Ancher and her legacy in the collection. Stephanie Midon is the curatorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. SUMMER 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS
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Shrinking the Digital Divide Laura Hoffman and J. Rachel Gustafson
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LAURA HOFFMAN
he internet has become the speedy resource for answers to myriad questions—type a quick Google search, click a Wikipedia link, and curiosity can often be sated. However, as Heather Slania, director of NMWA’s Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center (LRC), describes, “Part of the problem with using Wikipedia relates to notability. To have an individual post, a person must have attained a certain level of celebrity, which many women artists have traditionally been denied. Women were excluded from art shows and textbooks, and their achievements were not recorded. How do you include someone who has been excluded?”
A team from the Google Art Project captures the “gigapixel” image of Rachel Ruysch’s painting
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NMWA has always worked to ensure women artists’ place in the public eye, and today that visibility requires a strong online presence. To address the ongoing digital divide, the museum is taking part in two major initiatives—the Google Art Project and Wikipedia Edit-a-thons—that help to bring women artists and their work to a wider online audience. On March 8, NMWA celebrated International Women’s Day by announcing the launch of collection highlights and a virtual museum tour on the Google Art Project. This extensive website presents high-resolution art images to web users, who are able to zoom in on tiny details, replicating and going beyond the feeling of in-person close looking. Google’s staging is wonderful for distant visitors who are unable to come to the museum, or for those who simply want time to look carefully and learn more. Staff members worked hard on this project: more than fifty artworks were selected and photographed in extremely high resolution. NMWA’s preparator carefully unframed the pieces, and art photographer Lee Stalsworth went to great lengths to capture the artworks perfectly, using a state-of-the-art camera, testing the light and color balance with meters, and adjusting the photography environment with light reflectors. These images were compiled for Google, along with artists’ biographies and artwork information. Google’s team photographed one of the artworks, Rachel Ruysch’s Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies, and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge (ca. 1680s), using “gigapixel” photo-capturing technology. The image contains approximately seven billion pixels, enabling users to become immersed in the artwork’s
details, even those that are invisible to the naked eye. NMWA staff also worked with a team at Google to create a virtual tour of the museum, called “Museum View.” This allows users to explore selected galleries online, click on artworks to discover more, and dive into high-resolution images. Google’s Street View “trolley” captured 360-degree images of galleries, which were then digitally stitched together to create smooth navigation. Distant museum members have already reported enjoyable and enlightening virtual “visits” to NMWA. Another ongoing initiative surrounds Wikipedia, the wellknown, user-sourced digital encyclopedia—NMWA’s LRC has partnered with Wikimedia DC over the past year to host Wikipedia Edit-a-thons, and plans to hold additional events. Slania says that these gatherings have two primary goals: “The first goal is to create and improve Wikipedia entries related to notable women artists and art-world figures. The second goal is to encourage women to become Wikipedia editors.” This addresses acknowledged gender bias on Wikipedia—recent surveys suggest that up to 90 percent of the website’s editors are male.1 In February, NMWA was one of thirty-one venues in six countries participating in an Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edita-thon, a global initiative dedicated to creating a more gender-balanced Wikipedia. In all, 101 articles were created; the nearly twenty attendees at NMWA created ten of those, expanding on an additional eleven articles. For example, one page created at the museum showcases Joan Semmel, a notable feminist artist who primarily creates erotic self-portraits. Today, if web-goers type her name into a search engine, that page is one of the top links. “Wikipedia is often the first stop for people doing any research on the web, so it’s extremely important to have good articles written with reliable materials from our museum’s library,” said Slania. “Many women artists featured on Wikipedia have incomplete or unverified articles. For those without articles at all, like Semmel, it is about creating and increasing an online presence for their work and contributions.” NMWA plans to keep adding content on women artists to the internet: future edit-a-thons will bring more Wikipedia entries, more works will be showcased on the Google Art Project, and NMWA staff members will work on new and innovative projects. Visit our website, http://nmwa.org, to learn more. Or, just Google us.
At the 2014 Art + Feminism Edit-a-thon, Wikimedians gathered at NMWA’s Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center, hosted by Heather Slania
Laura Hoffman is the digital media specialist at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. J. Rachel Gustafson is a curatorial fellow at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Notes: 1. Robinson Meyer, “90% of Wikipedia’s Editors Are Male—Here’s What They’re Doing About It,” The Atlantic, October 25, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/ technology/archive/2013/10/90-of-wikipedias-editors-are-male-heres-what-theyredoing-about-it/280882.
Rachel Ruysch, Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge (and detail), ca. 1680s; Oil on canvas, 42 ½ x 33 in.; Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay
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MUSEUM NEWS AND EVENTS
Museum News Media takes note of NMWA’s Endowment Success
The National Museum of Women in the Arts has raised more than $25 million in the past six years, reaching its goal of doubling a $25 million endowment by the museum’s 25th anniversary. The idea of pursuing the $50 million goal during difficult economic times was a daunting one, but the museum director, Susan Fisher Sterling, said the timing “made a lot of sense.” After all, she said, “a museum only has its 25th anniversary once.”
Member News Members Honor Judy Chicago’s 75th Birthday In conjunction with NMWA’s recent exhibition Judy Chicago: Circa ’75, pioneer feminist artist Judy Chicago and historian Jane Gerhard engaged in an eye-opening discussion about their new books.
Judy Chicago receives members’ notes and birthday cards from NMWA Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay
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“When the museum began 25 years ago, we had no endowment,” said Sterling, who said the money will provide “a safety net,” as well as enabling the museum to do more advocacy for women and girls in the arts and increase its visibility. The museum is the only one in the world dedicated solely to the work of female artists. Carol Lascaris, endowment co-chair along with her husband, Climis, said the recession forced fundraisers “to be creative.” “I think that the very fact that we have been so successful is because this museum is really different,” she said. “People really do believe that it has a mission that needs to be addressed.” She quoted museum co-founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay: “One of her great expressions is, ‘People love Picasso
Gerhard’s book, The Dinner Party: Judy Chicago and the Power of Popular Feminism, follows the history of Chicago’s famous installation The Dinner Party and delves into the surrounding methodologies and untruths. In Chicago’s new book, Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education, she discusses her own art education and how students today can prepare for a career in the art world. In an effort to honor Chicago’s seventyfifth birthday and celebrate the exhibition, NMWA invited museum members to return signed notes to Chicago. The flood of praise from members was astounding. More than 300 dedicated members sent personalized messages, thanking Chicago for her trailblazing efforts on behalf of women artists. At the end of the dialogue, NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling surprised Chicago by presenting her with the cards onstage. Chicago was visibly delighted by the heartfelt gesture, stating that she wanted to read them right then. Once again, NMWA members have celebrated a great woman artist and demonstrated their unparalleled, enthusiastic support of the museum’s mission.
because they know Picasso.’ We have to educate people.” Lascaris’s conversations with donors, she said, have shown her that “there have been many, many people that feel like this museum has a home in our nation’s capital, that it’s unique in the world.”—Jessica Goldstein From the Washington Post, September 11, 2013; © 2013 Washington Post Company. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited
TOM FIELD
In fall 2013, the museum announced that it had achieved its goal of building a $50 million endowment. News coverage followed: below, we are pleased to reprint a Washington Post article, “National Museum of Women in the Arts hits its $50 million goal.”
Associate Curator Virginia Treanor leads a tour on Member Preview Day for “Workt by Hand”
Help your Generosity Go Further with a Corporate Matching Gift Did you know many companies match, double, or even triple employee contributions to the National Museum of Women in the Arts? Taking advantage of your employer’s matching donation program is one of the easiest ways to increase the impact of your gifts in support of the museum’s mission. Simply ask your human resources department for the proper matching form, fill in the requested information, and send it to the museum with your next contribution. Many corporations match gifts from working and retired employees and their spouses to nonprofits like NMWA. It only takes a few minutes to make your gift go further!
Member News Here’s a peek at some of the many thoughtful notes to Judy Chicago from members:
“You are an inspiration to all women artists! Thank you for your contributions to the art world and to NMWA.” “Judy, you have been a special inspiration to me for decades. Thank you and happy birthday!” “It’s been a more enlightened and improved planet for having produced you, Judy Chicago!” “A diamond birthday! How appropriate for you—like a diamond—strong, multifaceted and sparkling.” “Thank you for changing the world!” “Judy Chicago, you reaffirmed my belief that women can do great art. Best wishes!” “A big congrats for 75 years of creativity and the courage of your convictions.” “Thank you for leading the way—inspiring and inciting us to follow and then clearing the way for us to forge our own paths.”
Thank You to our many friends who helped to make Judy Chicago’s visit to the museum special. Your increased support to our annual recognition appeal helps to ensure that NMWA will continue to highlight the accomplishments of women artists through exhibitions and outreach programs. We can’t do it without you! Ms. Betty S. Abbott • Ms. Sue Adamson • Mrs. Mercedes Alderson • Mr. Leamond Anthony Allen • Ms. Robin Andrews • Joan and Lisa Arbeiter • Ms. Reyne Athanas • Ms. Evelyn Azarchi • Dr. Roann Barris • Ms. Barbara L. Baugh • Nancy Topping Bazin • Mrs. Suzanne R. Beedy • Ms. Stephanie Bennett • Mr. Lourene Bergey • Ms. Vivian Berman • Ms. Jane R. Bilderback • Ms. Thelma V. Blake • Ms. Carol Blanck • Sister Dorothy Bock • Dare J. Boles • Ms. Shirley Breeze • Ms. Katharine C. Brieger • Ms. Irene Buck • Dr. Delores P. Buford • Mrs. Joan Caefer • Ms. Lynda L. Calderone • Ms. Susan M. Call • Ms. Frances A. Candlin • Ms. Lisa Chickering • Mrs. Carol L. Chur • Ms. Carol P. Colby • Ms. Doris Jane Conway • Ms. Mary B. Cooper • Dr. Jan Crenshaw • Ms. Marilyn Sterling Crow • Ms. Phyllis J. Davis • Ms. Maxine M. Denniston • Ms. Michelle C. Dildey • Mrs. Joan Dioguardi • Ms. Anita Divita • Ms. Barbara A. Dixon • Ms. Laufey Downey • Ms. Jane Doyle • Ms. Lu-Jean Duran • Ms. Joyce Dutka • Ms. Ann F. Edwards • Mr. Coolidge A. Eichelberger, Jr. • Ms. Nancy Erlick • Ms. Jane Foley Ferraro • Ms. Karen Foget • Ms. Wendy J. Frances • Ms. Sara A. Friedman and Dr. Michael Friedman • Mrs. Nancy W. Gabalac • Dr. Mary Kay Shartle Galotto • Mrs. Arthur Gensler • Ms. Lois Getz • Dr. Mary Jo Ghory • Dr. Susan Giblin • Ms. Winnie Givot • Ms. Lee Glanton • Ms. Elaine Goldsmith • Mr. and Mrs. Bram Goldsmith • Mr. and Mrs. Dean A. Graves • Ms. Blue Greenberg • Mrs. Virginia Guitar • Ms. Bernadette G. Hampton • Ms. Maija Hay • Ms. Melanie M. Hedrick • Ms. Audrey Hefner • Ms. Laura J. Hollingshead • Virginia K. Holt • Marilyn E. Holtzer • Sue Gibbs Howard • Mitzi Humphrey • Ms. Ann Isolde • Mr. Dick Jacker • Ms. Clarissa V. Jaffe • Dr. Judith G. James • Ms. Judy Jashinsky • Dr. Hilda Jay • Ms. Krista Jiannacopoulos • Ms. Viola G. Johnson • Ms. Mary E. Kabisch • Mr. Kurt Kadow • Vivian M. Kallen • Ms. J. Koeppe Karp • Mr. W. Bruce Krebs • Suzanne Labiner • Ms. Monica Levin • Ms. Andrea Krantz Levine • Ms. Judith A. Lindquist • Ms. Margery M. Lindsey • Ms. Mary F. Lowe • Ms. Jo Lucas • Diana Kramer, M.S., M.S.W. • Ms. Dorothy Magen • Dr. Phoebe A. Mainster • Ms. Jeanne Maleckar • Mrs. Susan R. Malloy • Dr. Tulin E. Mangir • Ms. Barbara Margolies • Ms. M. Maughelli • Ms. Bernice K. McIntyre • Mr. Owen McMahon, Jr. • Drs. Herbert Y. Meltzer and Sharon Bittenson • Ms. Theresa Metz • Ms. Rita Meyers • Ms. Judith P. Meyers • Ms. Doretta Miller • Artist Norma Minkowitz • Ms. Renee Molko • Mrs. Dorothy K. Monnelly • Mgr. Viola Motyl-Palffy, Artist • Ms. Linda K. Myers • Ms. Frances Nater • Dr. Roberta W. Nauman • Ms. Grace Nelson • Ms. Rachel H. Norman • Dr. Elvy O’Brien • Ms. Karen Oehme • Ms. Madeline M. Olson • Mrs. Velma O’Neill • Ms. Joan S. O’Neill • Mrs. Mary Jane Pagenstecher • Ms. Lisa Painter • Ms. Janet T. Paulk • Ellen Largent Perlman • Ms. Lili Perski • Ms. Kathy Pherson • Ms. Lois Leroy Philon • Ms. Marsha M. Pippenger • Ms. Donalene S. Poduska • Mrs. Carol Z. Raff • Ms. Pat Ralph • Ms. Margaret Raper • Ms. Margaret M. Rasch • Mrs. Helene L. Reed • Ms. Carole Rein • Ambassador Lucia Renart • Beverly Reordan, Artist • Dr. Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring • Ms. Elizabeth Rogers • Ms. Jeanne M. Roslanowick • Dr. Randi Rubovits-Seitz • Peg Rutger • Ms. Barbara Ryberg • Ms. Patricia Salwei • Ms. Fanny Sanin • Ms. Caren V. Sarmiento • Ms. Catherine Schagh • Ms. Anne F. Schenck • Ms. Ronnee Schier David • Frances Sullivan Schulz • Ms. Debbie Schwartz • Mr. Joseph F. Scinto in memory of Mrs. Carol M. Scinto • Mrs. Edwin W. Semans, Jr. • Ms. Charlotte Severin • Ms. Ruth Jean Shaw • Mrs. John R. Shaw • Ms. Carol Wright Shea • Ms. Vivian Sheldon Epstein • Ms. Elizabeth L. Shepard • Helen Guthier Short • Ms. Mary-Elizabeth Silver • Ms. Sandra Simon • Ms. Debra Simpson • Mrs. Mary Jean Skarphol • Ms. Hendrika Sluder • Ms. Shannon B. Smith • Dr. R. P. P. Smith • Mrs. Eleanor Smith • Janet W. Solinger • Ms. Marguerite R. Spears and Diana Spears • Ms. Cathy Speer • Ms. Dixie Springer • Dr. Cherrill Spencer • Ms. Norma Squires • Ms. Margaret Stanton • Ms. Chrys Malone Street • Kristen Struebing-Beazley • Ms. Cyrena M. Summers • Mr. Richard P. Swallow • Ms. Sarah Sweetwater • Rosanne Colvard Thiel • Dr. Jan N. Thompson • Dr. Chezia Thompson-Strand • Barbara Tober • Ms. Sandra Pratt Treacy • Mrs. Jean W. Troemel • Ann K. U. Tussing • Ms. Caroline Utz • Valetta • Dr. Patricia S. Vary • Ms. Pat Votava • Ms. Nitza Wagoner • Dr. Ruth M. Wahlstrom • Ms. Gloria N. Watts • Ms. Irene Weinberger • Ms. Susan Weir-Ancker • Ms. Elaine A. West-Fry • Lois D. Whealey • Ms. Alyssa Wilhelm • Ms. Nancy Jones Williams • Ms. Beverly Winter • Dr. Barbara A. Wolanin • Dr. Margaret Wyckoff • Ms. Frances M. Ziccardi
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MUSEUM NEWS AND EVENTS
Committee News The Massachusetts State Committee partnered with Harvard Business School’s Women’s Association of New England to present A Conversation on Collecting Art by Women and a reception at Harvard Business School in March. A crowd of 285 honored NMWA Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay with a standing ovation when she welcomed them to the event. Moderated by gallerist Barbara Krakow, the panel discussion included Barbara Lee, Founder and President of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation; Jen Mergel, Beal Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling. “There was such buzz in the room,” said Sarah Treco, MA-NMWA committee president. One Boston gallery owner remarked that the evening was “such fun. . . . I saw so many people from the art world that I’ve known forever, but haven’t actually seen for years.”
Recent Committee Programs— Lectures, Tours, Partnerships, and More Committees support NMWA in bringing recognition to the achievements of women artists, often beginning in their home regions by hosting programs. Recently, the New Mexico State Committee hosted two “Artful Afternoons,” during which Diane Armitage, adjunct professor and founder of the art department at Santa Fe Community College, spoke to sold-out crowds about women artists from the sixteenth through twentieth centuries. When the Mississippi State Committee held its Spring Board Meeting in Vicksburg, in May, members enjoyed a tour of The Attic and H.C. Porter galleries, led by the venues’ owners, women artists Lesley Silver and Chris Porter. Also in May, the Texas State Committee held its semi-annual gathering in Waco— they visited Baylor University’s Armstrong Browning Library and Martin Museum of Art.
PHOTO © MERI BOND
NMWA in Massachusetts
Barbara Krakow, Susan Fisher Sterling, Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, Jen Mergel, and Barbara Lee
describes, “the highlight of Wat’s visit to Paris was the donation to NMWA’s collection from Les Amis du NMWA of Plaid House (Maquette),” a series of miniature felt architectural structures by French artist Laure Tixier. Committees often form important relationships with each other. In April, eight members of the Greater Kansas City Area Committee visited Santa Fe, New Mexico, to spend four days touring and sightseeing. Connie Conyac, the committee’s travel chair, says, “a highlight of our trip was meeting board members of the New Mexico State Committee. Judy Tully, president of the
committee, graciously escorted the group to the home of committee member Mary Ellen Degnan, where introductions were made and ideas exchanged.” The committee members visited the Turner Carroll Gallery, which was featuring work by Tracy Krumm, a featured artist in Women to Watch 2012.
A group enjoys one of the New Mexico Committee’s “Artful Afternoons”
Laure Tixier’s work was presented to NMWA during a reception at Galerie Polaris; Mylène Zerbib, Katy Debost, Laure Tixier, and NMWA Chief Curator Kathryn Wat
Be in touch! NMWA’s national and international committees are vital to the museum’s mission. To learn more about the committee in your area, please contact committees@nmwa.org.
Connecting and Networking To begin April’s Women in the Arts week in France, Les Amis du NMWA partnered with the American Library in Paris for a special presentation from NMWA Chief Curator Kathryn Wat. As committee president Tara Whitbeck 30
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Preparing for Women to Watch 2015 Two new NMWA committees—in Ohio and the Greater New York Region—are inspired by the opportunity to participate in the 2015 installment of the exhibition series Women to Watch, which will feature art on the theme of flora and fauna. Led by NMWA Advisory Board members and Ohio residents Barbara Richter and Harriet Warm, the Ohio Committee is working to grow its membership base. Richter says, “The committee established an advisory group of distinguished leaders in our region
who are dedicated to the arts or advocacy on behalf of women.” The initial programming of the Greater New York Committee, formed by NMWA Advisory Board members Cheryl Tague and Island Weiss, will focus on Women to Watch. Tague says that they are “in the process of setting up our website, lines of communication, board members, advisors, and general membership.” Their kick-off cocktail party in October will be attended by five artists chosen by Whitney Museum of American Art curators for Women to Watch.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Chilean Chapter of NMWA is organizing Women to Listen To, a partnership with the School of Music Education at the Universidad Mayor in Santiago. The program aims to promote and recognize Chilean women vocal artists performing classical works. Drina Rendic, the group’s founder and president, says, “Our chapter is very proud that NMWA reaches out to remote corners of the earth to improve and create opportunities for women classical singers in the North American lyrical scene.”
Museum Events 1. NMWA Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay and Barbara Kapusto welcome attendees 2. The evening featured a performance by Elizabeth Futral, recipient of NMWA’s Award for Excellence in the Performing Arts 1
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YASSINE EL-MANSOURI
2013 Fall Benefit: An Evening with Opera Star Elizabeth Futral
2014 Spring Gala: Nine Thousand and Nine Hundred Nights
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TONY POWELL
3.NMWA Trustee and Gala Chair Annie Totah and NMWA Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay 4. Shaista and Rafat Mahmood 5. Princess Yasmine Pahlavi, Stephanie Schmitt, and Princess Noor Pahlavi 6. NMWA Board Vice Chair Winton Holladay, Ambassador of the Republic of Bulgaria Elena Poptodorova, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Kristian Vigenin, and NMWA Trustee and Gala Chair Annie Totah 7. Michael Buxton, NMWA Trustee Charlotte Buxton, NMWA Trustee Marlene Malek, and Fred Malek 8. NMWA Trustee Mahinder Tak, NMWA Trustee Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, and Alexandra de Borchgrave
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SUPPORTING ROLES
Board of Trustees
Legacy of Women in the Arts Endowment Campaign
Wilhelmina Cole Holladay—Chair of the Board, Winton S. Holladay—Vice Chair of the Board, Sheila Shaffer— President, Gina F. Adams—First Vice President, Heather Miller Podesta—Second Vice President (Community Relations), Arlene Fine Klepper—Treasurer, Juliana E. May—Secretary, Mary V. Mochary—Finance Chair, Amy Weiss—Nominations Chair, Nancy Nelson Stevenson—Works of Art Chair, Marcia Myers Carlucci— Building Chair, Carol Matthews Lascaris—President Emerita and Endowment Chair, Dana J. Snyder— At Large, Susan Fisher Sterling*—Alice West Director, Janice Lindhurst Adams, Pamela G. Bailey, M. A. Ruda Brickfield, Charlotte Clay Buxton, Rose Carter, Diane Casey-Landry, Lizette Corro, Deborah I. Dingell, Martha Lyn Dippell, Nancy Duber, Gabriela Febres-Cordero, Karen Dixon Fuller, Susan Goldberg, Cindy Jones, Sally L. Jones, Marlene McArthur Malek, Jacqueline Badger Mars, Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, Marjorie Odeen, Andrea Roane, Clarice Smith, Kathleen Elizabeth Springhorn, Sharon Lee Stark, Jessica H. Sterchi, Joanne C. Stringer, Mahinder Tak, Annie S. Totah, Frances Usher, Ruthanna Maxwell Weber, Alice West
We wish to thank all of the supporters of the Legacy of Women in the Arts Endowment Campaign, whose generosity guarantees that NMWA will endure and forever inspire for generations to come. Although we can only list donations of $10,000 and above due to space limitations, NMWA is grateful to all donors of the endowment.
*Ex-Officio
NMWA Advisory Board Sarah Bucknell Treco—Chair, Noreen M. Ackerman, Sunny Scully Alsup, Jean Astrop, Carol C. Ballard, Gail Bassin, Susan G. Berk, Sue Ann Berlin, Catherine Little Bert, Brenda Bertholf, Ann Lisanby Bianchi, Caroline Boutté, Nancy Anne Branton, Amy Sosland Brown, Margaret Boyce Brown, Deborah Carstens, Eleanor Chabraja, Paul T. Clark, John Comstock, Linda Comstock, Lynn Finesilver Crystal, Belinda de Gaudemar, Betty Dettre, Elizabeth J. Doverman, Ginni Dreier, Kenneth P. Dutter, Gerry E. Ehrlich, Patrice Emrie, Elva B. Ferrari-Graham, Suzy Finesilver, Rosemarie C. Forsythe, Jane Fortune, Robert Freeman, Claudia Fritsche, Lisa Garrison, Barbara S. Goldfarb, Jamie S. Gorelick, Lorraine G. Grace, Jody Harrison Grass, Roddie Harris, Sue J. Henry, Anna Stapleton Henson, Caroline Rose Hunt, Jan Jessup, Alice D. Kaplan, Doris Kloster, Nelleke Langhout-Nix, Fred M. Levin, Gladys Kemp Lisanby, Sarah H. Lisanby, M.D., Nancy Livingston, Maria Teresa Martínez, C. Raymond Marvin, Pat McCall, Debby McGinn, Dee Ann McIntyre, Cynthia McKee, Suzanne Mellor, Joan S. Miller, Eleanor Smith Morris, Debbie Myers, Jeannette T. Nichols, Kay W. Olson, Katherine D. Ortega, Margaret Perkins, Patti Pyle, Madeleine Rast, Drina Rendic, Barbara Richter, Elizabeth Robinson, Elizabeth A. Sackler, Steven Scott, Marsha Brody Shiff, Geri Skirkanich, Salwa J. Smith, Patti Amanda Spivey, Kathleen Elizabeth Springhorn, Bonnie Staley, Jo Stribling, Susan Swartz, Cheryl S. Tague, Lisa Cannon Taylor, MaryRoss Taylor, Deborah Dunklin Tipton, Nancy W. Valentine, Paula S. Wallace, Harriet L. Warm, Island Weiss, Tara Beauregard Whitbeck, Patti White, Betty Bentsen Winn, Rhett D. Workman (all lists as of May 1, 2014)
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WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2014
Endowment Foundation Trustee ($1 million+) Anonymous, Betty B. and Rexford* Dettre, Estate of Grace A. George, Wilhelmina C. and Wallace F.* Holladay, Sr., Carol and Climis Lascaris, Estate of Evelyn B. Metzger, The Honorable Mary V. Mochary, Rose Benté Lee Ostapenko, Madeleine Rast, The Walton Family Foundation
Endowment Foundation Governor ($500,000–$999,999) Noreen M. Ackerman, P. Frederick Albee and Barbara E. Albee*, Catherine L. and Arthur A. Bert, M.D., J.W. Kaempfer, Nelleke Langhout-Nix, Joe R. and Teresa L. Long, James R. and Suzanne S. Mellor, National Endowment for the Humanities, Drs. A. Jess and Ben Shenson*, MaryRoss Taylor, Alice W. and Gordon T. West, Jr.
Endowment Foundation Fellow ($200,000–$499,999) Catharina B. and Livingston L. Biddle, Jr.*, Marcia Myers and Frank Carlucci, Costa del Sol Cruise, Kenneth P. Dutter, Estate of E. Louise Gaudet, Lorraine G. Grace, William Randolph Hearst Foundation, Estate of Eleanor Heller, Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston/The Shenson Foundation, in memory of Drs. Ben and A. Jess Shenson, Dorothy S. Lyddon*/Seven Springs Foundation, Marlene McArthur and Frederic V. Malek, Victoria J. Mastrobuono*, Sea Goddess I and II Trips, Alejandra and Enrique Segura, Sheila and Richard Shaffer, Clarice Smith
Endowment Foundation Counselor ($100,000–$199,999) Janice L. and Harold L. Adams, Nunda and Prakash Ambegaonkar, Carol C. Ballard, Baltic Cruise, Eleanor and Nicholas D. Chabraja, Clark Charitable Foundation, Hilda and William B. Clayman, Julia B. and Michael M. Connors, Martha Lyn Dippell and Daniel Lynn Korengold, Gerry E. and S. Paul* Ehrlich, Jr., Enterprise Rent-A-Car, FedEx Corporation, Barbara A. Gurwitz and William D. Hall, Caroline Rose Hunt/The Sands Foundation, Alice D. Kaplan, Dorothy and Raymond LeBlanc, Lucia Woods Lindley, Gladys K. and James W.* Lisanby, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Adrienne B. and John F. Mars, Juliana and Richard E. May, Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, Irene Natividad, Jeannette T. Nichols, Lady Pearman, Reinsch Pierce Family Foundation by Lola C. Reinsch and J. Almont Pierce, Julia Sevilla Somoza, Marsha Brody Shiff, June Speight*, Kathleen Elizabeth Springhorn, Sami and Annie Totah Family Foundation
Endowment Circle ($50,000–$99,999) Linda Able Choice*, George* and Ursula Andreas, Arkansas Fifty, Lulu H. Auger*, Virginia Mitchell Bailey*, Sondra D.* and Howard M. Bender/The Bender Foundation, Inc., Patti Cadby Birch*, Laura Lee and Jack S. Blanton, Sr.*/Scurlock Foundation, Anne R. Bord*, Caroline Boutté, BP Foundation Inc., M.A. Ruda and Peter J.P. Brickfield, Margaret C. Boyce Brown, Martha Buchanan, Charlotte Clay Buxton, Sandra and Miles Childers, Mary and Armeane Choksi, Margaret and David Cole/The Cole Family Foundation, Holland H. Coors*, Porter and Lisa Dawson, Courtenay Eversole, Suzy Finesilver/ The Hertzel and Suzy Finesilver Charitable Foundation, Karen Dixon Fuller, Alan Glen Family Trust, Peter and Wendy Gowdey, Laura L. Guarisco, Jolynda H. and David M. Halinski, Janie Hathoot, Hap and Winton Holladay, Evan and Cindy Jones Foundation, I. Michael and Beth Kasser, William R. and Christine M. Leahy, Louise C. Mino Trust, Zoe H. and James H. Moshovitis, Joan and Lucio A. Noto, Marjorie H. and Philip Odeen, Nancy Bradford Ordway, Katherine D. Ortega, Margaret H. and Jim Perkins, Ramsay D. Potts*, in honor of Veronica R. Potts, Elizabeth Pruet*, Edward Rawson, Jane S. Schwartz Trust, Jack and Dana Snyder, Judith Zee Steinberg and Paul J. Hoenmans, Susan and Scott Sterling, Nancy N. and Roger Stevenson, Jr., Jo and Thomas Stribling, Susan and Jim Swartz, Mahinder K. and Sharad Tak, Elizabeth Stafford Hutchinson Endowed Internship—Texas State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, William and Frances Usher, Elzbieta Chlopecka Vande Sande, Betty Bentsen Winn and Susan Winn Lowry, Yeni Wong
Endowment Patron ($25,000–$49,999) Micheline and Sean Connery, Sheila ffolliott, Georgia State Committee of NMWA, New York Trip, Nancy O’Malley, Mississippi State Committee of NMWA, Northern Trust, Estate of Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson, Chris Petteys*, Lisa and Robert Pumphrey*, Elizabeth A. Sackler, Estate of Madoline W. Shreve, Patti Amanda and Bruce Spivey, Sahil Tak/ST Paper, LLC, Jean and Donald M. Wolf, The Women’s Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts
Endowment Sponsor ($15,000–$24,999) Deborah G. Carstens , Stephanie Fein, Martha and Homer Gudelsky*, Sally L. Jones, Louise H. Matthews Fund, Lily Y. Tanaka, Liz and Jim Underhill, Elizabeth Welles, Dian Woodner
Endowment Friend ($10,000–$14,999) Carol A. Anderson, Julia and George L. Argyros, Mrs. Joseph T. Beardwood, III, Catherine Bennett and Fred Frailey, Susan G. Berk, Mary Kay Blake, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lynne V. and Richard Cheney, Esther Coopersmith, Darby Foundation, Jack J. Dreyfus, Jr.*, Patricia M. and Clifford J. Ehrlich, Mary Page and Thomas B. Evans, Lois Lehrman Grass, Anna Stapleton Henson, Alexine C. and Aaron G.* Jackson, Jan Jessup, Pamela Johnson and Wesley King, Helga and Peter-Hans Keilbach, Howard and Michelle Kessler, Ellen U. and Alfred A. King* , Jacqueline Badger Mars, C. Raymond Marvin, Clyde and Pat Dean McCall, Edwina H. and Charles P. Milner, Evelyn V. and Robert M. Moore, Harriet Newbill, Estate of Edythe Bates Old, PepsiCo., Inc., Anne and Chris Reyes, Savannah Trip , Mary Anne B. Stewart, Paula Wallace/Savannah College of Art and Design, Marjorie Nohowel Wasilewski, Jean S. and Gordon T. Wells * Deceased
Museum Shop Women Artists Tiny Folio, 2nd Edition The new edition of the
The Dinner Party: Restoring Women to History Judy Chicago—artist, author, feminist,
4-x-4-inch Tiny Folio includes 300 color images from NMWA’s collection, including recent acquisitions by Chakaia Booker and Justine Kurland. Hardcover, 318 pages. $11.95/Member $10.76 (Item #4280)
and educator—has devoted her work and life to expanding women’s presence in art. Her iconic installation The Dinner Party brought women’s history to light when it was completed in 1979. This volume features new photography and essays by the artist. $45/Member $40.50 (Item #2707)
“Love Who You Are” Accessory Pouch PAPAYA! is fueled and founded
Frida Kahlo Mints This set of three reusable slide boxes each has a different image of the artist’s famous self-portraits, containing delicious, sugar- and glutenfree peppermints. Boxes 2 x 3 in. $20.25/Member $18.22 (Item #3323)
by sisters Gina & Anahata Katkin. The company’s signature aesthetic is achieved using Anahata’s original artwork. Made from a durable, oil cloth-like material, this pouch features contrast lining, a zip closure, a metal lotus charm, and coordinating tassel key ring. 14 x 9 x 2 in. $32/Member $28.80 (Item #6529)
Orbanizer This contem-
ZoLO Creativity Sets
porary sculpture of coiled wire was made by Dodie Eisenhourer and Jenny Turner, a mother/daughter team who live in Missouri. The 5-in.diameter ball-within-a-ball holds flowers, pencils, or small utensils. $22.50/ Member $20.25 (Item #3949)
Designed for fun and focused play, each bold-colored set comes with building challenges and inspiring activities designed to spark the imagination. Ages 5 and up. $32.50/Member $29.25 Choose CHAOS (Item #6527, left) or RISK (Item #6528, right)
NMWA’s Shop Goes Online!
O’Keeffe Notecards Write to your pen pals
NMWA’s online Museum Shop carries jewelry, catalogues, children’s toys, home accessories, and gifts. These are a small sample: to see more, visit http://shop.nmwa.org.
in style! Each folio contains ten notecards and ten envelopes with two reproductions of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings. $10.95/ Member $9.85 Choose Petunias (Item #6798) or Red Flowers (Item #6797).
ORDER FORM
Summer 2014
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NATIONAL MUSEUM of WOMEN in the ARTS 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20005-3970
COMING SOON
Soda_Jerk: After the Rainbow September 19–November 2, 2014
S
oda_Jerk, a two-person art collective from Australia, creates video installations through sampling, a technique of appropriating segments from music, videos, and film. After the Rainbow (2009) combines film clips from The Wizard of Oz (1939) and a 1960s television special starring Judy Garland. Instead of the famed twister taking Garland’s Dorothy character to Oz, the young Garland is transported to the future, where she meets her disillusioned older self. The work interweaves the fantasy world of cinema with the complex reality of Garland’s life. After the Rainbow is the second work in Soda_Jerk’s Dark Matter series, an ongoing cycle of video installations featuring deceased movie stars. The series explores the relationship between screen technologies and the personal and communal experiences of time and death.
Soda_Jerk, After the Rainbow, 2009; 2-channel projection on screens back-lit with fluorescents, 5 min, 42 sec.; Image courtesy of the artists
This exhibition is part of 5 x 5, a project of the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and is presented in collaboration with the National Museum of Women in the Arts.