Women in the Arts Summer 2015 by Women in the Arts

SUMMER 2015

FOUNDER’S LETTER

Dear Members and Friends, It seems important to tell members as a whole about some of the museum’s remarkable recent successes. The Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea exhibition brought in more than fifty thousand visitors and received splendid reviews, bringing the National Museum of Women in the Arts scores of new friends. Truly a coup. The prestigious Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom was awarded to NMWA, the first American organization to receive it. Susan Fisher Sterling accepted the prize on behalf of the museum at a ceremony at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris in January (read more on page 28). These accomplishments follow a fruitful year in 2014. The Washington City Paper named NMWA’s show Total Art: Contemporary Video to its list of the Best Contemporary Art of the year. The third installation of the New York Avenue Sculpture Project features Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz, the greatest living woman sculptor, whose work we are also proud to have in the collection. Bringing her public art to Washington had long been a goal. The Board of Trustees, the Women’s Committee, and the staff have continued to be very busy. It is rewarding to proudly review recent happenings as we look forward to the future. These achievements have been possible through the generosity of friends and members. Warmest best wishes,

The National Museum of Women in the Arts brings recognition to the achievements of women artists of all periods and nationalities by exhibiting, preserving, acquiring, and researching art by women and by teaching the public about their accomplishments. MUSEUM INFORMATION Location: 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20005 Public transportation: Take metrorail to Metro Center station, 13th Street exit; walk two blocks north to corner of New York Avenue and 13th Street Website: http://nmwa.org Blog: broadstrokes.org 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 http://nmwa.org.

Women in the Arts Summer 2015 (Volume 33, no. 2) Women in the Arts is a publication of the NATIONAL MUSEUM of WOMEN in the ARTS® Director | Susan Fisher Sterling

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay Chair of the Board

Editor | Elizabeth Lynch Editorial Intern | Margie Fuchs 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 © 2015 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: Giovanna Garzoni, Still Life with Basket of Fruit, a Vase with Carnations, and Shells on a Table, ca. 1650–60; Gouache on vellum, 12 ½ x 17 ½ in.; On loan from the Holladay Collection FOUNDER’S PHOTOGRAPH: © MICHELE MATTEI

Cover Story

Features

Departments

Arts News

Super Natural

Organic Matters— Women to Watch 2015

Collector’s Voice: Erika Hoffmann

Culture Watch

Spring Report

Dedicated Donor: Margaret Perkins

Casting a Spell: Ceramics by Daisy Makeig-Jones

14 Recent Acquisitions: Remedios Varo

Women artists engage with nature as a space for exploration and invention. Historical painters and naturalists focused on the singularity or strangeness of plant and animal specimens. The exhibition juxtaposes their works with photographs, books, and videos by contemporary artists who share their artistic foremothers’ uninhibited view of flora and fauna. Kathryn Wat and Deborah L. Gaston

Contemporary artists explore the natural world and environment in the fourth installment of NMWA’s Women to Watch exhibition series. Virginia Treanor

As a designer at the Wedgwood pottery company, Makeig-Jones created Fairyland Lusterware—brightly colored decorative china featuring fairies, imps, and goblins. Stephanie Midon

16 Calendar 28 Museum News and Events 32 Supporting Roles 33 Museum Shop

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

ARTS NEWS

Arts News

MOIRA RICCI

Installation view of Joan Jonas, They Come to Us without a Word (Bees), 2014–15; U.S. Pavilion at the 56th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale; Commissioned by the MIT List Visual Arts Center

Video and performance artist Joan Jonas (b. 1936) is representing the United States at the Venice Biennale 56th International Art Exhibition, on view May 9–November 22, 2015. The exhibition features Jonas’s new five-room multimedia installation, They Come to Us without a Word, which incorporates video, drawings, objects, and sound. Jonas’s work frequently takes inspiration from literature, and this installation is influenced by, among others, Halldór Laxness (1902–1998), an Icelandic writer who explored spirituality and nature. On July 20, 21, and 22, Jonas will also present a live video and piano performance in Venice, They Come to Us without a Word II, pairing Jonas’s video work with new music by her longtime collaborator, American jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran. The exhibition is presented by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in cooperation with the MIT List Visual Arts Center. The List Center is also holding a complementary exhibition, Joan Jonas: Selected Films and Videos, 1972–2005, April 7–July 5, 2015, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jonas has been a visual arts professor at MIT for the past fifteen years. Born in New York, she received a BA in art history from Mount Holyoke College, studied sculpture at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and received an MFA in sculpture from Columbia University. Her performance art and multidisciplinary 2

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2015

work of the late 1960s and early 1970s were major influences on the development of many contemporary art genres.

Statistically Speaking—The 2014 VIDA Count VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, now in its sixth year, recently released the results of its annual volunteer-generated counts of gender disparities in thirty-nine literary journals and well-respected periodicals. The group tallies genre, book reviewers, books reviewed, and journalistic bylines to offer an assessment of the publishing world. This year, VIDA completed its fifth annual VIDA Count, second annual Larger Literary Landscape VIDA Count, and first annual Women of Color VIDA Count. This year’s counts show the promising progress of some journals toward gender parity, as well as a smaller number of outlets whose percentage of female contributors decreased. While results are mixed, the process of counting and sharing illuminates the literary world and encourages writers and editors to be mindful of diversity.

Visual Arts. The fund awards annual stipends of $50,000 to emerging artists who have demonstrated great talent. Bullock, one of only five fellowship recipients this year, won first prize at the 2012 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the 2014 Naumberg International Vocal Competition. She is currently pursuing her artist diploma at the Juilliard School. Other Annenberg Fellowship recipients included Brooklyn-based visual artist Caitlin Cherry, whose work melds sculpture, painting, and installation, and McKenzie Chinn, a Chicago-based actor, writer, and filmmaker who plans to create a feature-length film.

Annenberg Arts Fellowships— Julia Bullock Julia Bullock, a soprano who impressed audiences in a May 13 concert in NMWA’s Shenson Chamber Music Concert Series, was named a 2015 fellow by the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund for the Performing and

CRISTIAN STEINER

Joan Jonas at the Venice Biennale

Julia Bullock

Collector’s Voice: Erika Hoffmann NMWA celebrates art collectors who, like museum Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, build collections that highlight art by women. The authority and enthusiasm of these collectors is compelling, and they help to bring acclaim to worthy artists. Erika Hoffmann and her late husband Rolf began collecting contemporary art with a singular vision: they wanted to live in the midst of their art and invite others into their inspiring surroundings. Since 1997, Hoffmann has opened her Berlin home to the public on Saturdays. She updates and rearranges the collection each summer, sparking connections and giving visitors an opportunity to connect with contemporary art. You open your home to share your personal art collection with the public— can you explain why? The fall of the Berlin wall prompted my late husband and me to make our own contribution to the dialogue between the two, formerly separated, parts of Germany. We wanted to invite our new neighbors to share with us the experience of contemporary Western art, which they had not yet been able to see. We valued it for reflecting liberty and the joy and risk of a self-determined life. Therefore, since 1997, I’ve been opening my living and working spaces to allow for the physical encounter with works of art, which—in a private setting—may challenge even more than in the sacred realm of a museum. What is your approach to curating and presenting your space? I rearrange the collection once a year, aiming to create new associations and confrontations, between works of all media, works from storage as well as recent purchases. The changing theme may be inspired by a certain artwork I wish to see again, an often-used conspicuous word that struck me, or the commemoration of a historic moment. Young artists and art historians accompany our visitors through the collection, encouraging them to contemplate, to ask and to have a dialogue about what they see. What has it been like to live with and show your art? I worked as a fashion designer for twenty years, and after that as an interior designer, together with my husband,

with whom I also shared the passion for contemporary art. Opening our home to the public challenged our courage and changed my life. Once an anonymous art lover, using Saturdays to visit galleries or to do shopping, I now prefer to stay at home to be approachable, since I’m responsible for the selection as well as the display of the artworks. I like to listen to comments, I try to answer questions, and with great pleasure I engage in an exchange of ideas. You change your works on view every July—what are you planning to show starting this summer? I look forward to once more setting up works by longtime artist friends, referring more or less to the theme of “übersetzen,” which in German means to translate and transmit as well as to cross over—of shapes, of concepts, of emotions—into a different language or context. Your collection includes work by many contemporary women artists as well as men—how would you describe your interest in women artists? Since our visitors often wonder why I show so many works by women artists, I have become more and more conscious about that fact. Without ever having made the decision to pay particular attention to the work of female artists, both of us, my husband and I, were attracted by their sensibility. Which underappreciated woman artist do you think people should know more about? In comparison with male artists of the international art scene, almost all women

artists are underappreciated, even the most famous ones. Aside from your space, what’s your favorite place to see art? For some years, I have been much inspired and moved by the exhibitions in the Reina Sofia in Madrid. It has become one of my most cherished places to experience art because all kinds of media are taken into consideration for a more complete understanding of a historic period or a cultural movement. Earlier this year, I admired El retorno de la serpiente, an exhibition on Mathias Goeritz, a German-born artist, whom I had never heard about, and his innovative and confrontational approach to “emotional architecture,” in the 1950s in Mexico. Are you working on any new projects? Unlike most Berliners, I don’t have a new project. I just wish to continue and develop what I’m already doing: To install the artworks I love in the most intriguing and beautiful way and share my pleasure and knowledge with those people who are willing to open up to the experience.

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

Arizona Pattern Play: The Contemporary Designs of Jacqueline Groag Phoenix Art Museum On view through August 9, 2015

COURTESY JILL A. WILTSE AND H. KIRK BROWN III; PHOTO KEN HOWIE

Jacqueline Groag, Dress, 1940s; On view at the Phoenix Art Museum

Using vibrant colors and bold, collage-based designs, Groag’s works exemplify the renewed fashion and spirit of post-war Britain. This exhibition juxtaposes the Czech-born artist’s works on paper with her decorative fabric designs. Inspired by art and science, Groag mixed playful palettes with inventive patterns.

extreme technical skill, the artist spends weeks constructing the ornate, text-filled backdrops for her works. The culminating photographs challenge stereotypical depictions of Arab women from nineteenth-century Orientalist paintings.

Showcasing ten nearly life-size photographs, this exhibition draws from three different series by the Moroccan-born Essaydi. With

Lalla Essaydi, Harem #14C, 2009; On view at the San Diego Museum of Art

New York

Washington, D.C. Shirin Neshat: Facing History Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden On view through September 20, 2015

California Lalla Essaydi San Diego Museum of Art On view through August 4, 2015

Shirin Neshat, Untitled (Women of Allah), 1996; On view at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Influenced by the cultural and political events of her native country, Iranian-American Neshat explores the intersections of freedom, loss, power, and identity in the Islamic world. Through immersive video installations and large-scale photographs, viewers are able to experience Neshat’s most illuminating works.

Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971 Museum of Modern Art On view through September 7, 2015

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK; GILBERT AND LILA SILVERMAN FLUXUS COLLECTION GIFT, 2008; © YOKO ONO 2014

C U LT U R E WAT C H

Culture Watch | Exhibitions

Yoko Ono, Sky Machine, 1961/1966; On view at MoMA

This exhibition displays 125 early works from Ono’s extensive career. Recordings, films, paper works, and rarely-seen archival materials illustrate the artist’s pioneering role in performance art and experimental film, focusing on issues of gender, class, and cultural identity.

Books The work of movement artist, choreographer, dancer, and writer Simone Forti (b. 1935) is examined in Simone Forti: Thinking with the Body (Hirmer Publishers, 2015; distributed by the University of Chicago Press). Published for a 2014 exhibition at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, and edited by museum director and exhibition curator Sabine Breitwieser, the volume extensively documents the artist’s work through perspectives from curators, fellow artists, and Forti herself. Performance photographs, as well as essays, drawings, paintings, and journal entries, illuminate her process. Forti is best known for her “dance constructions,” which made her an integral figure in 1960s Minimalism. She sought to elevate everyday movements, combining performers’ casual motions with structures such as a see-saw, slanted board, or people whose bodies are used as sculptural presences. Her documentation reveals the surprise and improvisation inherent in her work, featuring such directions as “I suggest the performers wear tennis shoes.”—Elizabeth Lynch 4

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2015

Ofrenda: Liliana Wilson’s Art of Dissidence and Dreams (Texas A&M University Press, 2015) showcases the art of Wilson (b. 1953), a Chilean artist who immigrated to the U.S. in 1977, settling in Austin, Texas, and leaving behind the political turmoil of the Pinochet dictatorship. She had studied law in Chile, but in Texas studied visual art and was able to let her art flourish. Reflecting her political and social justice concerns, her works incorporate symbolism of violence, entrapment, and despair—fanged dogs, cages, and faceless people occupy her surrealistic paintings and drawings—as well as symbols of hope and peace. As the artist says in her autobiographical essay, she offers solidarity through her art: “I am giving a name to injustice.” The ten essays in this book, collected and introduced by editor Norma Cantú, explore Wilson’s work thematically, chronologically, and formally, presenting a robust resource on this significant Latina artist who creates “alternative realities where social injustices are exposed, deconstructed, and ultimately rendered obsolete.”—Elizabeth Lynch

Bursting with phosphorescent light, Humphries’s silver and black-light paintings are created through gestural strokes of metallic and ultraviolet pigments. This exhibition is the artist’s first solo show in nearly a decade and includes new works created with the museum’s space in mind.

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND GREENE NAFTALI, NEW YORK

Jacqueline Humphries, Untitled, 2014; On view at the Carnegie Museum of Art

structures transform gallery spaces into dazzling and disorienting environments. The seventy-year-old British sculptor’s sitespecific works challenge traditional ideas of sculpture and contrast the sleek, refined architecture of the museum’s Renzo Pianodesigned building.

International Vienna, Austria Lee Miller Albertina On view through August 16, 2015 Spanning her five-decade long career, this survey presents ninety mesmerizing works by the American photographer. Capturing a diverse array of subjects, Lee’s surrealistic photographs include fashion and portraiture, in addition to war-ravaged landscapes from her time as one of the only female photojournalists.

Installation view of Phyllida Barlow: Street; On view at the Nasher Sculpture Center

Phyllida Barlow Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas May 30–August 30, 2015 Composed of everyday materials like cardboard and cloth, Barlow’s towering

New site-specific installations accompany off-site performances by London-based artist Chosil Kil in her first solo show in the United States. Wall-hung leather and lambskin works and anchored helium balloons are positioned purposefully at the artist’s height in order to reference her own body.

When asked to explain her work, American artist Elaine Sturtevant (1924–2014) proclaimed, “I create vertigo.” In Under the Sign of [sic]: Sturtevant’s Volte-Face (Semiotext(e), 2013), Bruce Hainley mimics Sturtevant’s vertigo-inducing aesthetic to investigate the life and work of the late artist. Published a year before the artist’s death, Under the Sign of [sic] joins the growing number of exhibitions, articles, and literature celebrating Sturtevant’s impact on the art world. Sturtevant herself gained greater international recognition late in life, winning the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion award in 2011 and having a MoMA retrospective in 2014. As the first English-language monographic study of Sturtevant, Under the Sign of [sic] surveys archival documents to create a vivid picture of Sturtevant as an artist who based her career on imitating the work of other contemporary artists. Hainley’s book opens with two parallel essays, one running on the left-hand pages and the other on the right-hand side, tracking Sturtevant’s rise through her 1967 installation The Store of Claes Oldenburg (an imitation of Oldenburg’s installation The Store) and her 1967 cancelled performance of Relâche

Concentrations 58: Chosil Kil Dallas Museum of Art On view through August 2, 2015

Texas

Installation view of Concentrations 58: Chosil Kil; On view at the Dallas Museum of Art

COURTESY THE DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART

Jacqueline Humphries Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh June 11–October 5, 2015

Pennsylvania

Lee Miller, Floating Head (Mary Taylor), New York Studio, New York, USA, 1933; On view at the Albertina

(a rendition of Francis Picabia’s Dadaist ballet). Filled with the voices of art critics, journalists, and contemporary artists, each essay analyzes how Sturtevant’s artistic imitation radically challenged the concept of originality and what it means to be an artist. By repeating familiar Pop Art images and crafting replicas of Oldenburg, Picabia, Warhol, Duchamp, and many others, Sturtevant’s work illuminates the assumptions of the art world and fundamentally complicates the way art is understood. Hainley captures the aesthetic and philosophical questions Sturtevant’s work poses—many of which spurred vehement criticism and condemnation—in the text’s unconventional design and dissonant structure. With Under the Sign of [sic], Hainley highlights the revolutionary, upending power of Sturtevant’s art. Each section feeds into the overarching relationship of Sturtevant and “Art” as Hainley attempts to deconstruct Sturtevant’s proclamation that she “has no place at all except in relation to the total structure.” Hainley reflects Sturtevant’s ideas of concept, aesthetic, and culture with his radical literary style and structure, thus turning his subject into his own aesthetic muse. In doing so, he reveals conventions of contemporary society and thought and provokes the reader to think outside the box, just as his subject did through her art.—Margie Fuchs

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

SPRING REPORT

Spring Report

Top left, center, and right: During Picturing Mary, visitors explored the exhibition through gallery talks and participated in artist-led workshops Bottom left: Wikipedia Edit-a-thon participants worked to strengthen women artists’ representation online

Material Matters Renaissance and Baroque art has amazed and inspired viewers and artists for centuries. This impressive tradition continued December 5, 2014–April 12, 2015, as Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea brought more than sixty interpretations of the Virgin Mary to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. From Artemisia Gentileschi’s intimate portrayal of the Madonna and Child to Sister Orsola Maddalena Caccia’s large altarpieces, the works featured in this exhibition impacted all of our visitors.

This exhibition posed a unique challenge to the education department. With a period so well regarded and a subject so well known, how could we make what was old new again? One answer was through the exploration of materials. Certain techniques used in the exhibition’s artworks have become unfamiliar over time, but our hands-on workshops introduced participants to these techniques and allowed them to try creating their own works of art using traditional materials and methods.

Women on the Web On March 8, NMWA celebrated International Women’s Day by hosting its third annual Wikipedia Edit-a-thon to combat gender disparities in arts representation on Wikipedia. The museum’s Great Hall filled with participants creating, editing, and expanding Wikipedia entries related to notable women artists and art-world figures. This event was part of the larger Art+Feminism global initiative to help improve Wikipedia’s gender imbalance—a 2010 Wikimedia survey found that less than 13% of the site’s contributors are women. Participants at NMWA were introduced to Wikipedia’s editorial process and provided access to museum resources to cite and share. Both NMWA’s event and the worldwide initiative proved highly successful. Organizers learned that seventy separate Art+Feminism events were held in seventeen countries on March 8, during which 1,300 volunteers created 334 new Wikipedia articles on women in the arts.

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2015

NMWA partnered with three local artists— Rosemary Feit Covey, Kay Jackson, and Roberta Marovelli—to present workshops on wood engraving, a form of woodcut printmaking; gilding, the application of thin sheets of gold to a surface; and egg tempera, a paint medium created by combining pigment with yolk. After experimenting with these techniques, participants visited the galleries with an educator to view the same techniques in works on view in Picturing Mary. Many walked away with a new appreciation for these artists and their technical skill. We also explored the exhibition through gallery and scholar talks. Each talk highlighted certain pieces and presented new entry points to the works on view. Other programming focused on parallel traditions in other art forms, such as the Marian-themed Anonymous 4 concert: Marie et Marion. We are grateful to all of the partners who made these programs possible. It was especially rewarding to work with The Catholic University of America on a selection of scholar talks and for their graduate student conference. The guest artists, scholars, and staff who contributed to our efforts were essential to helping nearly 1,900 program attendees picture Mary and Renaissance and Baroque art in new ways.

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

Dedicated Donor | Margaret Perkins

The museum’s community has made wonderful contributions, both to make this a better world and to help the museum realize the prominence it enjoys today.

argaret Perkins believes in the power of arts and education to make a difference in the lives of students, communities, and the world. From Tyler, Texas, Perkins began supporting the National Museum of Women in the Arts through the Texas State Committee. Now a member of the NMWA Advisory Board (NAB), her involvement has grown to include gifts to the endowment and exhibitions, as well as continued engagement with the committee’s meetings and programs. Perkins grew up in Houston, Texas, and she says, “I was fortunate enough to have been exposed to the arts—symphony, dance, and wonderful museums—before becoming a teacher in public schools, where I became more aware of what children are getting and not getting.” She now works, with her husband, James, as well as their son and daughter, for Citizens 1st Bank, a family bank in Tyler, but education has remained a passion. In recent years their family has funded several significant scholarship programs. She says, “We recognize the importance of helping students with opportunities to get more education.” They have helped art and dance students, too, admiring “the focus and dedication it takes to excel in any art program.” She has also supported Young Audiences, a national organization that brings art into schools. Perkins says, “I think the evidence is in that students achieve higher scores, stay in school, and increase their interest levels when they are exposed to art performances.” For that reason, she has been particularly happy to witness such NMWA initiatives as Art, Books, and Creativity, the museum’s arts-integration curriculum. Her interest in NMWA began with the tight-knit and active Texas State Committee. Perkins became a member in 2004 and served as president from 2010 to 2012. The committee is formed through personal connections, and Perkins has found the group to be composed of accomplished and interesting women who are leaders in their communities. She says, “Every member is dedicated to the museum from the beginning, and they never waver in their desire to see it grow and improve.” During

her tenure as president, the committee decided to place a renewed focus on visiting D.C. to meet at the museum. This has helped foster the connection between NMWA and the committee, particularly its new members, including Perkins’s daughter, Laura Fonville. On recent trips to the museum, she has enjoyed the rotating installations of the New York Avenue Sculpture project, beginning with works by Niki de St. Phalle and now featuring Magdalena Abakanowicz. “The first installation was so wonderful and whimsical—I think it gave the museum great recognition and presence. The changing outdoor space continues to renew the museum and give it great publicity.” Most recently, she was impressed with Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea, which she found “stunning and jaw-droppingly beautiful.” She also counts several Endowment Circle trips among her favorite NMWA experiences. “On the trips, we have seen that Climis and Carol Lascaris assemble such an outstanding group of friends of the museum. The museum’s community has made wonderful contributions, both to make this a better world and to help the museum realize the prominence it enjoys today.” She has enjoyed the camaraderie and energy directed toward helping NMWA, as well as the company of accomplished leaders including NMWA Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay and her late husband Wallace. Perkins believes that Wilhelmina Holladay “is absolutely a force of nature. One cannot hear the history and background of the museum without being incredibly impressed with her drive, focus, political savvy, and determination from the very beginning.” Perkins knows that establishing the museum as a successful institution “was an uphill climb, and she did it diligently, thoughtfully, and successfully.” Holladay appreciates Perkins’s dedicated and wide-ranging support. She says, “Margaret Perkins has been helpful to the museum through the endowment, Texas State Committee, and NAB. I am grateful that she has brought her daughter into the committee, sharing her enthusiasm for NMWA.”

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

June 5—September 13, 2015

Kathryn Wat and Deborah L. Gaston

uper Natural explores historical and contemporary women artists’ unrestrained absorption with nature through paintings, prints, photographs, artists’ books, sculpture, and video from NMWA’s collection and private lenders. Along the way, it underscores the way contemporary artists are inspired by and respond to old mistresses’ investigations of the natural world. From antiquity, societies have linked women with nature, in part because of their generative, life-giving capacities. Women were also ascribed the less complimentary characteristics of nature—potentially mercurial and dangerous. In art, the female form often stood as the allegorical representation of spring, Earth, or times of the day. Because of their purported keen powers of observation and appreciation for beauty, women artists historically were encouraged to render the natural world. Still-life painting and botanical illustration, in particular, were

Patricia Piccinini, The Stags, 2008; Fiberglass, automotive paint, leather, steel, plastic, and rubber, 69 ¾ x 72 x 40 ¼ in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, Washington, D.C.; Photograph by Graham Baring

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

The study and rendering of the natural world took women outside the “feminine” sphere—into the intellectual realm of scientific analysis.

LEE STALSWORTH

considered appropriate for women, since they did not involve the indelicacy of rendering the human body and could often be done in the domestic sphere, the space of “feminine” activity. Yet, for their part, historical women did not always pursue such subjects in the genteel manner or on the small scale expected of them. Indeed, the study and rendering of the natural world often took women outside the “feminine” sphere—into the intellectual realm of scientific analysis and even into the dangerous out-of-doors.

In the seventeenth century, an age of empirical discovery, artists served patrons who collected plant and animal specimens, as well as paintings and prints of them. Women horticulturists and entomologists, such as Agnes Block and Magdalena Poulle in the Netherlands and Lady Eleanor Glanville and Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort, in England, built collections of images in addition to developing aviaries, menageries, hothouses, and gardens. Giovanna Garzoni (1600–1670) was a favorite at courts throughout Italy, including the Medici court in Florence, for paintings such as Still Life with Basket of Fruit, a Vase with Carnations, and Shells on a Table (ca. 1650–60) (cover). In such luminous gouache-on-vellum paintings, Garzoni united qualities of still-life painting and botanical studies. Portraying both perfect specimens and distorted anomalies, her images were collected for “paper museums” held by collectors seeking to understand (and control) the natural world. Typical of the Baroque era, Dutch painter Rachel Ruysch (1664– 1750) based her complex composition Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies,

above Rachel Ruysch, Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies, and Other Flowers on a Stone Ledge, ca. late 1680s; Oil on canvas, 42 ½ x 33 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay

LEE STALSWORTH

right Maggie Foskett, Rain Forest, 1996; Cliché-verre, 20 x 15 ¾ in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of the artist

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2015

LEE STALSWORTH

aspects of still life and scientific illustration, creating innovative compositions that present creatures’ ecological contexts and life cycles. At age fifty-two, Merian made the unprecedented decision to sail, without male chaperone, to the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America, where she and her younger daughter spent two years living and working. The lavishly detailed images in Merian’s Dissertation in Insect Generations and Metamorphosis in Surinam (2nd edition, 1719) present the life cycles of Suriname’s insects, as well as some native reptiles and mammals, in continuous narratives. Merian’s studies certainly portray much that was beautiful in this strange environment, as would have been expected from a woman at that time. But she also recorded menacing reptiles and insects devouring one another. In Plate 18, where ants swarm and tarantulas feast (in one case, on an unfortunate hummingbird), she refused to sentimentalize the inherent violence that is a reality of nature.

left Maria Sibylla Merian, Plate 18 from Dissertation in Insect Generations and Metamorphosis in Surinam, 2nd Ed., 1719; Hand-colored engraving on paper, 20 ½ x 14 ¼ in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay above Louise Bourgeois, Hairy Spider, 2001; Drypoint on paper, 19 x 16 in.; On loan from the Holladay Collection; © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA New York

LEE STALSWORTH

and Other Flowers on a Stone Ledge (ca. late 1680s) on direct study. She learned her acute observational abilities from time spent helping her father, the physician and anatomist Frederick Ruysch, prepare and display specimens in his renowned curiosity cabinet. Despite the precise details of individual flowers and insects in her painting, Ruysch’s work is pure invention—some of the flowers bloom in different seasons and different regions—a choice she made deliberately for artistic effect and for the pleasure of patrons captivated by exotic places and plants. Whereas Garzoni, Ruysch, and other artists often enlivened their still lifes with an array of insects, German-born artist-naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) inverted that tradition, making the insects the subject of her compositions. Fascinated with caterpillars and moths from a young age, Merian spent a lifetime raising, observing, and recording insect metamorphosis, working from life during an age when preserved specimens were the norm. To a greater degree than Garzoni, Merian combined

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

The historical and contemporary artists in Super Natural engage with the world as a space for exploration and invention.

above Monika E. de Vries Gohlke, Citrus aurantifolia, 2008; Etching and aquatint with acrylic on paper, 10 7⁄8 x 9 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of the artist

above Janaina Tschäpe, Livia 2, 2003; Color print, 40 x 50 in.; On loan from the Podesta Collection

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2015

Merian’s exacting technique, dedication to close study, and adventuresome decision to insert herself into a strange landscape for the sake of art and science resonates with contemporary artists creating in a range of mediums. Amy Lamb (b. 1945), who worked as a molecular biologist before turning to photography, melds science and art in her large-scale photographs of flowers, such as Purple Datura (2015). Lamb raises many of the flowers that are her primary subjects and attends closely to nature’s cycles of growth and decay to capture her subjects at the ideal moment, even if that requires her to be in her studio in the wee hours of the morning. The resulting images reflect the infinite beauty and strangeness of nature. Lamb says, “Humans often take for granted the amazing engineering that goes into plants. I’m looking for the overall structures and for the details that make plants unique.” In conventional botanical illustrations, plants are pruned to a small sample and appear against a plain background, demonstrating that the artist has isolated and controlled the specimen. For all their innovation and dynamism, Merian’s prints still share in that tradition. Monika E. de Vries Gohlke (b. 1940) creates hand-colored etchings just as Merian did, but permits leaves and branches to extend to the edge of the compositions, where she crops them abruptly. In etchings like Citrus aurantifolia (2008), fruits are positioned a little haphazardly within her compositions so that each print appears to be a momentary glance at expansive and dynamic vegetation. Adventurous travel and exploration has long been a gendered activity, thought to exemplify masculine traits. Yet German-Brazilian artist Janaina Tschäpe (b. 1973), who develops her performance-based videos and photographs as she travels the world, cites Merian and nineteenth-century women adventurers as vital sources of inspiration. In 100 Little Deaths (1997–2002), the artist spent four and a half years inserting herself face-down in landscapes and interiors throughout Europe and the Americas, using her body as her material to enact her own demise. “The space was very related to either new places I was living, or new places I was going to . . . I was really the landscape,” said Tschäpe. She also photographed models dressed in biomorphic costumes alongside rivers or emerging from ocean waters. These images vividly illuminate the power and mysticism historically linked to feminine beings such as mermaids and Iemanjá, the ancient goddess of the sea in Afro-Brazilian culture. Natural history study in previous centuries was ostensibly pursued in the interest of intellectual stimulation and enlightenment, but human emotion played a large role too—and it continues to do so. Humankind’s anxiety about the strength and potential threat of other creatures often drive our inquiries, and we regard other species—particularly those that appear to be most different from us—with both wonder and fear. To make her sculpture Britain’s Birds and Their Nests (2015), British artist Kerry Miller (b. 1957) dissected a discarded natural history book. She painstakingly

carved out the book’s pages and cut from them images of birds, which she then hand-colored and reassembled within the book’s cover. Miller’s dense, chaotic arrangement of birds evokes the flapping motion of the animals’ wings, their work as nest builders, and even the cacophonous noise created by screeching flocks. In addition to emotion, humans’ perceptions of the natural world are shaped profoundly by social politics. Indeed, scholars have articulated strong links between European efforts to colonize distant lands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the concurrent desire to possess and contain specimens from those lands. Today, artists including Australian Patricia Piccinini (b. 1965) consider bioengineering and question what the outcome will be as humanity and technology become more enmeshed. In The Stags (2008) (page 8), she presents two customized motor scooters as living animals. Piccinini observes, “Technology has become increasingly natural to us, and it’s this contemporary condition that has allowed me to imagine a life cycle for machines which is closer to animals than it is to something more artificial.”

ather than merely document beauty, the historical and contemporary artists in Super Natural engage with the world as a space for exploration and invention. Their paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, books, and videos present singular plant specimens, little-seen creatures, invented beasties, and their own bodies tucked into the natural landscape. Like artists of any gender, they were always attracted to nature’s diversity, peculiarities, and uncontrollable power.

Kathryn Wat is the chief curator and Deborah L. Gaston is the director of education and digital engagement at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Super Natural is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts and generously supported by Belinda de Gaudemar, with additional support provided by the members of NMWA.

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

RECENT ACQUISITIONS

Remedios Varo: The Call and Weaving of Space and Time Elizabeth Lynch

LEE STALSWORTH

Varo (1908–1963) was born María de los Remedios Varo y Uranga in Anglès, Spain, and her life was profoundly shaped by the political and artistic movements of her time. Childhood influences included her engineer father, who taught her to draw, and her strict Catholic schooling, against which she rebelled. Her family recognized her talent and allowed her to study at the Academia de San Fernando, a respected art school in Madrid. After her graduation

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2015

in 1931, she launched an artistic, nontraditional life of creativity and romantic liaisons—during the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War, she spent time in Paris and Barcelona allying herself with Surrealists and creating experimental art. Below left: Remedios Varo, Tejido espacio-tiempo (Weaving of Space and Time), 1954; Oil on Masonite, 26 x 21 ¼ in.; Gift from Private Collection. Below: Remedios Varo, La llamada (The Call), 1961; Oil on Masonite, 39 ½ x 26 ¾ in.; Gift from Private Collection

LEE STALSWORTH

urreal and spectral, Remedios Varo’s paintings feature stories powered by psychological, scientific, and supernatural forces. Within fraught and mysterious settings, her fantastical protagonists seem to undertake quests through time or space, as in two recent additions to NMWA’s collection, La llamada (The Call) (1961) and Tejido espacio-tiempo (Weaving of Space and Time) (1954), gifts from a private collection.

With Benjamin Péret, a Surrealist poet and lover whom she later married, Varo moved from Barcelona to Paris in 1937, later to find that she could not return to Spain because of the Franco regime’s restrictions on people with ties to the former Republic. Through Péret, Varo gained access to the Surrealists’ inner circle, associating with André Breton, Salvador Dalí, and others, and frequently exhibited with the group. She explored magic, alchemy, the occult, and analytical psychology—themes that continued to resonate through her mature artwork. As the Second World War threatened Paris, Spanish refugees were also under threat from the French police. Varo was arrested and held in early 1940 for her association with Péret, who was also interned. Shortly after her release, she fled Paris in the face of the Nazi invasion, making her way to Marseilles, and by late 1941 she and Péret had secured visas and passage to Mexico. In Mexico, Varo’s group of friends comprised many fellow refugees from her European Surrealist circle, including artist Leonora Carrington, who became her closest friend and creative collaborator. In the late 1940s, as she supported herself through commercial illustration work, Varo began to develop the mature personal style for which she is best known, with “fantasy imagery that suggests references to her life” and “unified, readable narrative . . . break[ing] with the Surrealist mode of chance juxtaposition.”1 Weaving of Space and Time and The Call reflect this style; they also bear illuminating titles, typical of her paintings.

Weaving of Space and Time shows a couple in a spare domestic seting, within a woven basket-like background that evokes the continuity and significance of an instant. Beneath their robes, the figures’ bodies appear to be constructed of turning wheels and gears. In The Call, a woman in flowing robes, who seems to derive energy from a celestial source, traverses a castle courtyard carrying alchemical tools, including a mortar and pestle at her collar. Imagery in The Call may be influenced by the work of one of Varo’s Surrealist friends in Europe, Victor Brauner. In a painting that he gave her, “among the few possessions that she carried with her into exile” and kept her whole life, a similar large-eyed woman appears with a castle in the background.2 This likely references her interests—with Carrington, she dabbled in alchemical experiments—and the displacement she felt in Mexico (her castles may refer to European architecture). These paintings both exemplify Varo’s characteristic color palette—figures illuminated in fiery orange-gold tones are set against shadowy blue-green-brown surroundings. Precise lines reveal unexpected details, such as those of the castle walls in The Call, which seem to entomb figures in tree bark. The woven-reed surroundings of Weaving of Space and Time contain ghostly echoes of the central image, such as the flowers that appear along the strand intersecting the flower held by the man. During the time she made these works, in the 1950s and early ’60s, her career

flourished, and her death, in 1963, of a heart attack, arrived as she reached new heights of public renown. Her third and final marriage, to Walter Gruen, a fellow European immigrant to Mexico, enabled her to devote time and energy to her art, and she delved further into the psychological and mystical sources that captured her imagination. Scholars have noted that Varo’s own features, particularly her large eyes and long, straight nose, reappear in the faces of her protagonists, emphasizing the importance she placed on her perspective as a woman. However, they are not direct self-portraits—they are frequently androgynous or not-quite-human alteregos, with witty and delicate features of fauna or otherworldly creatures. Varo’s characters share a sense of solemn preoccupation, as though in the midst of momentous adventures or visions. In effect, she applied “her extraordinary technical skill to the task of metaphorical autobiography.”3 With a life philosophy of non-conformity and a personal story marked by dislocation and tumult, Varo continued her quest through her art, confronting her past, identity, and beliefs. Her immediate and personal work reveals a universe where dreams reign and power is shared between science and magic. Elizabeth Lynch is the editor at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Notes: 1. Janet A. Kaplan, Remedios Varo: Unexpected Journeys (New York, Abbeville Press, 1988), 111., 2. Kaplan, 67., 3. Kaplan, 125.

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

6|3

Super Natural June 5–September 13, 2015 Organic Matters— Women to Watch 2015 June 5–September 13, 2015 Casting a Spell: Ceramics by Daisy Makeig-Jones On view through August 16, 2015 New York Avenue Sculpture Project: Magdalena Abakanowicz On view through September 27, 2015

LAURA HOFFMAN

Vanessa Bell’s Hogarth Press Designs On view through November 13, 2015, in the Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center; Open Monday– Friday, 10 a.m.–12 p.m. and 1–5 p.m.

Magdalena Abakanowicz, The Second Never Seen Figure On Beam With Wheels, 2001; On view in the New York Avenue Sculpture Project

6|5

WED 6:30–7:30 P.M.

CONCERT. Yaritza Veliz, A Woman to Listen To. Join us for a special concert of soprano Yaritza Veliz, organized by the Chile Committee of NMWA in conjunction with the Embassy of Chile, Washington, D.C. Yaritza Veliz, a native of Coquimbo, Chile, won first prize— among 47 contestants from all regions of Chile—at the “Women to Listen To” lyrical singing contest, held in Santiago, Chile, organized by the Chile Committee of NMWA in conjunction with Universidad Mayor. Free. Reservations are required. Reserve online by emailing cultural.eeuu@minrel.gov.cl. For additional questions, contact 202785-1746 (Cultural Department, Embassy of Chile).

6 | 3–9 | 9

WED 12–12:30 P.M.

GALLERY TALK SERIES. Lunchtime Gallery Talks. These bite-size lunchtime talks are offered every Wednesday through September 9. Museum staff members facilitate interactive conversations, encouraging visitors to look closely and investigate the mediums, techniques, and overarching themes of special exhibitions throughout the museum. Free. No reservations required. 6 | 3 Daisy Makeig-Jones 6 | 10 Organic Matters— Women to Watch 2015 6 | 17 Super Natural 6 | 24 Special exhibitions 7 | 1 Super Natural 7 | 8 Daisy Makeig-Jones

6 | 11

FRI 10 A.M.–3 P.M.

MEMBER DAY. Super Natural and Organic Matters—Women to Watch 2015. Join us for a special Member Day as NMWA explores the relationships between women, nature, and art. Free admission for members (with a current membership card) and one guest. Artists featured in Organic Matters and the curators of Super Natural will lead gallery talks throughout the day. Members receive a 10% discount in the Museum Shop and the Mezzanine Café. Light refreshments will be served. TESSA ANGUS

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SERGIO ESPINOZA LAMATTA

EXHIBITIONS

Polly Morgan, Systemic Inflammation (detail), 2010; On view in Organic Matters

Kerry Miller, Pflanzenleben des Schwarzwaldes (Plant Life of the Black Forest), 2015; On view in Super Natural

8 | 26 Super Natural 9 | 2 Organic Matters— Women to Watch 2015 9 | 9 Vanessa Bell’s Hogarth Press Designs

THURS 6–8:30 P.M.

NMWA NIGHTS. Earthly Delights. Channel your crafty side during this happy hour event. Enjoy specialty refreshments, try your hand at activities inspired by Super Natural and Organic Matters—Women to Watch 2015, and take themed tours of the special exhibitions and collection. Please note that this event is 21+. Price includes two drink tickets. $25 non-members; $15 members. Reservations recommended. To reserve online, visit http://nmwa. org/earthly-delights. LAURA HOFFMAN

CALENDAR

Calendar

Visit http://nmwa.org for more information and a complete calendar of events and programs.

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2015

7 | 12

SUN 2–3 P.M.

7 | 13–17

TEACHER PROGRAM. ABC Teacher Institute. Empower and inspire your students through art! Join NMWA education staff, a professional book artist, and curriculum and literacy specialists for this intensive and fun week centered on NMWA’s Art, Books, and Creativity (ABC) curriculum. No prior art experience is necessary, and classroom teachers are especially encouraged to apply. Participants receive free art materials for their classrooms and can register for graduate credit through Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C., for an added fee. Free. For more information and to apply, visit http://nwma.org/learn/ educators. LAURA HOFFMAN

LITERARY EVENT. Transformations: Maria Sibylla Merian in South America. Kim Todd, author of Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, presents a lecture on Maria Sibylla Merian’s 1699 trip to Suriname, looking at the ways her research there shaped her art and understanding of the natural world. Book sale and signing to follow. Free. No reservations required.

MON–FRI 9 A.M.–4 P.M.

7 | 13–17

MON–FRI 9 A.M.–4 P.M.

YASSINE EL MANSOURI

TEACHER PROGRAM. Advanced Teacher Institute. This week-long advanced practicum is open exclusively to ABC Teacher Institute alumni. Learn from and experiment alongside book artist Carol Barton; curriculum specialists in art, science, and language arts; and NMWA educators. Expand your tool kit of book formats, writing exercises, and integration ideas while exploring the parallels between studio and STEM habits of mind. Participants receive free art materials for their classrooms and can register for graduate credit through Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C., for an added fee. Free. For more information and to apply, visit http://nwma.org/learn/ educators.

ABC Teacher Institute participants learn projects to bring back to their classrooms

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THURS 6:30–9 P.M.

ARTISTS IN CONVERSATION. Merian’s Daughters: Monika E. de Vries Gohlke, Amy Lamb, and Janaina Tschäpe. Three contemporary artists featured in Super Natural credit Maria Sibylla Merian’s adventuresome spirit and exacting technique as an influence on their performances, photography, videos, and prints. Following a discussion among Gohlke, Lamb, and Tschäpe, join them and other guests in conversation over wine and light refreshments. $15 non-members; $12 members. Reservations required. Space is limited. Visit http://nmwa. org/visit/calendar.

Education programming is made possible by Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston, The Shenson Foundation, in memory of Drs. Ben and A. Jess Shenson; the Leo Rosner Foundation; Newman’s Own Foundation; and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. Additional support is provided by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts; the Harriet E. McNamee Youth Education Fund; William and Christine Leahy; The Samuel Burtoff, M.D. Foundation; Washington Marriott at Metro Center; Sofitel Washington D.C. Lafayette Square; and the Junior League of Washington.

Visit http://nmwa.org for more information and a complete calendar of events and programs.

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2015

June 5–September 13, 2015

women to watch 2015

Virginia Treanor

hat is nature? How do we perceive it? Are we, as humans, part of it or separate from it? How does it shape us, and vice versa? These are some of the questions that artists explore in Organic Matters, the fourth exhibition in NMWA’s Women to Watch series. Presented every two to three years, Women to Watch is a dynamic collaboration between the museum and its national and international outreach committees. This year, an unprecedented thirteen participating committees worked with curators in their regions to create shortlists of emerging and underrepresented artists working with the subject of nature. NMWA curators then selected the artists whose work is on view in Organic Matters. The contemporary artists highlighted here actively investigate the natural world. They build upon and expand ideas explored in Super Natural (pages 8–13), especially the historical dynamics that often equated nature with the feminine. The artworks in Organic Matters address modern society’s complex relationship with the environment, ranging from concern for its future to fear of its power. Through a diverse array of mediums, including photography, drawing, sculpture, and

video, these artists depict fragile ecosystems, otherworldly landscapes, and creatures both real and imagined. Today, concerns for the safety and survival of the environment are more mainstream than ever before, and many artists allude to these issues in their work. Monoculture (2013), by Dawn Holder (b. 1976, Arkansas Committee), obliquely references humans’ detrimental manipulation of nature in her manicured porcelain “lawn.” The fragility of Holder’s piece echoes the preciousness of the resource that is commandeered to maintain green lawns across the country: water. By calling attention to the use of water for ornamental spaces, Holder questions the sustainability and necessity of such a practice. Similarly, the meticulous drawings of Jennifer Celio (b. 1972, Southern California Committee) make explicit the threat of human encroachment on the natural world. In her dystopic environments, Celio blends the urban and rural, resulting in uncomfortable juxtapositions. The absurdity of food trucks and oil rigs depicted in a national park or the disturbing adaptations of organisms to a polluted environment serve as harbingers of a future best avoided.

Clockwise from top: Goldschmied & Chiari, Nympheas #12, 2007; Color print, 49 1/4 x 131 in.; Courtesy of the Podesta Collection

Mimi Kato, Landscape Retreat: In the Woods, 2012; Archival pigment print diptych, each print 28 x 65 in.; Courtesy of the artist

Rebecca Hutchinson, Patterns of Nature (detail), 2014; Porcelain paper clay, fiber, and organic material, 10 x 36 x 96 in.; Courtesy of the artist

Jiha Moon, Peach Mask I, 2013; Ink and acrylic on Hanji paper, 38 x 38 1/2 in.; Courtesy of the artist

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Contemporary art often references the art of the past; the visually lush Nympheas #12 by Italian duo Goldschmied & Chiari (b. 1975 and b. 1971, Gli Amici del NMWA), is a pastiche of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies. The photograph, however, subverts the Impressionist’s idyllic representation of nature by creating “lilies” out of plastic found floating in the Tiber river. While Monet’s paintings were a way of escaping the polluted urban environments of the Industrial Revolution, Goldschmied & Chiari’s work refuses to provide escape and instead confronts the viewer with the reality of the landscape. 20

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The work of Mimi Kato (b. 1974, Ohio Advisory Group) likewise addresses the clash between urban environments and bucolic nature in her hybrid digital landscapes. Kato’s urban green spaces, inspired by her memory of such landscapes in her native Japan, are a place of enforced and regulated recreation, invariably altering—and altered by—those who visit. In some works, the natural world is the only protagonist. Ysabel LeMay (b. 1966, Texas State Committee) conveys a sense of respite and refuge from the civilized world in Reflection (2014), her hyper-manipulated image of flora and fauna. LeMay’s nature

Opposite, clockwise from top left: Mary Tsiongas, The Mercurial Dog Anticipates Her, 2013; LED monitor, 2-minute HD video loop, media player, and wooden frame, 33 x 24 x 4 in.; Courtesy of the artist and Richard Levy Gallery

Andrea Lira, RHYTHMS, 2013; Video and animation; Courtesy of the artist

Dawn Holder, Monoculture (detail), 2013; Porcelain, 2 ½ x 92 x 176 in.; Courtesy of the artist

Below: Ysabel LeMay, Reflection, 2014; Color print diptych, 61 x 72 in. overall; Courtesy of the artist

is a benevolent one in which the artist—and, by extension, the viewer—finds spiritual solace. Nature is less benign in the hauntingly beautiful photographs by Lara Shipley (b. 1980, Greater Kansas City Area Committee). Her series “Devil’s Promenade” sparks contemplation of how a rural culture is shaped by the landscape. Inspired by a local Ozark legend, Shipley references the mysterious Spook Light in the woods, an archetypal tale of humanity’s primal fear of the wild and the unknown terrors that lurk there. Jiha Moon (b. 1973, Georgia Committee) fuses nature and cul-

ture in her works in paint and ceramic, where repeated motifs of animals, fruit, and flowers offer a multiplicity of meaning. The peach, symbolic of her current home in Georgia, is also a symbol of happiness and longevity in Moon’s native Korea. Oversized people and animals are paired in dream-like vignettes in the work of Françoise Pétrovitch (b. 1964, Les Amis du NMWA), which stresses the relationship between species. Often, as in this untitled work, there is an ambiguity in the scene that hovers somewhere between enchantment and fear. This ambiguity allows for a myriad of interpretations and questions:

Lara Shipley, In the Ozarks There Are Lights (Devil’s Promenade), 2013; Inkjet print, 30 x 37 in.; Courtesy of the artist

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

Who is the figure? Where is she? Is she dreaming of the bird? Is the bird friend or foe? The productive and symbiotic relationship between humans and nature is captured in the video sequence RHYTHMS (2013) by Andrea Lira (b. 1981, Chile Committee). Lira uses organic

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materials, found locally wherever she happens to be working, to create visual metaphors about the similarities of humans and plants in an effort to understand lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cycle. Her work speaks to the interdependence of humans and plants and the simultaneous fragility and tenacity of both.

Mary Tsiongas (b. 1959, New Mexico State Committee) also uses the medium of video to consider humans’ interaction with nature in her enigmatic work The Mercurial Dog Anticipates Her (2013). Using technology to explore the relationship between humans and nature, Tsiongas’s piece is also about nature and art mediated through digital technology. It raises questions about how we experience nature as well as art. Polly Morgan (b. 1980, U.K. Friends of NMWA) uses taxidermy animals to address the primordial concerns of all organisms—life and death. The incessant cycle of life is captured in Systemic Inflammation (2010), a work that references the phoenix, a mythical bird that is reborn out of the flames of its own ashes. The orange birds, evoking the destructive and generative power of fire, perpetually lift the charred cage by tethers harnessed to their fragile bodies. Like artists Maria Sibylla Merian and Rachel Ruysch before them, artists Rachel Sussman (b. 1975, Greater New York Committee) and Rebecca Hutchinson (b. 1962, Massachusetts State Committee) blend art and science to stunning effect. Sussman’s empirical observations of the oldest living organisms on the planet highlight their beauty and their threatened singularity. Ethereal constructions by Hutchinson made from porcelain paper clay rejoice in the intricate beauty of plants that engineer themselves to suit their environments.

Considered together, these artists redefine women’s—and humankind’s—relationship to nature. Their works allow us to revel in nature’s beauty while also forcing us to acknowledge its strength. All of them encourage thoughtful reflection and a renewed appreciation of how art can both reflect and affect our interaction with the world around us. By recognizing our impact on nature, both positive and negative, we grow to understand ourselves and the world in which we live. Virginia Treanor is the associate curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Organic Matters—Women to Watch 2015 is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts and generously sponsored by its participating committees with additional support provided by the NMWA Advisory Board and the museum’s members. Support for Les Amis du NMWA is provided by the GRoW Annenberg Foundation, and support for Gli Amici del NMWA is provided by Vhernier.

Opposite, clockwise from top left: Jennifer Celio, NIMBY (national park), 2012; Graphite on Yupo paper, 38 x 50 in.; Courtesy of the artist; Photography by Alan Shaffer Polly Morgan, Systemic Inflammation, 2010; Taxidermy and steel, 51 1/8 x 44 ½ x 44 ½ in.; Private Collection, London; Photography by Tessa Angus Françoise Pétrovitch, Untitled, 2014; Ink on paper, 63 x 94 ½ in.; Courtesy of Semiose galerie, Paris; Photography by Hervé Plumet Left: Rachel Sussman, La Llareta #0308-2B31 (3,000+ years old; Atacama Desert, Chile), 2008; Archival pigment prints on photo rag paper, 44 x 54 in.; Courtesy of the artist

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

casting a spell CERAMICS BY DAISY MAKEIG-JONES

On view through August 16, 2015 Stephanie Midon

maginative, resourceful, and driven, ceramic designer Daisy Makeig-Jones (1881–1945) created innovative pottery that enthralled her contemporaries and remains highly coveted among collectors today. Employed at the Wedgwood pottery company from 1909 to 1931, she developed decorative china called “Fairyland Lusterware.” Its intricate designs feature fairies, imps, and goblins painted in jewel-tone iridescent glazes. Makeig-Jones was born in Yorkshire, England, to a middle-class family that supported her artistic ambitions. The eldest of seven children, she often read to her siblings from popular children’s books such as the “Coloured Fairy Books” series edited by Andrew Lang. She was an adventurous and determined child whose flair for painting led her to study at the Torquay School of Art and in London for a period. Her parents worried that she would not be able to use her artistic talents to support herself financially, until she met a distant relative who was a friend of Cecil Wedgwood. Through this connection, Makeig-Jones introduced herself to Wedgwood, a partner in the Wedgwood pottery firm, and she began an apprenticeship at the company in 1909. She quickly progressed through her training, and in 1914 she was promoted to lead designer. In her new role, Makeig-Jones gained a studio of her own, where she began experimenting with new glazing techniques and developing Far East-inspired motifs. Her experiments were inspired by the development at Wedgwood of a new glaze known as “powder blue” that imitated a popular hue from Chinese ceramic decoration. She also visited an exhibition of lustered ceramics, pottery glazed with a thin film of metal that

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2015

produces an iridescent color effect when fired in a kiln—this likely inspired her own subsequent experiments in luster glazes. With the help of Wedgwood decorators, Makeig-Jones created her first line of lusterwares, known as “Ordinary Lusters,” which launched in 1914. These ornamental objects were glazed with simple colors, but when fired had a mottled, shimmering finish. These surfaces were embellished with gold-painted designs featuring Asian motifs such as dragons, fish, and hummingbirds, and they proved highly popular among critics and the buying public. The commercial success of the Ordinary Lusters prompted Makeig-Jones to create grander designs and more elaborate lusterwares. Her Fairyland Luster ceramics, which debuted in 1915, combined brilliant color and glaze combinations with intricate, whimsical patterns. In a country fatigued by wartime austerity, Makeig-Jones’s fanciful wares appealed to wealthy buyers and bolstered sales for the Wedgwood company, lifting the firm to the top of the ornamental china market. Fairyland Lusterware production was divided into eight color schemes, with four corresponding to types of natural light: day, night, sunset, and moonlight. Casting a Spell includes a vase painted in “Sunset Fairyland,” featuring a fiery orange sky, with figures and foliage in brilliant greens and blues. This vase is decorated

Opposite, clockwise from top left: Vase, ca. 1929–31; Color scheme: Sunset Fairyland; Pattern: Imps on a Bridge; Bone china with underglaze, luster, and gilding, 5 x 9 in.; Vase, ca. 1928–31; Color scheme: Moonlight Fairyland; Pattern: Imps on a Bridge and Treehouse; Bone china with underglaze, luster, and gilding, Overall 4 x 9 in.; Vase detail; Trumpet vase, ca. 1916–31; Color scheme: Black Fairyland; Pattern: Butterfly Women; Bone china with underglaze, luster, and gilding, 9 ½ x 4 ¾ in. All works on loan from a private collection; photographs Lee Stalsworth

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2015

with the most frequently produced fairyland motif, “Imps on a Bridge and Treehouse.” The imps bear a strong resemblance to Kewpies, the contemporaneous baby Cupid characters created by American illustrator Rose O’Neill. This design is replicated on a covered vase painted in the “Moonlight Fairyland” color scheme. Only three designs appeared in this palette, which evokes twilight and evening magic through cool colors—vivid royal blue background and figures painted in green and violet. Objects with a black background are known as “Black Fairyland,” their iridescent sheen produced by a mother-of-pearl luster applied over the dark ground color. A trumpet vase decorated with the pattern “Butterfly Women” displays a young woman with wings perched on a branch against a deep background. The vase’s neck features a pattern called “Flight of the Birds,” and the interior, the swirling “Floating Fairies.” Particularly on larger objects such as this one, Makeig-Jones often combined multiple patterns. Makeig-Jones and Wedgwood called motifs with an open sky or a background of mother-of-pearl luster over a wash of color “Daylight.” A square flower vase featuring the pattern “Castle on a Road” presents a blue sky and idyllic palace. She typically applied this design to squatter bowls, but on this taller vessel, she extended the pattern by adding tiny gnomes under a tree. A striking color scheme among Fairyland Lusterware was the combination of coral and bronze seen on an octagonal bowl. A mirror-like copper-bronze luster with gold detailing applied against matte orange enamel produced a dazzling effect. The intricate exterior of this bowl belies a simpler interior that features a black-and-white checkered rosette surrounded by birds and a garland of masks painted in bold colors. Makeig-Jones created her complex designs by adapting motifs from the fairy books she read as a child, as well as from book illustrators including Kay Nielsen and Edmund Dulac. She combined figures, landscapes, and abstract elements relating to Art Nouveau and Asian sources. To create the large number of wares produced by Wedgwood, she depended on the technical skills of the company’s all-female corps of “paintresses,” artisans who transferred her designs using engraved plates and tissue paper and applied the vivid glazes. Makeig-Jones cultivated a remarkable persona alongside her impressive ceramics. When she joined Wedgwood, women represented about half the employees within the British pottery industry. Women were thought to be suited for designing wares and crafting pottery due to their supposed proclivity for nature-based motifs and their perceived dexterity. However, as Makeig-Jones became known for her forthright manner and

occasionally eccentric behavior in addition to her formidable skills as a designer, she was distinguished from most other women working in the industry. Competing pottery firms attempted to copy Makeig-Jones’s style, but none could achieve the same effects. Production ranged widely at Wedgwood in the early twentieth century, from traditional creamware and iconic blue Jasperware to modern pottery inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement, yet no line surpassed the commercial success of Fairyland Lusterware. At the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, the pottery industry faltered. Demand for Fairyland Lusterware fell, and the management under whom Makeig-Jones had flourished dispersed. When Wedgwood executives asked her to retire in 1931, she initially refused but relented after a confrontation with the managing director. In her brief and intense career, Daisy MakeigJones distinguished herself through technical ingenuity and an enchanting artistic vision that resonates today. Stephanie Midon is the curatorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Casting a Spell: Ceramics by Daisy Makeig-Jones is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts and is generously supported by the members of NMWA.

Left: Square flower vase, ca. 1917–31; Color scheme: Daylight Fairyland; Pattern: Castle on a Road; Bone china with underglaze, luster, and gilding, 7 ½ x 5 ¾ in.; Right: Octagon bowl (and detail), ca. 1923–26; Color scheme: Coral and Bronze; Pattern: Gargoyles; Bone china with underglaze, luster, and gilding, 8 ½ x 3 ¾ in.

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

NMWA Receives Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom

n January 9, Director Susan Fisher Sterling accepted the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom on behalf of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, during a ceremony at the Musée

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2015

1. Susan Fisher Sterling accepted the award from Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, 2. and 3. NMWA received the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom during a ceremony at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 4. Belinda de Gaudemar, Connie Borde, Susan Fisher Sterling, Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, and Tara Whitbeck, of Les Amis du NMWA

a critical point of view; and welcomes curators like me who try to change the paradigms in art history.” During her acceptance remarks, Sterling said, “We recognize the significance of this award and deeply appreciate the jury’s selection of NMWA for its dedication to foregrounding women’s free expression and filling the void in the recognition of women artists, past and present.” She discussed the museum’s mission and its worldwide committee-based network of volunteers and supporters, which had brought it to the attention of the jury. NMWA’s committees, Sterling said, “aid in promoting the museum’s message of equity for women through excellence in the arts. It is thanks to Les Amis du NMWA that I am here before you today, and it is my pleasure to share the credit for this award with them.” The award ceremony in Paris occurred

only two days after the attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and the same day that its perpetrators were killed in a related hostage incident. Sterling expressed her condolences, saying, “To you, who are active in the French press, cultural, and academic communities, we offer deepest sympathy. This tragedy reminds us that cultural expression has real power. It is one of the most visible and creative aspects of free societies, and must be safeguarded.” These somber events underscored the importance of advocacy for equality and creative expression in the tradition of Simone de Beauvoir. Sterling acknowledged the generations of artists, art historians, critics, and curators whose work continues to provide inspiration for the museum and its mission. She noted, “It is thanks to the space created for women’s creative projects by Simone de Beauvoir’s writings that our museum exists today.”

ALL PHOTOS: UNIVERSITÉ PARIS DIDEROT, E. DESCARPENTRI

d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. As the first U.S. organization to be presented this prestigious award, NMWA joins the company of recipients such as Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai and Russian novelist and civil rights activist Lyudmila Ulitskaya, honored for their contributions to women’s rights and free speech. The prize, which has been awarded since 2008, was created to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986). It honors women, men, and associations who, in the spirit of de Beauvoir, fight to defend women’s rights. Chaired by Josyane Savigneau (writer and journalist for Le Monde), with founding president Julia Kristeva (professor at Paris Diderot University, writer, and psychoanalyst) and Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir (honorary president), the jury is composed of public figures from the world of arts and literature. Upon the announcement of the award, NMWA received congratulations from friends and supporters. Renowned feminist artist Judy Chicago said, “When Wilhelmina and Wallace Holladay founded the National Museum of Women in the Arts, I became a staunch supporter. I long for the day when women around the world are accorded equal rights, equal pay, and equal recognition in all aspects of human life. . . . My congratulations to the museum on this well-deserved award.” Camille Morineau, the independent curator behind elles@centrepompidou, an eighteen-month exhibition showing works by women artists from the Centre Pompidou, said, “NMWA deserves to be selected as it is a completely unique place in the world, which shelters women artists, their works, their history, and their narratives; encourages research and

We recognize the significance of this award and deeply appreciate the jury’s selection of NMWA for its dedication to foregrounding women’s free expression and filling the void in the recognition of women artists, past and present.

MUSEUM NEWS AND EVENTS

Museum News In Memoriam Suzy Josephson Finesilver, a charter member of NMWA, founding member of the Texas State Committee in 1985, and member of the NMWA Advisory Board since 1992, died February 1 at age ninety-eight. She was an ardent volunteer and champion of the arts and other philanthropies, and was involved with numerous cultural organizations in her home city of San Antonio, Texas, and nationally. Born in 1916, Finesilver graduated high school in 1934 and studied education at the University of Texas at Austin. She traveled widely with her late husband, Hertzel Finesilver, and she devoted herself to charitable institutions, many focusing on the arts. During World War II, she was a Grey Lady for the Red Cross and U.S.O. Travelers Aid. She supported organizations dedicated to the visual arts, opera, ballet, arts education, and more. Finesilver was a great supporter of NMWA and women in the arts, as well as an enthusiastic ambassador for the museum. Over the years, she served as vice president of the Texas State Committee, was a founding member of the museum’s Elisabeth A. Kasser Wing expansion, and was a very active member of the NAB, frequently traveling to attend museum events and programs. As part of NMWA’s Endowment Circle, she participated in numerous fundraising trips. Her daughter, Lynn Finesilver Crystal, also a member of the NMWA Advisory Board, says, “She loved the museum and enjoyed everyone connected with it. Her involvement gave her a great deal of pleasure throughout the years.” In addition to her daughter, she is survived by three grandsons and eight great-grandchildren.

Member News Save the Date for Member Day Members are invited to ask the question “What is natural?” on a special Member Day to explore NMWA’s sensational summer exhibitions. Members and one guest are invited on June 5 to celebrate Super Natural and Organic Matters—Women to Watch 2015. Members will enjoy gallery talks every half hour led by artists presented in Organic Matters and the curators of Super Natural. Members will also receive a 10% discount in the Museum Shop and Mezzanine Café.

NMWA Nights: Earthly Delights

Channel your crafty side during this delightful happy hour event, 6–8:30 p.m. on June 11.

Guests will delight in specialty refreshments, take themed tours, and participate in activities inspired by Super Natural and Organic Matters. This 21+ event is hosted in partnership with the NMWA Young pARTners Circle. Tickets are $25 for non-members and $15 for members; admission includes two drink tickets and craft materials.

Help Your Gift Go Further with a Corporate Matching Gift Did you know many companies match, double, or even triple employee contributions to the National Museum of Women in the Arts? Ask your human resources department for the proper matching form, fill in the requested

information, and send it to the museum with your contribution. Many corporations match gifts from working and retired employees and their spouses!

Afternoon Tea and Silver Presentation On April 26, the Women’s Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts organized an enlightening presentation by Nancy Valentine on the museum’s silver collection of seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury British and Irish women silversmiths. Among the featured pieces were works by Hester Bateman and Louisa Courtauld. Following the talk, guests enjoyed a refreshing afternoon tea on the museum’s Mezzanine level. Far left: Guests at a recent NMWA Nights event enjoyed refreshments, tours, and activities

BETTY LEE

DAKOTA FINE

Left: April Georgelas, Jacqui Michel, and Michele Hartlove at the Silver Tea.

SUMMER 2015 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

MUSEUM NEWS AND EVENTS

Committee News NMWA in Ohio The Ohio Advisory Group, co-chaired by Barbara Richter and Harriet Warm, partnered with the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) to present Women to Watch—Ohio. The exhibition was curated by Reinberger Galleries Director Bruce Checefsky with the assistance of Jen Rokoski, a graduate-level curatorial intern from the Art History and Museum Studies program at Case Western Reserve University. It featured work in a variety of mediums by Ohio’s five Women to Watch shortlisted artists, who were selected by Reto Thüring of the Cleveland Museum of Art and Rose Bouthillier of MOCA Cleveland. Works by Christi Birchfield, Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson, Mimi Kato, Eva Kwong, and Lauren Yeager were on view April 2– May 2 in the CIA’s Reinberger Galleries. An exclusive preview with a presentation by Director Susan Fisher Sterling was held April 1, with a larger public opening on April 2. Kato’s work is on view at NMWA in Organic Matters—Women to Watch 2015.

Women to Watch 2015

Executive Director Barbara O’Brien spoke to the assembled group. Most recently, NMWA’s committee in Italy, Gli Amici del NMWA, participated in MIART, April 10–12 in Milan. One of the most important art fairs in Italy, it attracted more than 41,000 visitors this year. The committee’s booth, generously sponsored by Vhernier, highlighted the museum and its programming and featured works by the artistic team of Goldschmied & Chiari, whose photograph Nympheas #12 (2007) is included in Organic Matters.

Meetings and Visits NMWA committees visit the museum when possible to forge closer bonds, and museum staff members have also been able to visit

committees for some recent meetings and events. Members of both the Greater New York and the Greater Kansas City Area Committees of NMWA traveled to D.C. in the spring to meet staff and enjoy tours of Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea. On March 13, Chief Curator Kathryn Wat visited the Florida Committee for an afternoon tea, held at the Lost Tree Club in North Palm Beach, hosted by NMWA Trustees Marge Odeen and Joanie Stringer. Following the tea, Wat gave a presentation on Picturing Mary. Ilene Gutman traveled to a meeting of the Southern California Committee, one of the museum’s oldest and most active groups, and to Texas, where she discussed upcoming programming and thanked the committee for generously supporting Picturing Mary.

LAURA HOFFMAN

Over the past year, many of the thirteen committees taking part in Organic Matters— Women to Watch 2015 (read more on pages 18–23) have held events and exhibitions as part of their participation. In conjunction with the Epsten Gallery, the Greater Kansas City Area Committee organized an exhibition of their shortlisted artists—Rain Harris, Diana Heise, Linda Lighton, Sonié Joi Ruffin, and Lara Shipley—to raise awareness of emerging women artists in their region and spotlight the museum’s activities. An opening reception was held at the gallery on February 5, at which NMWA Deputy Director Ilene Gutman, Committee Chair Arlene Finney, Epsten Gallery Curator Heather Lustfeldt, and Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Women to Watch—Ohio artists Lauren Yeager, Eva Kwong, Mimi Kato, Christi Birchfield, and Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson

Left: Organic Matters artists Eleonora Chiari and Sara Goldschmied at MIART in Milan Right: At the museum, members of the Greater New York Committee and their guests visited with NMWA Trustees

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2015

Museum Events

1. LAURA HOFFMAN; 2. ED PFUELLER/ THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

Picturing Mary Conference in Partnership with The Catholic University of America

1. The Catholic University of America held a graduate student conference in collaboration with the museum to coincide with the exhibition 2. Catalogue essayist and medieval historian Miri Rubin delivered the conference’s keynote address

2015 Spring Gala

YASSINE EL MANSOURI

3. Gala Honorary Chair Alejandra Segura and NMWA Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay 4. Gala co-chairs Janice Obuchowski and Bertha Soto Braddock 5. Gala Honorary Patrons Laura Denise Bisogniero and Ambassador of Italy Claudio Bisogniero 6. Ambassador of Norway Kåre R. Aas, NMWA Board President Emerita and Endowment Chair Carol Lascaris, and Climis Lascaris 7. NMWA Trustee Marcia Carlucci and NMWA Board President Sheila Shaffer 8. Picturing Mary sponsor Enrique Segura and NMWA Trustee Rose Carter 9. Irene Natividad, NMWA Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, and NMWA Trustee Mahinder Tak 10. NMWA Board Vice Chair Winton Holladay, Director Susan Fisher Sterling, and Lorna Meyer Calas 11. Kathern Ivous Sisk, Jacqui Michel, NAB member Betty Boyd Dettre, Dawn Clark, NAB member Gladys Lisanby, and Jean Riley

SUMMER 2015 | 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—Vice Chair of the Board, Sheila Shaffer—President, Gina F. Adams—First Vice President, Heather Miller Podesta—Second Vice President (Community Relations), Arlene Fine Klepper—Treasurer, Juliana E. May—Secretary, Mary V. Mochary—Finance Chair, Amy Weiss—Nominations Chair, Nancy Nelson Stevenson—Works of Art Chair, Marcia Myers Carlucci—Building Chair, Carol Matthews Lascaris—President Emerita and Endowment Chair, Dana J. Snyder—At Large, Susan Fisher Sterling*—Alice West Director, Janice Lindhurst Adams, Pamela G. Bailey, M. A. Ruda Brickfield, Charlotte Clay Buxton, Rose Carter, Diane Casey-Landry, Lizette Corro, Deborah I. Dingell, Martha Lyn Dippell, Nancy Duber, Karen Dixon Fuller, Susan Goldberg, Cindy Jones, Sally L. Jones, Marlene McArthur Malek, Jacqueline Badger Mars, Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, Jacqui Michel*, Marjorie Odeen, Jackie Quillen, Andrea Roane, Clarice Smith, Kathleen Elizabeth Springhorn, Sharon Lee Stark, Jessica H. Sterchi, Joanne C. Stringer, Mahinder Tak, Annie S. Totah, Frances Usher, Ruthanna Maxwell Weber, Alice West

We wish to thank all of the supporters of the Legacy of Women in the Arts Endowment Campaign, whose generosity guarantees that NMWA will endure and forever inspire for generations to come. Although we can only list donations of $10,000 and above due to space limitations, NMWA is grateful to all endowment donors.

*Ex-Officio

NMWA Advisory Board Sarah Bucknell Treco—Chair, Patty Abramson, Noreen M. Ackerman, Sunny Scully Alsup, Jean Astrop, Jo Ann Barefoot, Gail Bassin, Susan G. Berk, Sue Ann Berlin, Catherine Little Bert, Brenda Bertholf, Eva M. Borins, 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, Rosemarie Forsythe, Jane Fortune, Robert Freeman, Claudia Fritsche, Lisa Garrison, Barbara S. Goldfarb, Jamie S. Gorelick, Lorraine G. Grace, Jody Harrison Grass, Claudia Hauberg, Sue J. Henry, Anna Stapleton Henson, Caroline Rose Hunt, Jan Jessup, Alice D. Kaplan, Doris Kloster, Nelleke Langhout-Nix, Fred M. Levin, Gladys Kemp Lisanby, Sarah H. Lisanby, M.D., Nancy Livingston, Maria Teresa Martínez, C. Raymond Marvin, Pat McCall, Debby McGinn, Dee Ann McIntyre, Cynthia McKee, Suzanne Mellor, Eleanor Smith Morris, Claudia Pensotti Mosca, Deborah E. Myers, Jeannette T. Nichols, Kay W. Olson, Katherine D. Ortega, Margaret Perkins, Patti Pyle, Madeleine Rast, Drina Rendic, Barbara Richter, Elizabeth Robinson, Elizabeth A. Sackler, Steven Scott, Marsha Brody Shiff, Kathern Ivous Sisk, Geri Skirkanich, Salwa J. Aboud Smith, Patti Amanda Spivey, Kathleen Elizabeth Springhorn, Bonnie Staley, Sara Steinfeld, Jo Stribling, Susan Swartz, Cheryl S. Tague, Lisa Cannon Taylor, MaryRoss Taylor, Deborah Dunklin Tipton, Nancy W. Valentine, Christy A. Vezolles, Paula S. Wallace, Harriet L. Warm, Island Weiss, Tara Beauregard Whitbeck, Patti White, Betty Bentsen Winn, Rhett D. Workman (all lists as of May 6, 2015)

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2015

Endowment Foundation Trustee ($1 million+) Anonymous, Betty B. and Rexford* Dettre, Estate of Grace A. George, Wilhelmina C. and Wallace F.* Holladay, Sr., Carol and Climis Lascaris, Estate of Evelyn B. Metzger, The Honorable Mary V. Mochary, Rose Benté Lee Ostapenko*, Madeleine Rast, The Walton Family Foundation Endowment Foundation Governor ($500,000–$999,999) Noreen M. Ackerman, P. Frederick Albee and Barbara E. Albee*, Catherine L. and Arthur A. Bert, M.D., J.W. Kaempfer, Nelleke Langhout-Nix, Joe R. and Teresa L. Long, James R. and Suzanne S. Mellor, National Endowment for the Humanities, Drs. A. Jess and Ben Shenson*, MaryRoss Taylor, Alice W. and Gordon T. West, Jr. Endowment Foundation Fellow ($200,000–$499,999) Catharina B. and Livingston L. Biddle, Jr.*, Marcia Myers and Frank Carlucci, Costa del Sol Cruise, Kenneth P. Dutter, Estate of E. Louise Gaudet, Lorraine G. Grace, William Randolph Hearst Foundation, Estate of Eleanor Heller, Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston/The Shenson Foundation, in memory of Drs. Ben and A. Jess Shenson, Dorothy S. Lyddon*/Seven Springs Foundation, Marlene McArthur and Frederic V. Malek, Victoria J. Mastrobuono*, Sea Goddess I and II Trips, Alejandra and Enrique Segura, Sheila and Richard Shaffer, Clarice Smith Endowment Foundation Counselor ($100,000–$199,999) Janice L. and Harold L. Adams, Nunda and Prakash Ambegaonkar, Carol C. Ballard, Baltic Cruise, Eleanor and Nicholas D. Chabraja, Clark Charitable Foundation, Hilda and William B. Clayman, Julia B. and Michael M. Connors, Martha Lyn Dippell and Daniel Lynn Korengold, Gerry E. and S. Paul* Ehrlich, Jr., Enterprise Rent-A-Car, FedEx Corporation, Barbara A. Gurwitz and William D. Hall, Caroline Rose Hunt/The Sands Foundation, Alice D. Kaplan, Dorothy and Raymond LeBlanc, Lucia Woods Lindley, Gladys K. and James W.* Lisanby, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Adrienne B. and John F. Mars, Juliana and Richard E. May, Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, Irene Natividad, Jeannette T. Nichols, Lady Pearman, Reinsch Pierce Family Foundation by Lola C. Reinsch and J. Almont Pierce, Julia Sevilla Somoza, Marsha Brody Shiff, June Speight*, Kathleen Elizabeth Springhorn, Mahinder K. and Sharad Tak, 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, 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, In Honor of Alice West, 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

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COMING SOON

Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft, and Design, Midcentury and Today October 30, 2015–February 28, 2016

athmakers illuminates the vital contributions of women to postwar visual culture and their use of craft materials— especially clay, fiber, and metals—to explore concepts of Modernism. Featuring more than 80 works, Pathmakers focuses on women working at mid-century, including Ruth Asawa, Lenore Tawney, and Eva Zeisel. The group came to maturity along with the emerging American modern craft movement and had impact as designers, artists, and teachers. Pathmakers presents an expanded version of post-war Modernism, highlighting the contributions of both European émigrés, including Anni Albers and Maija Grotell, and Native artists who worked to revive and build on indigenous traditions, such as Margaret Tafoya and Marie Chino. The work of Scandinavian designers Rut Bryk, Vuokko Eskolin-Nurmesniemi, and Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe emphasizes parallels between women designers working in the U.S. and Scandinavia. The exhibition also presents contemporary artists whose work reflects the influence of the historical figures, including Vivian Beer, Hella Jongerius, and Front Design. Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft, and Design, Midcentury and Today is organized by the Museum of Arts and Design. The exhibition is generously sponsored by Share Fund with assistance from the Louis J. Kuriansky Foundation, Inc.

Vivian Beer, Anchored Candy no. 7, 2014; Steel and automotive paint, 80 x 20 x 37 in.; Courtesy of Wexler Gallery; Photograph by Alison Swiatocha