Women in the Arts Winter/Spring 2014 by Women in the Arts

WINTER/SPRING 2014

FOUNDER’S LETTER

Dear Members and Friends, The museum’s plans for the exhibition Picturing Mary: Mother, Woman, Idea, opening in December 2014, are exciting. For thousands of years the image of the “mother” figure has been worshipped in visual culture. In ancient Egypt, the goddess Isis is pictured nursing her infant, Horus, and in ancient Incan civilizations, monumental female figures representing fertility abound. The ubiquitous nature of the mother figure throughout time inspires NMWA’s forthcoming exhibition. The prestigious committee helping to realize the exhibition is made up of people of various religions who are approaching the project as a humanistic effort with the hope that it will strike a positive, unifying note. The exhibition is curated by the renowned Marian scholar Timothy Verdon, director of the Museo dell’Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence, in consultation with Dr. Kathryn Wat, NMWA’s chief curator. The show features masterworks by Titian, Caravaggio, and Botticelli, along with several other master artists of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, and women artists’ interpretations of the themes. Five rarely seen works are being loaned by the Vatican Museums. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Cardinal Wuerl, and His Excellency C.M. Vigano are among those endorsing the project. It is hoped that given the enduring appeal of the exhibition’s subject, NMWA will reach and welcome new and diverse audiences from near and far. Monsignor Timothy Verdon recently visited the museum and spoke about Picturing Mary at the meeting of the NMWA Advisory Board ably led by Chair Gladys Lisanby and Vice Chair Sarah Treco. His outstanding presentation gave the NAB attendees a first glimpse of the much-anticipated project. Other activities during the NAB’s two-day meeting included a visit to the remarkable contemporary art collection and beautiful home of Daniel Levinas followed by dinner at my residence. The NAB had a joint meeting with the trustees and established new priorities, setting the stage for an exciting year ahead. Warmest best wishes,

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay Chair of the Board

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: www.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 Winter/Spring 2014 (Volume 32, no. 1) Women in the Arts is a publication of the NATIONAL MUSEUM of WOMEN in the ARTS® Director | Susan Fisher Sterling Editor | Elizabeth Lynch Editorial Intern | Diana Wilkinson 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 © 2013 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: Mary A. Stinson, Crazy Quilt, ca. 1880; Silk, 81 ¼ x 81 5⁄8 in.; Brooklyn Museum, Designated Purchase Fund, 1995.87; Brooklyn Museum photograph, Gavin Ashworth, 2012 FOUNDER’S PHOTOGRAPH: © MICHELE MATTEI

Cover Story

Features

Departments

Arts News

“Workt by Hand”: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts

Judy Chicago: Circa ’75

Collector’s Voice: Barbara Lee

Culture Watch

Fall Report

Dedicated Donor: Mary Ross Taylor

Over time, quilts have been revered as nostalgic emblems of the past, hailed as examples of American ingenuity, and dismissed as women’s work. This exhibition breaks new ground, revealing rarely seen eighteenthto twentieth-century quilts through contemporary feminist theory and showcasing examples of iconic quilting designs and techniques. Catherine Morris

In honor of Judy Chicago’s 75th birthday, this exhibition examines a selection of her art that paralleled and influenced the U.S. feminist movement of the 1970s. Virginia Treanor

22 Anita Steckel: The Feminist Art of Sexual Politics A new archival collection at NMWA features the work of Anita Steckel, who spoke out against gender discrimination and censorship of art. Rachel Middleman

14 Calendar 30 Museum News and Events 32 Supporting Roles 33 Museum Shop

Celebrate, Educate, Captivate: National and International Committees NMWA’s committees provide integral outreach, expanding the museum’s mission into their home regions. Karen Kelly

WINTER/SPRING 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

COURTESY OF THE JOHN D. & CATHERINE T. MACARTHUR FOUNDATION

ARTS NEWS

Arts News

Carrie Mae Weems

The Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, designed by Making Space subject Farshid Moussavi

Honors and Accolades

Stanford, California, through January 5, and at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, January 24–April 23, 2014. Women also recently won two other important prizes: the Turner Prize and the Man Booker Prize. Laure Prouvost won the Turner Prize, awarded annually to an artist under the age of fifty who lives and works in Britain. Prouvost, a video and multimedia artist, was honored for Wantee, an elaborate and personal installation that she was commissioned to create for a Kurt Schwitters retrospective at Tate Britain. In the literary arts, the prestigious Man Booker Prize was given to Eleanor Catton for her novel The Luminaries. Catton, at twenty-eight, is the youngest author to have received the prize, and the second winner from New Zealand (historically, only works by authors from the British Commonwealth have been eligible, though next year the contest will be open to all English-language novels). She won £50,000 for her lengthy novel, which delves into a mystery patterned after the zodiac signs of its characters.

Photographer and video artist Carrie Mae Weems received a MacArthur Fellowship, one of the year’s so-called “genius grants,” in September 2013. The only visual artist on a list of fellows including choreographers, writers, scientists, and musicians, Weems creates images that examine African American identity, class, and culture in the United States. The MacArthur Foundation lauded her for uniting “critical social insight with enduring aesthetic mastery. Her signature works over three decades . . . juxtapose the harsh realities of race, class, and gender discrimination with the dignity and resilience of the human character in everyday life.” Weems has extended her work into social activism, initiating a public art project about the need to stop gun violence. Weems, whose work was exhibited in a 1993 show at NMWA, currently has a traveling retrospective on view, Three Decades of Photography and Video. The show will be at the Cantor Center for Visual Arts in

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WOMEN IN THE ARTS | WINTER/SPRING 2014

Making Space in Architecture “For the first time in history, women are designing our world,” according to the creators of the documentary film Making Space. Due to be released in early 2014, Making Space profiles five influential women who are building impressive careers in architecture, a field long dominated by men. The film’s creators, Alice Shure and Janice Stanton, founders of Amici Productions, LLC, worked on the film for four years and completed funding for the production in part through a campaign on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter. Based in North American and European cities, the film’s subjects—Annabelle Selldorf, Odile Decq, Farshid Moussavi, Kathryn Gustafson, and Marianne McKenna—have helmed large-scale projects and grown prominent architectural practices. In many cases, they teach at leading architectural schools, passing their knowledge and perspective on to the next generation of aspiring architects.

Collector’s Voice: Barbara Lee NMWA celebrates art collectors who, like museum Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, focus their collections on work by women artists. The authority and enthusiasm of these collectors is compelling, and they help to bring acclaim to the worthy women artists they champion. Barbara Lee, who will participate in a March panel discussion organized by the Massachusetts Committee of NMWA, is the founder and president of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation. She discusses her “mission and passion,” which inspire her advocacy for women in artistic and political spheres.

Why do you collect art by women? Work by women artists so often reflects my own experience. I was collecting work by women without actually realizing it at first, because it resonated with me. I consciously started focusing on collecting art by women in the early 1990s, when I learned about the activism of the Guerrilla Girls. One of their posters so perfectly captures the sentiment of their work. It reads: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 3% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 83% of the nudes are female.” What’s the latest artwork you purchased? I recently purchased a painting by Amy Sillman called Unearth, which is part of her mid-career survey at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (ICA). Which woman artist do you think people should know more about? This show at the ICA is putting Amy Sillman on the map. She’ll also be featured at the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Sillman’s work includes an incredible amount of color and levity. The juxtaposition of colors and line is ravishing and shocking. The sense of passion in her work is unrivaled. You are a Trustee at the ICA as well— what are your goals for that museum? My goal has always been for the ICA to be a leader in reflecting the great work of our time, much of which is work by women artists. The ICA is becoming one of the most important contemporary art museums in the country. And we are developing one of the most important collections by women artists under the leadership of a fantastic woman director

and chief curator, Jill Medvedow and Helen Molesworth. In addition to the arts, your foundation supports women in politics, as they are establishing themselves and beyond. How has the foundation made its biggest impact? Since 1998, the Barbara Lee Family Foundation has researched every woman’s race for governor on both sides of the aisle. We have also produced pragmatic, real-time research on the obstacles facing women and their strategic advantages. When I began this work almost twenty years ago, only sixteen women had ever been elected governor of their state. Now, that number is up to thirty-five. That progress motivates me. We focus on executive office, because governorships can often be the pipeline to the presidency. The more we see women in charge as CEO of their state, the more we can envision them in the White House. My own personal goal is to help elect not only the first but the second woman president of the United States. Having women in leadership positions is about the symbol and substance of creating a better democracy. Do you see any parallels between your work for women in the arts and politics? Definitely. Art is my passion and politics is my mission. My foundation works to advance women’s equality and representation in both areas, and I’m guided by a core belief that women’s voices enrich our culture and strengthen our democracy.

Having women recognized at the table and in the studio isn’t only good for women—it’s good for everyone. You supported “Create the Vote,” a campaign urging 2013 Boston mayoral candidates to commit to strong arts policy agendas. Can you describe the results? I was so pleased to support MASSCreative’s “Create the Vote,” because it was an ideal way to combine my passion and my mission. The Create the Vote Mayoral Forum on Arts, Culture, and Creativity was the largest campaign event of the race, with 600 attendees listening to nine candidates debate the issues. It brought art to the forefront of the campaign conversation and made the point that art needs to be an integral piece of the city’s cultural fabric as well as our economy. What new projects are on the horizon? 2014 is an exciting year for my foundation. We are launching a comprehensive compilation of our nearly two decades of nonpartisan research on women running for office, titled Keys to Elected Office: The Essential Guide for Women. Look for it at www.barbaraleefoundation.org in June 2014.

WINTER/SPRING 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

Connecticut

In this exhibition, Simmons, whose oeuvre spans photography, performance, video, sound, and installation, explores the way artists draw directly from the movements, subtitles, and concepts of other practitioners in order to produce work. She emphasizes artistic synergy, experimentation, and collaboration.

Florida Pérez Art Museum Miami Project Gallery: Monika Sosnowska On view through September 28, 2014 Best known for site-specific sculpture, Sosnowska was commissioned by PAMM to

create a towering, bent-steel sculpture for the museum’s project gallery. She often takes inspiration from the built environment of her native Poland, and this piece refers to juryrigged sales kiosks seen throughout Warsaw.

four video projections and 193 glowing polyurethane sculptures. The work explores the human condition: sculptures examine the border between the beautiful and the monstrous, and characters navigate seemingly playful situations that turn sinister.

Monika Sosnowska, Market (detail), 2013; On view at the Pérez Art Museum Miami

Minnesota Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Album: Cinémathèque Tangier, a project by Yto Barrada On view through May 18, 2014

Massachusetts Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston Nathalie Djurberg and composer Hans Berg: A World of Glass March 19–July 6, 2014 Nathalie Djurberg and music by Hans Berg, A World of Glass, 2011; On view at the ICA/ Boston

COURTESY OF ICA/BOSTON

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND DAVID CASTILLO GALLERY, MIAMI

Xaviera Simmons, Horse, 2009; On view at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH, NEW YORK; PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANIEL AZOULAY

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum Xaviera Simmons: Underscore On view through March 9, 2014

A multimedia installation by Nathalie Djurberg, with music by Hans Berg, incorporates

PHOTO SARAH KELLER © CINÉMATHÈQUE DE TANGER

C U LT U R E WAT C H

Culture Watch | Exhibitions

Yto Barrada, Cafe Cinémathèque Tangier; On view at the Walker Art Center

Barrada combines the strategies of documentary with a metaphoric approach to imagery in her photographic, film, and sculptural work. Art and artifacts portray the rich visual and cinematic culture of her hometown, as well as the social and political realities that have shaped Morocco.

Books In The Woman Upstairs, by Claire Messud (Knopf, 2013), protagonist Nora Eldridge has gradually let go of her dreams of artistry, motherhood, and love, following a decision to put her life on hold and take care of her ill mother. In the process, she has become the “woman upstairs,” an elementaryschool teacher with no desires of her own, living only to support others’ successes. Nora maintains a content façade, but she is inwardly furious and “ravenous” for more out of life. She grasps the possibility of a more fulfilling existence when she encounters the Shahid family, whose bewitching son Reza enrolls in her class. She connects with his father, a Harvard professor, and his mother, an Italian artist whose influence reignites Nora’s artistic passion. Nora’s relationships with each member of the Shahid family prompt her emotional reawakening, which enables her to create the dioramas that are the focus of her artistic practice. The flawed characters in this beautifully crafted, urgently told novel help chart a woman’s internal struggle between self-confidence and self-doubt, following her journey toward creating a meaningful life. —Diana Wilkinson

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | WINTER/SPRING 2014

Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent (DelMonico Books and the Tang Museum, Skidmore College, 2013) aims to provide not a comprehensive, but a “kaleidoscopic view of Corita’s life, work, relationships, and legacy,” and it pays homage to the artist’s vibrant work. Published in conjunction with a traveling exhibition of her prints, the book presents art by Corita with insightful complementary text. The artist (Sister Mary Corita, later Corita Kent, 1918–1986) was a Roman Catholic nun in the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles who left the sisterhood, as well as an influential art teacher at Immaculate Heart College. Her ebullient, moving body of work combines elements of Pop art with a frank spirituality. This book’s texts include oral histories written by Corita’s friends and family, a series of statements by artists she inspired, transcriptions of the calligraphy that embellishes her art, and selected writings by the artist. They reveal an artistic mind that was kaleidoscopic, too—with inspiration from poets, activists, advertising, and the Bible—reflecting the synergy that Corita saw in daily life and art. —Elizabeth Lynch

This video installation considers museum collections and the human compulsion to capture the transience of time. Filmed at the Sir John Soane Museum in London, Inventory presents intimate details of the British architect’s (1753–1837) personal antiquities collection; the film explores time, memory, and place.

Pennsylvania Philadelphia Museum of Art Fiona Tan: Inventory On view through March 23, 2014

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND FRITH STREET GALLERY, LONDON

The first comprehensive retrospective of Genzken’s work in a U.S. museum, this exhibition encompasses the influential artist’s work in all mediums over the past 40 years— including not only her three-dimensional art, but also paintings, photographs, collages, drawings, artist’s books, films, and public sculptures.

Fiona Tan, Inventory, 2012; On view at the Philadephia Museum of Art

Installation view of Isa Genzken: Retrospective; On view at MoMA

The power of image, text, and representation is crystallized in the early work of photographer and multimedia artist Lorna Simpson (b. 1960), building the foundation for her first European solo museum exhibition. The accompanying catalogue, Lorna Simpson (DelMonico Books, 2013), spans Simpson’s thirty-year career and offers more than 150 illustrations, five scholarly essays, and an in-depth interview. Shown at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris and now on view at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, the exhibition ranges from the photo-text works that first brought Simpson acclaim in the 1980s to her recent self-staged, performative film and video works. Joan Simon, the exhibition’s curator and the monograph’s primary editor, describes Simpson as a “conceptualist” who uses the camera to highlight the malleability of representation and memory, proposing questions of “identity, gender, history, fact, and fiction.” Simon’s essay provides a chronological overview of Simpson’s career and argues that her work allows the viewer to question the verisimilitude of photography’s “reality.” Other scholars, including Marta Gili, director of the Jeu de Paume, and Naomi Beckwith, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, examine specific works, such as Chess (2013), a three-

Lee Bontecou, Untitled, 1982; On view at the Menil Collection

This retrospective exhibition of the drawings of American artist Bontecou spans more than five decades, from the late 1950s, when she began making innovative works on paper with welding torch and soot, to the art she continues to create in her Pennsylvania studio.

Washington Tacoma Art Museum Agnes Martin: The New York-Taos Connection (1947–1957) January 25–April 20, 2014 COURTESY OF THE TACOMA MUSEUM OF ART

Museum of Modern Art Isa Genzken: Retrospective On view through March 10, 2014

Agnes Martin, Untitled, ca. 1949; On view at the Tacoma Museum of Art

Martin is best known for using grid structures in her work, but she painted for nearly twenty years before arriving at this motif. This exhibition gathers many of the surviving works from this earlier period, displaying her development from colorful biomorphic paintings to subtle, geometric mature work.

screen projection video piece that Simpson created for the exhibition. The largely monochromatic catalogue complements Simpson’s quiet, powerful black-and-white photographs. The book’s cover, a detail of one of her best-known works, Waterbearer (1986), calls to mind the work’s unseen accompanying text: “She saw him disappear by the river. They asked her to tell what happened, only to discount her memory.” Simpson challenges and deconstructs the idea of truth, not only in representation, but also in terms of identity and the cultural construction of class, gender, and race. Like the exhibition, this monograph introduces Simpson’s established work to new audiences while offering new theoretical perspectives on her legacy and future. —J. Rachel Gustafson Lorna Simpson, Momentum (film still), 2010; On view through February 14, 2014, at Haus der Kunst, Munich

COURTESY THE ARTIST; SALON 94, NEW YORK; AND GALERIE NATHALIE OBADIA, PARIS / BRUSSELS © LORNA SIMPSON

New York

WINTER/SPRING 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

FA L L R E P O R T

Fall Report Ringgold Roundup: Programming for Adult and School Audiences American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s revealed itself at NMWA at the perfect moment. This collection of rarely seen works poignantly, and in some cases, insistently, addresses race relations and the evolution of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Coinciding with two significant anniversaries—the fiftieth of the March on Washington and the 150th of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation—this exhibition resonated deeply with a broad range of visitors. Inspired by Ringgold’s works and overarching themes, NMWA offered a host of educational programming throughout the summer and fall to engage adult and school audiences. • Perhaps most significantly, the museum welcomed Faith Ringgold herself—bookending this popular exhibition in meaningful and memorable ways for the museum’s audiences. In October, Ringgold entertained and inspired a sold-out audience with stories of her life, reflections on her long and fruitful career, and insights into her artwork. • Additionally, seven Ringgold-related gallery talks were included in the museum’s ongoing and popular series. Through these free talks, museum educators and curators offered 200 visitors a close look at selected works in the Ringgold exhibition. These digestible lunchtime talks provided food for thought and a

healthy dialogue about challenging themes and topics addressed in Ringgold’s early works. • For school and teacher audiences, Ringgold’s work helped to place important events from American history in context. Education staff developed on-site and classroom offerings for kindergarten through college audiences. NMWA staff introduced Ringgold’s work to 115 Washington, D.C., metropolitan-area teachers through NMWA’s well-regarded ABC Institute and Advanced Teacher Institute; the Faith Ringgold: Art and Activism teacher workshop; the National Art Education Association’s SummerVision 2013; and Art Education DC’s inaugural professional development program. • To supplement these offerings, staff

developed a printed Educator’s Resource on Ringgold complete with selected artworks, information about the artist and her work, discussion questions, suggested classroom activities, handouts, and applicable standards of learning. This resource has been digitized and is now available to a national audience on the museum’s website. Over the course of the exhibition, NMWA welcomed nearly 200 primary and secondary students and fifty college students for interactive tours. Through this carefully curated and installed exhibition and its related programming, NMWA was proud to become an exciting center for dialogue and debate about matters of race and art in Ringgold’s 1960s and today.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY J. RACHEL GUSTAFSON

Reckoning Authors at NMWA

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | WINTER/SPRING 2014

On November 10, the authors of The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millenium held a conversation and book signing at NMWA. Eleanor Heartney, Nancy Princenthal, Helaine Posner, and Sue Scott discussed essays they each wrote for the book on recurring themes in the work of many prominent women artists. Extending the scholarship they began in After the Revolution: Women who Transformed Contemporary Art (2007), the new book covers the evolving status and concerns of the women artists who followed pioneering feminist artists of the 1970s. The book event, a corollary program of American University’s 2013 Feminist Art History Conference, attracted a large, engaged audience. The authors’ talk spurred a lively question-and-answer session about the distinction women artists have attained in new media work and at biennial exhibitions; the place of men in feminism; and what the authors see as a “clear basis for optimism” in the trajectory of persistent gender disparities.

D E D I C AT E D D O N O R

Dedicated Donor | Mary Ross Taylor

I think the most important work of the committees is helping women artists move to the next level professionally.

Mary Ross Taylor at NMWA’s recent Endowment Celebration

he National Museum of Women in the Arts does what nobody else does,” says Mary Ross Taylor, who has championed the museum since it was just an idea. In the 1970s, while she was an arts advocate and bookstore owner, she first heard about the plans for NMWA. “Ann Sutherland Harris, a pioneering feminist art historian and curator, was in my Houston bookstore in about 1975 and told me that a museum of women’s art was in the planning stages in Washington, D.C. I could hardly believe it!” She got involved soon afterward and has been a steadfast supporter ever since, promoting Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay’s vision, participating in committees that help women artists build careers, and contributing to long-term initiatives such as the Legacy of Women in the Arts endowment campaign. Taylor’s career has given her an ideal background to advocate for women artists. She left a dissertation “back in the days when the University of Texas didn’t put married women on the PhD candidate job list” and opened her bookstore. Through the store, she hosted book signings for feminist authors and met artist Judy Chicago (whose work is currently on view at NMWA in Circa ’75)—initially, she says, because “I was selling her memoir Through the Flower to women who weren’t artists, so I read it to see why it was so popular.” She went on to organize the exhibition of Chicago’s The Dinner Party in Houston, worked for Chicago’s nonprofit in California, and earned a master’s degree in museum administration. She returned to Houston to revitalize an alternative arts space, a position that “taught me what emerging and established artists value and prioritize.” Holladay has found Taylor to be an invaluable ally: “Mary Ross Taylor’s generosity and friendship over the years has been meaningful. She has helped the museum achieve many of its goals and has been most helpful in strengthening committees.” Taylor has been gratified to observe Holladay’s influence “on the revisiting and rewriting of art history. By

1980 we all knew Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe, but that was pretty much it. Of the early exhibitions at the museum I especially remember Remedios Varo and later Camille Claudel as exhibitions that won serious reviews saying that NMWA had changed the way these women artists were seen and evaluated.” Taylor’s support for NMWA’s committees and endowment strengthens the museum’s reach and longevity. “No two committees are alike,” she says, so taking part in both the New Mexico and Arkansas committees “has been fun and very instructive. I think the most important work of the committees is helping women artists move to the next level professionally, to show their work in museums. Committees educate their communities about women artists and support NMWA’s programs financially.” She also feels that the museum’s endowment is crucial, and her gifts have helped it grow over the years. Her hopes are high for the museum’s future: “one of my goals is for NMWA to find the resources to replace admission revenues,” further expanding access and feelings of ownership to new audiences. NMWA’s special significance, Taylor says, lies in the fact that “the percentage of women artists in other museum collections is still miniscule. The percentage of women who have midcareer retrospectives is still tiny. If you keep track of what is on view at your local museums, you will be surprised—it is so taken for granted that nobody asks why these are museums of men’s art!” NMWA’s impact has reawakened other museums to work by women artists in their own collections, she says. “Many forces combined to enlarge the historical perspective, but I believe Mrs. Holladay’s program was effective in opening the way for women artists of the past to be reconsidered. This makes a tremendous difference for women artists practicing today, and for students and art appreciators of all ages.”

WINTER/SPRING 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

December 20, 2013–April 27, 2014

“ Workt by Hand” Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts

Catherine Morris

urators working at historical institutions quickly learn that objects have lives of their own. Tastes change, popularity ebbs and flows, and new generations discover or rediscover artists, genres, and newly resonant historical moments. Exhibitions can be organized to trace those moments when something old is suddenly new again, examining how and why a popular resurgence happens. This approach offers the chance to present artworks while taking into account their broader social and cultural histories. The motivation for “Workt By Hand” grew from a desire to present the different ways old quilts have been appreciated at different moments in American history, while also examining the culturally specific reasons for several striking moments of popularity over two centuries.

Elizabeth Welsh, Medallion Quilt, ca. 1830; Cotton, 110 ½ x 109 in.; Brooklyn Museum, Gift of The Roebling Society, 78.36; Photography by Gavin Ashworth, 2012, courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

WINTER/SPRING 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

Traditionally, a curator’s job, like that of a historian, has been to tidy things up in clarifying ways—offering categories for types of art, making comparable and qualitative judgments about objects, and developing a historical narrative to describe and quantify things. In the twenty-first century, it has become more pressing for curators to incorporate the complex and compelling relational histories that the world’s cultures contribute to subjects. Now, instead of merely building descriptive boundaries, we can acknowledge the ways that multifaceted art objects often cross and break categories. Quilts—products, largely, of domestic labor, with clear connections to women makers—have provoked remarkable vicissitudes of responses over the past 150 years. The beauty of the objects in “Workt by Hand” has been appreciated and valued in different ways as successive generations have encountered them and formed opinions of their significance. The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum is the only space of its kind, dedicated to feminist art and theory within an encyclopedic museum, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts is the only major museum in the world solely dedicated to recognizing women’s creative achievements. The partnership this exhibition provides is an exceptional opportunity to present the social histories and gendered debates surrounding historical quilts. Throughout history, women artists have made work that blurs, questions,

and pushes the boundaries between fine art and other forms of creative visual enterprise, often called decorative, industrial, or, for a long time, “minor” arts. Quilts defy easy categorization, although they clearly warrant study, collection, and celebration within museums. A variety of presentations has revealed quilts from compelling and different perspectives: they have been treated as ethnographic artifacts of national culture (as in the Brooklyn Museum’s 1924 exhibition Early American Handicraft), shown as “delightfully abstract designs” (as in the 1960 Quilts and Coverlets exhibition), and used as a feature of the mise-en-scene in museum period rooms. As a genre of creative work that has always been associated with women, quilts have received a significant amount of attention from art and cultural historians interested in feminism. In the introduction to her 1973 essay “Quilts: The Great American Art,” art historian Patricia Mainardi noted some of the dynamics that drew her to the study of quilt history: “Because quilt making is so indisputably women’s art, many of the issues women artists are attempting to clarify now— questions of feminine sensibility, or originality and tradition, of individuality versus collectivity, of content and values in art—can be illuminated by a study of this art form, its relation to the lives of the artists, and how it has been dealt with in art history.”1 Mainardi’s article is a revisionist work that positions quilt-making as a fine art that incorporates unique personal histories, usually women’s histories. She argues that the personal stories behind the making of quilts are a vitally important aspect of their

Pictorial Quilt, ca. 1795; Linen and multicolored thread, 91 x 103 ¼ in.; Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 41.285; Photography by Gavin Ashworth, 2012, courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

Star of Bethlehem Quilt, ca. 1830; Cotton, 95 x 95 ½ in.; Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Alice Bauer Frankenberg, 59.151.7; Photography by Gavin Ashworth, 2012, courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

History is messy.

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | WINTER/SPRING 2014

value and significance. Mainardi’s impassioned argument for celebrating the makers of quilts was prompted, at least partially, in response to a successful, concurrent attempt at reshaping the public’s perceptions of quilts: An exhibition devoted to positioning quilts within the modern art museum as design objects of pure abstraction—formally sophisticated works of art removed from their historical realities.

That exhibition, Abstract Design in American Quilts at the Whitney Museum in 1971, announced: “Considerations of technique, geographical distinction and historic significance have been excluded in favor of visual content.”2 Many feminist historians offered a strong critique of the exhibition, which was organized by quilt collectors Jonathan Holdstein and Gloria van der Hoof. As art historian Karin Elizabeth Peterson described this modernizing initiative, “the Whitney exhibition can be understood to offer an assimilationist rather than a transformative strategy.”3 And so, two dueling attempts at revising history were born, one in the service of describing the complex social and creative history of women quilt makers, the other prompted by the resilient influence of formalism as an art historical methodology. Add to this mix the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial, which fostered nationalistic interest in our cultural legacies, leading to a popular resurgence of attention to making and collecting quilts. Quilts were collected, presented, and documented as never before. An unprecedented market developed as they were championed by dealers, artists, curators, and popular tastemakers and craftspeople. Starting with this popular interest in quilts in the 1970s, the curatorial team at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art moved backward in history, looking at earlier moments of renewed curiosity about the genre. The most important of these was the Colonial Revival, with roots in the post-Civil War reconstruction period and the 1876 U.S. Centennial—moments of national pride and reappraisal seem to have a way of bringing quilts out of the mothballs. As historian Janneken Smucker

Victoria Royall Broadhead, Tumbling Blocks Quilt, ca. 1865–70; Silk, velvet, and wood, 64 x 68 in.; Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mrs. Richard Draper, 53.59.1; Photography by Gavin Ashworth, 2012, courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

Bars Quilt, ca. 1890, Pennsylvania; Cotton and wool, 83 x 82 in.; Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. H. Peter Findlay, 77.122.3; Photography by Gavin Ashworth, 2012, courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

Russell Lee, Women looking at quilting and crocheting exhibit at Gonzales County Fair, Gonzales, Texas, November 1939; Black-and-white photograph; Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division

WINTER/SPRING 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

The long history of the changing perception of old quilts proves the resilience and importance of the genre.

Pictorial Quilt, ca. 1840; Cotton and cotton thread, 67 ¾ x 85 ½ in.; Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mrs. Franklin Chace, 44.173.1; Photography by Gavin Ashworth, 2012, courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

Anna Williams, Quilt, 1995; Cotton and synthetics, 76 ¼ x 61 ½ in.; Brooklyn Museum, Gift in memory of Horace H. Solomon, 2011.18; Photography by Gavin Ashworth, 2012, courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | WINTER/SPRING 2014

noted in the catalogue for this exhibition, “As early as the Civil War, women were associating quilts with a simpler, preindus trial time during which women creatively made goods at home. At sanitary fairs and at the colonial kitchens of the late nineteenth century world’s fairs, women presented quilt-making as an old-fashioned activity. Yet these very same years were the heyday of American quilt-making, perhaps in part because the activity was a way for women to ward off the pressures of industrialization, urbanization, and modernization. Already in these early years of what later became known as the Colonial Revival, Americans (mistakenly) understood quilts as a prime form of colonial women’s ingenuity.” Here begins the second aspect of our curatorial exploration: myths about quilt-making abound. Like George Washington’s cherry tree, these myths are embedded in our national identifies, making it difficult to dislodge them or discuss them as the nostalgic metaphors they are. An example is the notion that colonial-era quilts were cobbled together from scraps and cloth remnants, demonstrating the fortitude of our resourceful forebears. In fact, quilts did not feature prominently in the earliest history of the United States as a struggling democracy, or, if they did, they certainly didn’t survive to tell their stories. Rather, the surviving quilts from the first hundred years of this nation, such as the Medallion Quilt (pages 8–9), were made by women of means who had the time and resources to design, collect imported fabrics, and, often, oversee others—including enslaved Africans—to realize ambitious designs. Another myth debunked is that quilts were made collectively. While this did happen in the case of album quilts such as the Pictorial Quilt (above left), which were made as commemorative objects, or most commonly, in sewing bees that attached the top of the quilt to the bunting and backing, most of the existing quilts from this era were conceived by a single artist and prized for their skill and opulence. Very few of these works ever actually had a sleeping body beneath them. In an interesting further note, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, women did in fact fashion utilitarian bedclothes from flour sacks and fabric remnants. Perhaps some of the women who made these quilts for their families were inspired by history they had been taught,

historical subject through a contemporary lens. One could also argue that the word takes on a remarkably modern reading in light of social media’s taste for abbreviation. As a feminist curatorial experiment, “Workt by Hand” is, in some sense, yet another chapter in an evolving legacy intended to acknowledge history’s course as we currently see and understand it. The long history of the changing perceptions of old quilts—as nostalgic objects in the Colonial Revival of the 1880s, as symbols of ingenuity in the 1930s, and more recently as prescient precursors to modernist abstraction and material documents of the history of women—proves the resilience and importance of the genre. Catherine Morris is curator at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum. Notes

Jack Delano, Woman who has not yet found a place to move out of the Hinesville Army camp area working on a quilt in her smokehouse, near Hinesville, Georgia, April 1941; Black-and-white photograph; Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division

which never actually happened. The end result, however, was another popular revival in interest in quilts during the Depression. The word “workt” was used in historical texts as a form of elision, and it is now used by contemporary practitioners who wish to link their work to historical precedents. Its inclusion in the exhibition title encapsulates our view of conveying a complex

1. Patricia Mainardi, “Quilts: The Great American Art,” The Feminist Art Journal, 2, no. 1 (Winter 1973), 1, 18–23. 2. Robert Doty’s introduction in Jonathan Holstein, ed., Abstract Design in American Quilts (exh. Cat.; New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1971), 5. 3. Karin E. Peterson, “How the Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary: The Modern Eye and the Quilt as Art Form,” in Maria Elena Buszek, ed., Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art (Durham, N.C.; Duke University Press, 2011), 99–114. “Workt by Hand”: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts is organized by the Brooklyn Museum. Its presentation at the National Museum of Women in the Arts is made possible through the generous support of the Arkansas State Committee of NMWA and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding is provided by the Coby Foundation, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Museum Educational Trust, and the members of NMWA.

Arkansas and NMWA: Stitched Together by a Mission

hen members of the Arkansas State Committee first heard about “Workt by Hand”: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts, the group was drawn to the exquisite works that would be included. Just as importantly, committee board member Joey Halinski explains that they saw it as “a perfect fit for Arkansas, which has such a rich fiber arts tradition.” This tradition—of quilting, weaving, knitting, and more—has continued through the present day, demonstrated by the committee’s recent participation in NMWA’s exhibition High Fiber— Women to Watch 2012, the most recent in the committee-sourced exhibition series. The Arkansas group took participation in this event to a distinct height, selecting works by Louise Halsey to be featured at NMWA as well as organizing their own exhibition of textile-based works, which has toured the state for nearly a year, ending in February 2014. The state exhibition features five

exemplary Arkansas artists—Barbara Cade, Jennifer Libby Fay, Louise Halsey, Jane Hartfield, and Deborah Kuster—who create works ranging from felted tapestries to hand-dyed and painted quilts, to woven wall hangings. Members of the Arkansas State Committee, which was founded in 1989 by Ed Dell Wortz and Helen Walton, look forward to celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2014. The committee’s mission, like NMWA’s, is broad: it honors and expands awareness of women artists through a state exhibition series; annual scholarships and internships; participation in the museum’s “Women to Watch” program; a state registry of women artists; and a range of other programs. Their decision to sponsor “Workt by Hand” represents not only the centrality of textiles as an arts medium with a strong connection to the state but, also, the committee’s ongoing commitment to the museum. WINTER/SPRING 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

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EXHIBITIONS

Judy Chicago: Circa ’75 January 17–April 13, 2014 Meret Oppenheim: Tender Friendships April 25–September 14, 2014

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 NMWA’s exhibitions and collection with museum staff (topics below). Free. No reservations required.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANIEL SCHWARTZ

“Workt by Hand”: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts December 20, 2013–April 27, 2014

New York Avenue Sculpture Project: Chakaia Booker On view through spring 2014 Equal Exposure: Anita Steckel’s Fight Against Censorship On view through May 9, 2014, in the Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center; Open Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–12 p.m. and 1–5 p.m. Above: Chakaia Booker, Shape Shifter, 2012; On view in the New York Avenue Sculpture Project

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MON 4:30–7:30 P.M.

TEACHER WORKSHOP. Beneath Quilts—Uncovering American History and Culture. Explore “Workt by Hand” through gallery discussions, writing, and hands-on activities. Learn how to illuminate American history and culture for students by examining the ideas and hands behind quilting. Receive related materials for classroom use. Light refreshments. Free for educators. Reservations required. Reserve online at http://nmwa.org/jan-13teacher-workshop.

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FRI 8 P.M.–MIDNIGHT

NMWA NIGHTS. After-Hours Soirée. The Young pARTners Circle of NMWA and the International Club of D.C. host an after-hours event at the museum with music, dancing, food, and drinks. “Workt by Hand” will be open for viewing until 10 p.m. VIP admission with open bar beginning at 8 p.m., $55 non-members; $50 members. General admission with one drink ticket beginning at 9 p.m., $30 non-members; $25 members.

WED NOON

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY GAVIN ASHWORTH, BROOKLYN MUSEUM

CALENDAR

Calendar

1/15 Selections from “Workt by Hand” 1/22 “Textiles in Art—Rendered, Reimagined, and Real,” on textiles in “Workt by Hand” and the collection 1/29 “What’s going on in this quilt?” Exploring narratives in “Workt by Hand” 2/5 Equal Exposure: Anita Steckel’s Fight Against Censorship 2/12 “For the love of quilts! What’s love got to do with it?” 2/19 Selections from “Workt by Hand” 2/26 “The Power of the Quilt,” on quilts with a political twist in “Workt by Hand” 3/5 “Fabulous Functionality,” on quilts as art and as functional household wares 3/12 Complicated and Creative,” on crazy quilts in “Workt by Hand” 3/19 “Domestic Affairs,” on fabric, fiber, and food storage 3/26 Selections from “Workt by Hand” 4/2 Selections from “Workt by Hand” 4/9 “Textiles in Art—Rendered, Reimagined, and Real,” on textiles in “Workt by Hand” and the collection 4/16 Selections from “Workt by Hand” 4/23 “Celebrating Earth Day,” on nature in art 4/30 Equal Exposure: Anita Steckel’s Fight Against Censorship 5/7 “A Mother’s Work,” on selections from the collection 5/14 Selections from the collection 5/21 “Must You Be So Formal?” Viewing quilts as modern art 5/28 “In Depth,” exploring dimensionality in art 6/4 Selections from the collection Above: Mary A. Stinson, Crazy Quilt, ca. 1880; On view in “Workt by Hand”

SUN NOON

CHAMBER CONCERT. United States Air Force Band. Members of the United States Air Force Band play a concert of chamber music in honor of the Year of Military Women (March 2013– April 2014). Free. No reservations required.

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WED 5–8 P.M.

NMWA NIGHTS. Wine, Twine, and Valentine. Explore your crafty side during this happy hour. Sip wine, try your hand at crafts inspired by “Workt by Hand”, and join a “Love Hurts”or “Love is a Many-Splendored Thing”-themed tour of the museum’s collection. $20 general; $18 members, seniors, and students. Ticket price includes two glasses of wine, beer, or soda, as well as craft materials. Reservations recommended. Reserve online at http://nmwa.org/feb-12-nmwa-nights.

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FRI NOON–1 P.M.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GAVIN ASHWORTH, BROOKLYN MUSEUM

CURATOR TALK. “Workt by Hand”. Explore NMWA’s special exhibition with Alden O’Brien, curator of costume and textiles at the DAR Museum. She will share insights into the content and themes of “Workt by Hand”. Free with admission. No reservations required. Victoria Royall Broadhead, Tumbling Blocks Quilt, ca. 1865–70; On view in “Workt by Hand”

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SUN NOON–5 P.M.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GAVIN ASHWORTH, BROOKLYN MUSEUM

DEMONSTRATION. Discover Quilting. Do you have questions that have been needling you about quilts? Learn more about the quilt techniques, materials, and processes on view in “Workt by Hand” through in-gallery demonstrations by area quilt-guild members. For a complete schedule of demonstrations and presenters, visit www.nmwa.org.

Bars Quilt, ca. 1890; On view in “Workt by Hand”

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SAT 12:30–2 P.M.

LITERARY EVENT. Coming to My Senses with Alyssa Harad. Join us for a discussion with Alyssa Harad, author of Coming to My Senses: A Story of Perfume, Pleasure, and an Unlikely Bride, and Holly Dugan, associate professor of English literature at the George Washington University and author of The Ephemeral History of Perfume. Book sale and signing to follow. Free. No reservations required.

SUN NOON–5 P.M. WORKSHOP. Catch the Quilting Bug: Yo-Yo Madness. Want to try your hand at quilt-making techniques but don’t know where to start? Artist Jennifer Lindsay offers the first of three hands-on quilt workshops to instruct and engage audiences ages 10 and up. Children 10–14 must be accompanied by an adult. Suitable for individuals of all skill levels. Materials and instruction provided. $15 general; $13 members, seniors, and students. Reservations required. Reserve by emailing reservations@nmwa.org.

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SUN 5–7 P.M.

ARTIST CONVERSATION. Judy Chicago and Jane Gerhard in Dialogue. In conjunction with Judy Chicago: Circa ’75, pioneer artist of the feminist movement Judy Chicago and historian and author Jane Gerhard will discuss their new books, Gerhard’s The Dinner Party: Judy Chicago and the Power of Popular Feminism, and Chicago’s Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education, in which she explores art education. Book signings and a 75th-birthday celebration for Chicago will follow. $10 general; $8 members, seniors, and students. Reservations required. Reserve online at http://nmwa.org/mar-2-Chicago.

WED 7:30–9:30 P.M.

SHENSON CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERT. Inbal Segev, Cellist. Israeli-American cellist Inbal Segev’s playing has been characterized as “strong and warm . . . delivered with impressive fluency and style.” Equally committed to new repertoire for the cello and beloved masterworks, Segev brings natural, insightful interpretations to the widest range of solo and chamber music. Her repertory of concerti and solo works includes new pieces and rarely performed gems. Free. Reservations required. Reserve online at http:// nmwa.org/march-5-shenson-concert.

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SUN NOON–5 P.M.

FREE COMMUNITY DAY. Celebrate National Quilting Day at NMWA. Do you have questions that have been needling you about quilts? Join us for National Quilting Day and find the answers! Learn more about the quilt techniques, materials, and processes on view in “Workt by Hand” through in-gallery demonstrations by area quilt-guild members. For a complete schedule of demonstrations and presenters, visit www.nmwa.org. Star of Bethlehem Quilt, ca. 1830; On view in “Workt by Hand”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GAVIN ASHWORTH, BROOKLYN MUSEUM

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Visit www.nmwa.org for more information and a complete calendar of events and programs.

WINTER/SPRING 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

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SUN NOON–5 P.M.

WORKSHOP. Catch the Quilting Bug: Crazy for Crazy Quilts. Want to try your hand at quilt-making techniques? Artist Jennifer Lindsay offers the second of three hands-on quilt workshops designed to instruct and engage audiences ages 10 and up. Children 10–14 must be accompanied by an adult. Recommended for individuals with basic hand-sewing skills. Materials and instruction provided. $15 general; $13 members, seniors, and students. Reservations required. Reserve by emailing reservations@nmwa.org.

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MON 7–9:30 P.M.

FILM. Environmental Film Festival: The Barefoot Artist. Lily Yeh’s story progresses from her first exposure to Chinese landscape painting as a young girl to the hauntingly beautiful memorial she designed to honor victims of the 1994 Rwanda genocide. $5 general; $4 members, seniors, and students. No reservations required.

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CURATOR TALK. “Workt by Hand”. Explore NMWA’s special exhibition with Catherine Morris, curator at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Morris, who organized the exhibition, will share insights into its content and themes. Free with admission. No reservations required. Pictorial Quilt, ca. 1795; On view in “Workt by Hand”

TUE 7–9:30 P.M.

FILM. Environmental Film Festival: Sokola Rimba (The Jungle School). Butet Manurung is bringing literacy to indigenous people living in the forests of Indonesia, which are constantly under threat by loggers, and on palm oil plantations. This documentary by filmmakers Mira Lesmana and Riri Riza reveals Manurung’s efforts to empower the native populations to protect their rainforest. Presented in partnership with the Embassy of Indonesia. $5 general; $4 members, seniors, and students. No reservations required.

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SAT 11 A.M.–2:30 P.M.

THEATER. SWAN Day Staged-Reading Marathon. NMWA celebrates SWAN Day (Support Women Artists Now) with staged readings of fresh, thought-provoking plays by U.S. women playwrights. Featured works will be directed by women stage directors from D.C. Drop by and see one play, or stay for all of them. For a full description and calendar of all SWAN Day events, visit www. georgetowntheatre.org. Free. No reservations required.

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FRI NOON–5 P.M.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GAVIN ASHWORTH, BROOKLYN MUSEUM

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SAT NOON–5 P.M.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GAVIN ASHWORTH, BROOKLYN MUSEUM

CALENDAR

Calendar

SAT 10 A.M.–2 P.M. WORKSHOP. Catch the Quilting Bug: Sashiko Sampler. To celebrate the National Cherry Blossom Festival, artist Jennifer Lindsay focuses on Japanese embroidery techniques in this hands-on quilt workshop, the final in the “Catch the Quilting Bug” series. This workshop is designed to instruct and engage audiences ages 10 and up. Children 10–14 must be accompanied by an adult. Recommended for individuals with basic hand-sewing skills. Materials and instruction provided. $15 general; $13 members, seniors, and students. Reservations required. Reserve by emailing reservations@nmwa.org.

Visit www.nmwa.org for more information and a complete calendar of events and programs. 16

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SUN 2–3:30 P.M.

LITERARY PROGRAM. Women Writers on Women Artists. Celebrate National Poetry Month with three poets who took inspiration from art and artists in NMWA’s collection. Karren Alenier shares poems about the work and relationships of artist Marie Laurencin. Jo Ann Clark reads from her suite of poems From the Loggia of Alba Agatha Mims, inspired by Renée Stout’s Seven Windows. B.K. Fischer presents selections from St. Rage’s Vault, a pregnancy memoir that unfolds through poems about the visual arts. Free. No reservations required.

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GALLERY TALK. Slow Art Day. Slow Art Day is an international movement aimed at encouraging people of all ages to visit museums to look at art slowly. Participants will be guided to look at five works of art for ten minutes each and then meet over lunch to talk about their experiences. Free with admission. Reservations recommended. Reserve online at http://slowartnmwa2014.eventbrite.com/.

FRI NOON–1 P.M.

CURATOR TALK. “Workt by Hand”. Explore NMWA’s special exhibition with Associate Curator Virginia Treanor, who will share her insights into the exhibition’s content and themes. Free with admission. No reservations required.

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Renée Stout, Seven Windows, 1996

SAT 11 A.M.–2 P.M.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY YASSINE EL MANSOURI

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THU 11:30 A.M.–12:30 P.M.

CURATOR TALK. “Workt by Hand”. Explore NMWA’s special exhibition with Janneken Smucker, assistant professor of history at West Chester University and author of Amish Quilts: Crafting an American Icon. She will share her insights into the exhibition’s content and themes. A book sale and signing will follow. Free with admission. No reservations required.

FRI 7 P.M.

SPRING GALA. Nine Thousand and Nine Hundred Nights. The museum’s signature philanthropic event, a special night to salute patrons, members, and friends, will take inspiration from Marrakesh. Chaired by Annie Totah, this black-tie gala will begin with a silent auction, cocktails, and an opportunity to view “Workt by Hand”, followed by dinner and dancing. For reservations, contact Melody Ain at 202-266-2815 or main@nmwa.org.

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WED 7:30–9:30 P.M.

SHENSON CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERT. Jeanine De Bique, Soprano. Recognized as an artist of “dramatic presence and versatility,” Trinidadian soprano Jeanine De Bique’s luscious tone and compelling stage presence have garnered accolades. Her “genuine star quality” and “voice of exceptional beauty” earned her upcoming roles as Juliette in Roméo et Juliette with St. Petersburg Opera and Clara in Porgy and Bess with the Royal Danish Opera. Free. Reservations required. Reserve online at http://nmwa.org/may-14shenson-concert.

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WED 7:30–9:30 P.M.

SHENSON CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERT. A Tribute to Marvin Hamlisch: Mary Millben, Soprano. Helen Hayes Award nominee Mary Millben, a versatile soprano, is gaining a broad fan base, impressing audiences at the White House, Kennedy Center, and Copacabana, as well as on stages across Asia and Europe. She was a soloist in the 2008 National Symphony Orchestra Pops concert under the direction of Dr. Joyce Garrett and the late Marvin Hamlisch. Free. Reservations required. Reserve online at http://nmwa.org/may-28shenson-concert.

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; and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Cigna Foundation; the Harriet E. McNamee Youth Education Fund; William and Christine Leahy; The Samuel Burtoff, M.D. Foundation; the Louis J. Kuriansky Foundation, Inc.; Washington Marriott at Metro Center; Sofitel Washington D.C. Lafayette Square; and the Junior League of Washington.

Visit www.nmwa.org for more information and a complete calendar of events and programs.

WINTER/SPRING 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

JUDY CHICAGO CIRCA ’75 January 17–April 13, 2014

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | WINTER/SPRING 2014

Virginia Treanor

As Judy Chicago prepares to celebrate her seventy-fifth birthday in 2014, NMWA honors the trailblazing feminist artist with an exhibition of her works from the 1970s. The decade was pivotal in both Chicago’s career and the feminist movement in the United States. Beginning with her public name change in 1970—she jettisoned her birth and married surnames for the neutral “Chicago,” an act of independence—and concluding with her bestknown work, The Dinner Party, Chicago’s art paralleled and influenced the ’70s feminist art movement. Circa ’75 gathers a selection of Chicago’s innovative work from this era. The “Pasadena Lifesavers” series of paintings, 1969–70, marks Chicago’s break with the often emotionally disconnected aesthetic of Minimalism. Seeking to convey what it was like to be a woman through abstracted forms, Chicago perfected the use of spray paint (usually associated with the masculine realm of auto-body work) on acrylic or Plexiglas, a medium that allowed her to create shapes that appear to turn, dissolve, pulse, and vibrate, evoking emotional and physical sensations.

● OPPOSITE

Virginia Woolf (preparatory drawing for The Dinner Party), 1976; Mixed media on paper, 24 x 36 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Mary Ross Taylor in honor of Elizabeth A. Sackler

WINTER/SPRING 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

My work is all about overcoming erasure and ensuring that women’s achievements become a permanent part of our cultural history. JUDY CHICAGO

uring this time, Chicago was developing her visual vocabulary based on the idea of central core imagery, which she believes “has been greatly misunderstood. In the early 1970s, I studied a lot of historic art by women (for example, Mary Cassatt, Emily Carr, and Georgia O’Keeffe). I noticed that they seemed to construct pictorial space from the center, which is my own tendency as well. This discovery helped me in my struggle to be myself in my work instead of disguising my gender in order to be taken seriously in the macho 1960s L.A. art scene.”1 Throughout the ’70s, Chicago explored the possibilities of central core imagery. These works are characterized by circular

or square forms with defined centers that radiate lines of color, evoking petals, pages, wings, or labia. The majority of the pieces in this exhibition share an additional theme, “Great Ladies,” that recurs in Chicago’s 1970s art. Driven by her realization that “too much of women’s cultural production has been lost,” Chicago began researching women in history—artists as well as writers, scientists, women’s rights advocates, and others. Her “Great Ladies” work began in the early ’70s with large-scale abstract oil paintings named for famous women as well as smaller drawings like Study for Transformation of the Great Ladies, 1973, and the series “Compressed Women Who Yearned to be Butterflies,” 1973–74. ● ABOVE

Virginia Woolf (test plate for The Dinner Party), 1978; Glazed porcelain, 14 in. diameter; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Mary Ross Taylor in honor of Elizabeth A. Sackler ● LEFT

Pasadena Lifesavers Red #5, 1970; Sprayed acrylic lacquer on acrylic, 60 x 60 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Elyse and Stanley Grinstein ● OPPOSITE, LEFT TO RIGHT

Paula Modersohn-Becker from “Compressed Women Who Yearned to be Butterflies,” 1973–74; Prismacolor and graphite on paper, 23 x 23 in.; Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection, Gift of Mary Ross Taylor, Houston, Texas Margaret Fuller from “Compressed Women Who Yearned to be Butterflies,” 1973–74; Prismacolor and graphite on paper, 23 x 23 in.; Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection, Gift of Mary Ross Taylor, Houston, Texas Madame Deronda from “Compressed Women Who Yearned to be Butterflies,” 1973–74; Prismacolor and graphite on paper, 23 x 23 in.; Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection, Gift of Mary Ross Taylor, Houston, Texas

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | WINTER/SPRING 2014

In the Transformation drawing, Chicago juxtaposes imagery— three rows of colorful shapes that transform, left to right, from squares to circles to wing-like forms—with handwritten notes around the paper’s perimeter and between the images. In diaristic, pencil-written script, she records thoughts on topics as varied as the nineteenth-century social activist Elizabeth Cady-Stanton and the wonder of seashells. Likewise, the works in the “Compressed Women” series are named for significant women, and Chicago includes text related to their subjects alongside colorful central core imagery. Subjects include the German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker; English writer Mary Lamb; and Lily Bart, the tragic heroine from Edith Wharton’s novel House of Mirth. Of the writing that appears frequently in Chicago’s work, she explains, “In the 1970s the diarist Anais Nin was my mentor, and she encouraged me to write . . . writing has allowed me to express ideas that don’t lend themselves to visual form.” During this time, Chicago’s “Great Ladies” research and art fueled her vision of a large-scale, multi-media work celebrating women in history. “My work is all about overcoming erasure and ensuring that women’s achievements become a permanent part of our cultural history,” she says. This mission would find its ultimate manifestation in The Dinner Party, completed in 1979. A complex installation of three tables arranged in triangular form, The Dinner Party provides place settings for a fantastical gathering of thirty-nine great female historical figures. Now housed permanently at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, it remains one of the most iconic twentieth-century artworks. Chicago chose to incorporate various mediums, particularly painted porcelain and embroidery, because historically they have been deemed “women’s work.” By appropriating and integrating them, Chicago elevates these art forms to the status of painting and sculpture, demanding that they be recognized as the equals of art by men. As part of her artistic process, Chicago produced numerous preparatory drawings and test plates for the place settings in The Dinner Party. NMWA’s collection features preliminary studies for settings for Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf, as well as a

porcelain test plate for the Woolf setting. The Dickinson and Woolf preparatory drawings are more aptly described as multi-media works, comprising textiles, photographs, and writing. While text in the Dickinson piece records the intricate technique of lace draping, which Chicago used to adorn the finished plate, the Woolf piece features the artist’s personal observations on the life of the writer. These preparatory works address their subjects both intellectually and emotionally, a symbiosis that is a hallmark of Judy Chicago’s art. Chicago has been a friend and ally to the National Museum of Women in the Arts since the museum’s 1987 opening. “I am often asked about NMWA and why we need a ‘women’s museum,’” she says. “As I point out, as long as our major museums continue to shortchange women artists by not giving us appropriate space on the walls, we need our own institutions. At this moment in time, NMWA and the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art are the only institutions devoted to women’s art; that’s hardly enough to handle the enormous history of women’s art, which is increasing as women gain more rights around the world.” Chicago’s work from the 1970s is inextricably intertwined with the feminist art movement, and she continues delivering strong social and political messages through her art: “Given the experiences I have had in relation to the impact of my work, I believe more than ever in the power of art to transform consciousness. Over the years, many people have told me that seeing The Dinner Party in particular changed their lives. . . . I have been extremely heartened to discover the impact my work has had. That said, unfortunately, too many artists make art that is intended for the marketplace instead of the human heart.” Virginia Treanor is the associate curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. 1. All quotes are from email correspondence with the author in September 2013. Judy Chicago: Circa ’75 is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts and is generously supported by the members of NMWA.

WINTER/SPRING 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | WINTER/SPRING 2014

Anita Steckel

The Feminist Art of Sexual Politics Rachel Middleman

erhaps the most iconic feminist artworks by Anita Steckel (1930–2012) are those of the “Giant Woman” series (1969– 1973). In Just Waiting for the Bus, we see an oversized female nude painted into a photograph of a busy urban street. The giant woman, disproportionally large and unabashedly nude, creates great disruption in an otherwise ordinary scene. When the series was still in process, Steckel explained the connection between her personal experience, the women’s movement, and her art: “In these pictures the women are outsized, these are giant women. Women who have outgrown their roles, that is, the old roles women have had. And I’m one of these women.”1 Steckel began the “Giant Woman” series in 1969, but it was not until a later iteration in the early 1970s that she changed the anonymous female face in Just Waiting for the Bus into a self-portrait. “When I merged my face with them,” she said, “it was like an understanding that we are each all of these women, sometimes victorious and sometimes victim.”2 While Just Waiting for the Bus communicates an attitude of defiance, Pierced shows that even the giant woman can be injured by the phallocentric city. These revised nudes, with her visage, embody the feminist phrase “the personal is political.” With the “Giant Woman” series, Steckel represented the conditions of women in society, and in New York in particular, at a time of regular, blatant discrimination against professional female artists. Art historian Ruth Iskin noted the feminist potential of Steckel’s appropriation of images: Giant Woman on Empire State Building, 1973; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center Anita Steckel Papers

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“Steckel utilizes collage for its political potential. In addition, collage provides Steckel with a means of addressing and using available (male) traditions of culture while giving them a feminist twist—allowing her to introduce her own point of view of those traditions while using them.” 3 This strategy of appropriation and transformation, inspired in part by Dada, can be seen throughout Steckel’s oeuvre. Adding her artistic touches to found photographs and reproductions of historical artworks, Steckel revamped existing images into timely social and political commentary. She often employed nudity and sexuality to surprise viewers and drive her points home.

Anita Steckel (née Arkin) was born in Brooklyn in 1930, living and working almost all of her life in New York City. She attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan and studied at Cooper Union, Alfred University, and the Art Students League, where she also taught from 1984 until her death, in 2012. She considered American painter Edwin Dickinson to be her most influential studio teacher, although she also learned from art history, at times directly appropriating from artists ranging from Rogier van der Weyden and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres to Marcel Duchamp and Tom of Finland.4 In 1963, Steckel titled her second solo exhibition Mom Art (Hacker Gallery, New York) punning on the “Pop Art” of such artists as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol who drew subject matter from popular culture, while also gesturing to the art world’s gender biases.5 Mom Art comprised at least twenty-eight small-scale montages based on either turn-of-the-century photographs or reproductions of art-historical masterworks. Steckel altered these familiar or innocuous-looking images into unexpected appraisals of societal sexism, racism, and violence. Dowry, for example, protests the treatment of women as possessions by placing shadowy hands over the demure bride’s breast. In College Boy, the black man who goes to college is crucified; and, in Fat Man: Death Grows Fat on War, the robust male figure in military uniform has the head of a smiling skull. In 1970, Steckel moved into an apartment in Westbeth Artists’ Housing in Greenwich Village, which served as her studio and home for the rest of her life. This sizable space pushed her toward large-scale works, including her “New York Skyline” series, which added phalluses and other symbols to enlarged photographs of the Manhattan landscape. “I use the ‘cityscape’ because it’s a visual symbol of male power,” she explained, “. . . the city was built by men and run by men, and its profile can be seen as phallic—all those erect, hard structures.” 6 Early in 1972, Steckel drew the attention of the media with her controversial exhibition The Feminist Art of Sexual Politics, held at Rockland Community College art gallery in Suffern, New York, in which her “Giant Woman” and “New York Skyline” series were featured among others that used sexual imagery. A local county legislator attempted to censor the exhibition, asking that it be closed, but, with the support of the college, students, and the New York art world, the show remained opened while spurring public debates about freedom of expression in art. In response to this episode, Steckel formed the Fight Censorship group to advocate for the acceptance of sexual art made by women into museums and mainstream culture. Louise Bourgeois, Martha Edelheit, Juanita McNeely, Joan Semmel, and Hannah Wilke were among the artists present at the first meeting.

Top: Just Waiting for the Bus, 1969–70; Image courtesy of the Anita Steckel Estate Bottom: Pierced, 1969–70; Image courtesy of the Anita Steckel Estate

Right: Anita Steckel, ca. 2000; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center Anita Steckel Papers Far right: Fat Man: Death Grows Fat on War, ca. 1963; Image courtesy of the Anita Steckel Estate Below: Untitled work from “Giant Animals on New York,” ca. 1970s; Image courtesy of the Anita Steckel Estate

Together, they discussed the hurdles they faced in attempting to publically display sexual subject matter of any sort, whether it was about eroticism, sexual violence, maternity, or other forms of female experience. Steckel continued working with feminist themes in such series as “Creation Revisited,” which includes images of Steckel riding through the Sistine ceiling on the wings of a bird. Animals also appeared in her next series, which incorporates photography of the New York landscape. “When I first thought of putting antelope and zebra on the skyline, I thought they’d be upsetting,” she recalled, “but instead they somehow turn the city back into a grassland . . . tame it.” 7 Like the giant women, the animals transform viewers’ ideas about urban experience. Steckel’s directly political work also adapted to her current concerns. From the “Mom Art” of 1963, to the “Hitler” series in 1978, to her “Bush” series during the Iraq war, she made visual anti-war protests, pointing the finger at aggressive, male-dominated governments and militaries. In her final and perhaps most personal series, still in progress at her death, Steckel turned a critical eye upon her own life history. The “Revisions on a Photo Album” series is based on photographs, many from her family album, to which Steckel added pencil drawings, making visible her feelings about significant people and foundational experiences in her life. One powerful montage shows Steckel graduating from junior high school. Dressed up and smiling at the camera, the young girl is flanked by her mother, who has been rendered nude by Steckel’s pencil, and her aunt, whose head has been replaced by a grinning skull. Responding to the memory of abuse that she suffered by her mother, Steckel strikes back at the older women by exposing them, uncomfortably. Even in her early eighties, Steckel had not relinquished her determination or her use of wit in cleverly revealing truths that might be repressed in polite company. Her aesthetic style of appropriating the culture around her and then altering it through montage and collage served well her conviction to represent issues of social, political, and even personal injustices. Rachel Middleman is an assistant professor of art history at Utah State University.

Selections from Anita Steckel’s archive are on view in Equal Exposure: Anita Steckel’s Fight Against Censorship, in the Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center through May 9, 2014. Notes: 1. Raeanne Rubbenstein, “Women: The Impaled Sex,” Crawdaddy (January 1972): 35.; 2. Amanda Sebestyen, “Sex, Power, & Art,” Spare Rib (August 1979): 44.; 3. Ruth Iskin, “Anita Steckel’s Feminist Fantasy: The Making of a New Ideology,” Chrysalis 3 (1977): 93.; 4. Information not otherwise cited comes from interviews with the author and Anita Steckel’s personal archives, which are now in the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.; 5. Richard Meyer, “Artists Sometimes Have Feelings,” Art Journal 67 (winter 2008): 38–55. For more on Steckel’s life and career also see Rachel Middleman, “Anita Steckel’s Feminist Montage: Merging Politics, Art and Life,” Woman’s Art Journal 34 (spring/summer 2013): 21–29.; 6. Catherine Houck, “Women Artists Today,” Cosmopolitan 188 (January 1980): 258.; 7. Houck, 266.

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e t a e r t b a e c l u e C Ed e: t a v i t p a C

s e tte i m d m n Co a l a nal n o tio i t Na erna Int lly Ke n e r Ka

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | WINTER/SPRING 2014

THROUGH EXHIBITIONS, EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS, AND EVENTS, NMWA’s national and international

outreach committees celebrate the achievements of women artists alongside the museum. The committees have been integral partners since the museum’s inception, when Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay created the program as a way to help promote women artists, reach out to members, and create new audiences beyond the D.C. area. In 1985, two years before the museum opened its doors, the first committee was founded in Texas. Today, the museum is proud to have twenty-two committees with more than 2,100 members in Europe, South America, and the United States. Although each committee is an independently incorporated nonprofit organization, they all share the goal of extending the museum’s visibility and reaching out to new constituencies. To accomplish this objective, they work with the museum on programming that takes place at NMWA, and they also expand the message into their home regions by organizing events that forge new connections and raise the profiles of local women artists. Networking and learning opportunities include attendance at biannual committee conferences at NMWA; committees also receive regular visits from members of the museum staff and NMWA Board and Advisory Board, which are helpful in making plans and maintaining momentum. Massachusetts Committee Chair Sarah Treco explains that these chances to gather “really cement the relationship between committee leaders and the museum.” A cornerstone of committees’ work with NMWA is the “Women to Watch” exhibition series. Since its 2008 creation, thirteen committees have taken part in this biennial invitational program, which features underrepresented and emerging women artists from the states and countries of NMWA’s committees. Artists are invited by the committees, and groups often work with regional curators—including those from such esteemed institutions as the Centre Georges Pompidou, the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Dallas Museum of Fine Art—to make their selections. Each exhibition is organized around a specific medium or theme. In 2012, seven groups worked with curators from their areas to choose up-and-coming female fiber artists for the most recent “Women to Watch” show, High Fiber. Several committees have held successful regional events and exhibitions that tie into “Women to Watch.” In 2012, the Greater Kansas City Area Committee and the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art held a reception to celebrate the exhibition Focus on Fiber and Textiles, which was on view at the Epstein Gallery, in Overland Park, and included nominees for High Fiber. The Arkansas Committee also organized

Below, left to right: Installation view of Body of Work—Women to Watch 2010, with work by Mequitta Ahuja (nominated by the Texas Committee), Julie Farstad (Greater Kansas City Area Committee), and Jennifer Levonian (Pennsylvania Committee) At the committee conference in 2009, nearly forty attendees represented nineteen committees at NMWA At the opening of High Fiber—Women to Watch 2012, all of the artists spoke about their work; Beili Liu, nominated by the Texas Committee, describes her sculpture, Toil

WINTER/SPRING 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

exhibitions of “Women to Watch” artists, which were held at venues throughout the state in 2013. Committees are beginning to prepare for the next exhibition, in 2015, which will showcase artwork related to the theme of flora and fauna. To increase awareness of the work of women artists in their communities, committees also coordinate local educational events. By arranging programs such as the New Mexico State Committee’s studio tours of local artists, or the Massachusetts State Committee’s group tours of local museums and galleries—timed to coincide with compelling exhibitions of work by women artists—committee members are introducing an everwider circle of the art world to the museum’s mission. Several committees have established highly anticipated recurring events that build camaraderie among members while supporting women in the arts. Every summer, the Mississippi State Committee recognizes accomplished Mississippi women artists at their Honored Artist Luncheon: “It has become our best-attended event,” says former president Jean Laney. The Southern California State Committee’s annual summer luncheon celebrates members and the group’s achievements. Others have marked special occasions or partnerships, such as the 2007 event held by the U.K. Committee at Prince Charles’s residence, Clarence House, which honored Holladay; or the 2009 collaboration that allowed the committee in Milan (Gli Amici del NMWA) to assist in securing twenty works from NMWA’s collection for the exhibition Women in Art from Renaissance to Surrealism at Milan’s Palazzo Reale. In 2011, the committee in Paris (Les Amis du NMWA) planned an event with the U.S. Embassy in France, which was followed by a luncheon honoring NMWA at the French Sen-

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | WINTER/SPRING 2014

ate. The event celebrated International Women’s Day and the twenty-fifth anniversary exhibition Royalists to Romantics, bolstering ties with supporters in France. These events, programs, and partnerships help to spread enthusiasm and awareness. The Georgia Committee’s Three to See event each fall attracts over two hundred people for visits to three local art collections. As Lisa Cannon Taylor, chair of the Georgia Committee, describes, “All three of this year’s collections highlighted women artists, and several of those artists are in the NMWA collection, which jumpstarted a lot of fabulous discussions about women and collecting. I love not only introducing women artists to others but discovering new and exciting ones as well. This tour encourages that passion.” Committee members’ interest in and advocacy for NMWA is also invigorated by the biannual conference, for which group representatives travel to Washington for a two-day meeting. They exchange ideas for events and programs, meet NMWA staff, and attend presentations on upcoming exhibitions, membership, and educational programming. As Sarah Treco says, “The committee conferences offer a sense of welcome and inclusion that is almost impossible to re-create in any other manner. They provide an excellent forum for networking with other committee leaders, for sharing experience and programming ideas, and for making friends.” Attendees then bring these tools and information—as well as their renewed energy—back to local committees. For the same reasons, NMWA staff is thrilled to be able to host committee groups when they are able to visit and tour the museum. The museum has had recent visits from the Greater Kansas City Area Committee, the New Mexico Committee, and the Pennsylvania Committee. During their D.C. trips, committees

meet with museum staff and go on curator-led tours of the collection and special exhibitions. Looking forward, committees continue to plan exciting and educational events recognizing women in the arts. Additionally, many of these groups are building websites to extend and enhance their own reach, aiding communication to growing groups. “Through our committees, we are able to promote women artists and the mission of the museum. This is a unique approach to outreach and it brings us many friends worldwide.” says Deputy Director Ilene Gutman. As this important program evolves— with new committees currently forming in Brazil, Chile, and the Greater New York Area—these groups continue to bring NMWA and its mission to a broader audience, growing in their invaluable roles as advocates and ambassadors for the museum.

Interested in Learning More? Contact Us and Get Involved. NATIONAL

Texas

Arizona

Dorothy Snyder

Contact NMWA

dotsnyder@aol.com

epollak@nmwa.org Arkansas

INTERNATIONAL

Marta Jones

Brazil

ms.martajones@gmail.com

Rita Almeida Freitas ritalmeidaf@hotmail.com

Southern California

Karen Kelly is the development and endowment coordinator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Kathy Todd

Chile

krosstodd1@gmail.com

Drina Rendic Drina.rendic@gmail.com

Georgia Below, left to right: Installation view of High Fiber—Women to Watch 2012, with work by Rachael Matthews (nominated by the U.K. Committee) and Laure Tixier (Les Amis du NMWA) At the opening of High Fiber—Women to Watch 2012, all of the artists were in attendance: Tracy Krumm (nominated by the Greater Kansas City Area Committee), Debra Folz (Massachusetts Committee), Laure Tixier (Les Amis du NMWA), Beili Liu (Texas Committee), Ligia Bouton (New Mexico Committee), Louise Halsey (Arkansas Committee), and Rachael Matthews (U.K. Committee) Installation view of the Arkansas Committee’s traveling Women to Watch exhibition at the Fort Smith Regional Art Museum opening reception in May 2013, with participating artists Jane Hartsfield and Louise Halsey At the Mississippi Committee’s fall business meeting, Peggy Oakes, Betty Harris, incoming committee president Lillian Wade, and outgoing committee president Jean Laney

Lisa Cannon Taylor

Czech Republic

lisa@ansleypark.com

Lenka Duskova lenka@nmwa.cz

Greater Kansas City Area

Pavlina Jirmannova

Margot Matteson

pavlina@nmwa.cz

mmatteson4@kc.rr.com France Massachusetts

Tara Beauregard Whitbeck

Sarah Bucknell Treco

tara.whitbeck@free.fr

Sue O’Brien Italy

contact@ma-nmwa.org

Claudia Pensotti Mosca Mississippi

claudiapensotti@gmail.com

Jean Laney laneybw@aol.com

Portugal

Lillian Wade

Antonio da Veiga Pinto

mlhwade@cableone.net

antonioveigapinto@gmail.com Maura Marvao

New Mexico Judy Tully

Spain

judyktully@aol.com

Sofia Barroso sofia.barroso@aroundart.es

Greater New York Area Cheryl S. Tague

United Kingdom

cheryl@core-home.com

Patti White

Island Weiss

patti@4whites.com

island@islandweiss.com

Beth Colocci bcolocci@yahoo.co.uk

Pennsylvania Mary Beth Bogan mbogan@boganlawgroup.com

SEASON 0000 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

MUSEUM NEWS AND EVENTS

Museum News Director’s Circle in Barcelona In October 2013, the museum’s Director’s Circle traveled to Barcelona for an art, design, and architecture trip. The group explored the city, famous for its Art Nouveau architecture, revitalized Gothic Quarter and waterfront scene, and, of course, its vibrant contemporary culture. Led by Sofia Barroso, an art historian and the chair of NMWA’s committee in Spain, the trip included tours of museums, galleries, private collections, and contemporary artists’ studios. Highlights included behind-the-

scenes visits to architect Benedetta Tagliabue’s office, the Godia Collection at El Conventet, the marvelous Romanesque frescos at the Museum of Catalan Art renovated by Gae Aulenti, and lunch with Gabriela Moragas and Emilio Alvarez of Àngles Gallery. The group’s final evening included a guitar performance at the Palau de la Musica, one of the world’s great Art Nouveau concert halls. The group also enjoyed the distinctive Catalan cuisine and fashion, met with new NMWA members in Barcelona, and created ties to the city’s contemporary art collectors.

NMWA’s Director’s Circle group visits Barcelona

Meet NMWA’s Staff What does your team do? Emily Haight: We work together to distribute information to members, shape events, and plan member benefits. Christina Knowles: There are two other important team members, Database Manager Susan Aronstam and New Media Marketing Specialist Kathleen Kimlin. They both started out working in member relations and bring that perspective to their work.

Emily Haight, Carolyn Higgins, and Christina Knowles

What’s your favorite thing about your job? Christina Knowles: Seeing visitors’ expressions—the look of people who are about to make a wonderful discovery or who have just been given an unexpected gift—gives me a great feeling about our work. Emily Haight: I love member preview days. We get just as excited as members do for new exhibitions, guided tours, and talks by artists. I was among our group of attendees to be star-struck by artist Audrey Niffenegger at the preview last summer.

Get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the jobs of NMWA’s staff: Director of Membership Christina Knowles, Membership Operations Coordinator Carolyn Higgins, and Member Relations Associate Emily Haight are often the primary museum representatives interacting with members. They answer correspondence, plan exhibition preview days, and ensure that NMWA maintains its strong membership base.

What plans do you have for membership programs? Christina Knowles: We hope to increase members’ opportunities to engage with the museum’s mission online—a recent example is the launch of the monthly Culture Watch email that highlights U.S. and worldwide exhibitions of women artists. Future plans include offering museum lectures and talks online.

Christina, you worked at NMWA previously, recently returning to lead the membership team; Emily and Carolyn, you both started as museum interns before you were hired. What brought you here? Christina Knowles: NMWA was my first museum position. After fifteen-plus years in fundraising for cultural nonprofits and, more recently, as director of development for the Mathematical Association of America, I was delighted to be invited back to NMWA to once again run the membership program. Carolyn Higgins: I was introduced to NMWA by one of my professors in school, and I fell in love with the museum, its story, and its mission. Working here introduced me to art that is not seen enough and stories that are not told enough.

NMWA’s large group of dedicated members is exceptional among museums. Can you describe why that is so significant? Emily Haight: In membership, I’ve been able to see what NMWA means to the people who support it—through Charter members’ stories as well as notes from members who have never visited in person but continue to support NMWA’s mission. Carolyn Higgins: Through members’ support and advocacy, we are able to bring women artists into the spotlight they deserve. We have thousands of members who have been giving for over twenty-five years, which is amazing! The loyalty of our members is inspiring to our entire staff.

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | WINTER/SPRING 2014

MUSEUM NEWS AND EVENTS

Mezzanine Café Reopens NMWA announces the reopening of its Mezzanine Café under new management. Open for weekday lunches, the family-run establishment focuses on fresh, organic ingredients to serve to museum guests and the local community. The menu includes Caesar salads with smoked salmon or grilled chicken, a Wagyu burger, a roasted vegetable flatbread with marinated eggplant, and a quiche du jour. The café owner, Iliana Paravalou, is joined by her husband, Pantelis Paravalos, and her

parents, Effie Damigou and Christos Damigos, who ran a café for The Star Ledger newspaper in Newark, New Jersey, for fifteen years. “We are honored to work alongside NMWA on its beautiful mezzanine level, which provides a lovely, relaxing atmosphere for patrons,” says Paravalou. The café is open Monday–Friday, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. Reservations are available at 202-6281068, and walk-in customers are welcome. Café guests are not required to pay museum admission.

Museum Events Legacy of Women in the Arts Endowment Celebration 1. NMWA Trustee Mary Mochary, NMWA Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, NMWA Board President Emerita and Endowment Chair Carol Lascaris, and NMWA Trustee Annie Totah 2. NMWA Advisory Board Chair Gladys Lisanby, NMWA Board President Emerita and Endowment Chair Carol Lascaris, and NMWA Advisory Board member Betty Boyd Dettre 3. NMWA Trustee Nancy Stevenson, Gordon West, and NMWA Trustee Alice West 4. NMWA’s Alice West Director, Susan Fisher Sterling, presents the Award for Excellence in the Performing Arts to Lesley Gore 5. Judy and A. R. Esfandiary 6. Barbara and Andrew Kapusto

PHOTOGRAPHY BY REBECCA D’ANGELO

Artist Lecture by Faith Ringgold: More Than 50 Years 7. During her recent exhibition at NMWA, American People, Black Light, Faith Ringgold spoke to a sold-out audience about her life and career

WINTER/SPRING 2014 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

SUPPORTING ROLES

Board of Trustees

Legacy of Women in the Arts Endowment Campaign

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay—Chair of the Board, Winton S. Holladay—President, Gina F. Adams—First Vice President, Heather Miller Podesta—Second Vice President (Community Relations), Charlotte Clay Buxton—Secretary, Sheila Shaffer—Treasurer, Mary V. Mochary—Finance Chair, Marcia Carlucci— Nominations Chair, Nancy Nelson Stevenson—Works of Art Chair, Arlene Fine Klepper—Building Chair, Carol Matthews Lascaris—President Emerita and Endowment Chair, Juliana E. May—At Large, Susan Fisher Sterling*—Alice West Director, Janice Lindhurst Adams, Pamela G. Bailey, M. A. Ruda Brickfield, 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, Dana J. Snyder, Kathleen Elizabeth Springhorn, Sharon Lee Stark, Jessica H. Sterchi, Jennifer P. Streaks, Joanne C. Stringer, Mahinder Tak, Annie S. Totah, Frances Usher, Ruthanna Maxwell Weber, Amy Weiss, Alice West *Ex-Officio

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 to the endowment.

NMWA Advisory Board Gladys Kemp Lisanby—Chair, Sarah Bucknell Treco— Vice 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, Jane Fortune, Robert Freeman, Claudia Fritsche, Lisa Garrison, Barbara S. Goldfarb, 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, Sarah H. Lisanby, M.D., Nancy Livingston, C. Raymond Marvin, Pat McCall, Dee Ann McIntyre, Cynthia McKee, Suzanne Mellor, Joan S. Miller, Eleanor Smith Morris, Jeannette T. Nichols, Kay W. Olson, Katherine D. Ortega, Margaret Perkins, Patti Pyle, Madeleine Rast, Barbara Richter, Elizabeth Robinson, Elizabeth A. Sackler, Steven Scott, Marsha Brody Shiff, Geri Skirkanich, Patti Amanda Spivey, Kathleen Elizabeth Springhorn, Bonnie Staley, Jo Stribling, Susan Swartz, Cheryl S. Tague, 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 November 25, 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 Samoza, 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

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | WINTER/SPRING 2014

Museum Shop I Like You This special book expresses the true meaning of friendship with charming accompanying illustrations. Short, sweet, and sure to please! $4.99/Member $4.49 (Item #776)

A Museum of Their Own Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay details the conception and first twenty years of NMWA’s history, paying homage to remarkable individuals who helped cultivate the museum. Hardcover, 240 pages. $49.95/Member $44.96 (Item #7700)

“Workt by Hand”: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts Over time, quilts have provoked reverence, nostalgia, and awe. Beautiful examples of historical quilts and compelling interpretive scholarship are showcased in this exhibition catalogue from the Brooklyn Museum. Hardcover, 126 pages. $39.95/Member $35.96 (Item #4500)

Amish Cube

Expand your knowledge of the Amish tradition of quilt-making with the visual splendor of these art cubes. Rotate the colorful cube to experience the geometric art of quilting! $15/Member $13.50 (Item #5904)

Quilt Mini Puzzle Explore a new angle

Bold Double Helix Bracelet Spice up your winter

of the distinctly American craft of quiltmaking— and have a good time doing it. Picturing a crazy quilt by Mary Stinson, on view in “Workt by Hand”. $9.50/Member $8.55 (Item #2666)

outfits with this bracelet designed by Carolyn Forsman. A comfortable fit with stretch, the piece is sure to turn heads. Choose Silver or Hematite. $18/Member $16.20 (Item #1340)

LOQI Reusable Bags Be elegant while staying eco-friendly with these durable, reusable bags. Includes carrying case. Choose Red Blossom or Gray Dahlia. $18/Member $16.20 (Item #2665)

Pride & Prejudice or Jane Eyre Counting Books Introduce your little

NMWA’s Shop Goes Online! 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.

learner to Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte through BabyLit Counting Primers. Texts by Jennifer Adams and illustrations by Alison Oliver adapt classic works to counting. Ages 1–2. Choose Pride & Prejudice or Jane Eyre. $9.99/Member $9 (Item #9574)

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COMING SOON

Total Art: Contemporary Video June 6–October 12, 2014

omen artists around the world were pioneers of video art in the 1960s and 1970s. Early videos were often single-channel shorts, made with experimental techniques and political content that critiqued mainstream media. A half-century later, video artists are attuned to popular media formats rather than critical of them. To create immersive, experiential works, today’s artists design elaborate stage sets, film at remote locations, incorporate digital technology and animation, and meticulously plan viewing spaces. Featuring recently acquired works in NMWA’s collection as well as loans from notable private and public collections, Total Art highlights the inventive processes that sustain women artists’ position at the forefront of video. Total Art reflects the continued global scope of video. The exhibition features works by Dara Birnbaum, Mwangi Hutter, Alex Prager, Michal Rovner, Eve Sussman/Rufus Corporation, Janaina Tschäpe, and others. Janaina Tschäpe, Lacrimacorpus (Zeitschneide), 2004; Chromogenic print, 40 x 32 in.; Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, Washington, D.C.; Image courtesy of the artist and Tierney Gardarin Gallery, NY

New York Avenue Sculpture Project: Magdalena Abakanowicz On view later in 2014, the third installation in the New York Avenue Sculpture Project will feature work by renowned Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz. Check www.nmwa.org for current announcements and events.