Women in the Arts Summer 2017 by Women in the Arts

SUMMER 2017

FOUNDER’S LETTER

Dear Members and Friends, This spring, it was a delight to mark the museum’s thirtieth anniversary at a beautiful gala organized by Board President Cindy Jones and co-chairs Amy Baier, Kristin Cecchi, and Jamie Dorros. The Great Hall was filled with flowers, and seeing so many new young faces enjoying the museum we have built and sustained was wonderful. During the festivities, we celebrated the addition of a beautiful new work to the museum’s collection, Jeune Femme en Mauve by Berthe Morisot, given by Teresa and Joe Long. This painting is a superb example of Morisot’s work and adds greatly to the collection. We are deeply indebted to Teresa and Joe for this outstanding gift. Last, but not least, this spring we were given a donation of $9 million from the estate of Madeleine Rast. It is the single largest cash gift the museum has received. We are grateful for her generous bequest, which will strengthen the museum’s future.

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: https://nmwa.org Blog: https://nmwa.org/blog 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. For more information, check https://nmwa.org.

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay Chair of the Board

Women in the Arts Summer 2017 (Volume 35, no. 2) Women in the Arts is a publication of the NATIONAL MUSEUM of WOMEN in the ARTS® Director | Susan Fisher Sterling Editor | Elizabeth Lynch Digital Editorial Assistant | Emily Haight Editorial Intern | Meghan Masius 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 © 2017 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: Louise Bourgeois, Spider III, 1995; Bronze, 19 x 33 x 33 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wilhelmina Cole Holladay; Art © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY FOUNDER’S PHOTO: © MICHELE MATTEI

Cover Story

Features

Departments

Arts News

Revival

Talking & Taking Action

Contemporary women sculptors and photo-based artists create transcendent encounters with art by using scale, technique, and effect to spark memory and emotion. Kathryn Wat

During two seasons, the Women, Arts, & Social Change initiative has convened and inspired crowds. Alicia Gregory

Culture Watch

Philanthropist Madeleine Rast’s Bequest to NMWA

#5WomenArtists Goes Global For Women’s History Month, NMWA reprised its viral social media campaign. Emily Haight

22 Gallery Reboot The museum’s collection galleries now highlight lively thematic connections. Kathryn Wat, Virginia Treanor, and Deborah Gaston

14 Education Report 15

Dedicated Donor: Lee Anne Geiger and the Geiger Family Foundation

18 Calendar 30 On View: From Masonic Temple to Women’s Museum 32 Museum News and Events 36 Supporting Roles 37 Museum Shop

26 Equilibrium: Fanny Sanín Alongside her finished paintings, Sanín’s studies reveal her process for creating geometric abstract art. Virginia Treanor and Patterson Sims

SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

Above: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Walking Figures (group of 10), 2009; Installation view at NMWA. Right, above and below: Exterior and interior views of the Musée Camille Claudel, Nogent-sur-Seine, France

In Memoriam

Not a Muse, a Museum

Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz died April 20, at age 86. During her long career, she created pioneering fiber-based installations and large-scale sculptures, including a series of hanging abstract works known as Abakans. She became best known for her evocative figurative sculptures— often fragmented or headless—made from materials ranging from burlap to bronze. Abakanowicz’s art was influenced by her traumatic experiences in Poland under Nazi and Soviet occupation during and after World War II. Although she drew inspiration from her autobiography, her ambiguous sculptures speak broadly to human experience—as she said, “My work is about the general problems of mankind.” At NMWA, Abakanowicz’s work is featured in the collection and was also showcased as the third installation in the New York Avenue Sculpture Project. Five of her large-scale sculptures—monumental bronzes representing human figures and dynamic stainless steel birds in flight—were on view outside the museum September 27, 2014–September 27, 2015. Like many of Abakanowicz’s works, the pieces exemplified universal issues: the power of nature, the force of destruction, and the resiliency of hope.

In March, the Musée Camille Claudel opened in the French town of Nogent-sur-Seine, built around the shell of the brick townhouse Camille Claudel (1864–1943) lived in during her adolescence. With only ninety works by the artist in existence today, the museum holds forty-three sculptures by Claudel—the largest collection in the world. NMWA’s collection contains one of her masterful, small-scale bronze sculptures, Young Girl with a Sheaf (ca. 1890). Although Claudel was renowned for her nuanced portrayals of the human form, her work was often overshadowed by her personal and professional relationship with her mentor and lover, Auguste Rodin. As she struggled with professional obstacles and deteriorating mental health, Claudel was institutionalized at the age of forty-nine and later died in a mental asylum. The Musée Camille Claudel displays her art alongside more than 150 works by her male contemporaries, offering visitors the opportunity to study her unrivaled ability to convey narrative in marble and bronze sculptures. The new museum also showcases four versions of one of her most noteworthy sculptures, La Valse (The Waltz), reflecting the influence of the Symbolist and Art Nouveau

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Right: Installation view, folly, Phyllida Barlow, British Pavilion, Venice, 2017

movements on her style. The museum recontextualizes Claudel’s works and revives her legacy, ensuring that her genius will not be forgotten.

View from Venice Must-see pavilions at the 57th Venice Biennale, which opened in May, include work by Phyllida Barlow for Britain, Carol Bove for Switzerland, Geta Bra˘tescu for Romania,

RUTH CLARK © BRITISH COUNCIL; COURTESY THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH

ARTS NEWS

Arts News

Prizewinning Drama Playwright Lynn Nottage won her second Pulitzer Prize for the play Sweat, which she wrote several years ago as a response to the economic crash and resulting Occupy Wall Street movement. Nottage based the play on interviews with residents of Reading, Pennsylvania, and set most of the drama in a blue-collar bar. The play focuses on class and economic pressure, seeking to reflect individuals’ stories and build empathy.

PHOTO BY SAM D/ BFA.COM

JOHN D. & CATHERINE T. MACARTHUR FOUNDATION

Claudia Fontes for Argentina, Anne Imhof for Germany, Rachel Maclean for Scotland, Tracey Moffatt for Australia, and Jana Zelibska for the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic. Barlow’s immersive exhibition folly crowded six galleries of Britain’s pavilion, displaying massive boulder-like constructions, forests of towering columns, and craggy stone shard structures. Although she was largely unrecognized for most of her career, the seventy-two-year-old’s playful and powerful works stole the spotlight at the beginning of this year’s Biennale. In another highlight, Carolee Schneemann received the exhibition’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award for her role in the development of performance and Body Art throughout her sixty-year career. Although the Biennale showcases phenomenal works by contemporary women artists, women and artists of color are still vastly underrepresented, making up only thirty-five percent of the participants, including work by only one black woman artist, Senga Nengudi.

Left: Pulitzer-winning playwright Lynn Nottage Right: Lowery Stokes Sims at ArtTable’s 24th Annual Benefit and Award Ceremony

Mind the Gender Gap The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) released the Gender Gap Report 2017, revealing some incremental improvements since the 2013 survey—as well as persisting inequities. The survey found that less than half of directorships at art museums were held by women, and that their salaries were lower, especially at the largest museums. Women occupy directorships at fifty-four percent of museums with operating budgets under $15 million, but only thirty percent of museums with operating budgets of more than $15 million. There has been slight improvement for women at larger museums, who previously earned seventy cents to the male dollar, and now earn seventy-five.

ArtTable Awards Distinguished Service to the Arts ArtTable, a national organization devoted to professional women in the arts, held its annual benefit and awards ceremony in April, awarding Lauren Cornell its New Leadership Award and Lowery Stokes Sims its award for Distinguished Service to the Visual Arts. In her acceptance remarks, Sims reflected on her parents, whose love of the arts—and particularly their contagious enthusiasm for New York City’s cultural offerings—forged bonds between them, framed her childhood memories, and simultaneously shaped her future.

JOIN US!

Champion women through the arts with NMWA membership

SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

New York

Marisa Merz: The Sky is a Great Space Hammer Museum, Los Angeles Through August 20, 2017

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 Brooklyn Museum Through September 17, 2017

Marisa Merz, Testa (Head), 1984–95; On view at the Hammer Museum

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND GALLERY WENDI NORRIS

California

COURTESY THE ARTIST AND FONDAZIONE MERZ; PHOTO BY PAOLO PELLION

Dedicated to highlighting the voices and experiences of women of color, this exhibition examines their political, social, cultural, and aesthetic priorities in order to reorient conversations around race, feminism, political action, art production, and art history during the emergence of second-wave feminism.

Firelei Báez, Vessel of Genealogies, 2016; On view at the DePaul Art Museum

Paintings and drawings by DominicanAmerican artist Firelei Báez ask viewers to consider the multiculturalism that is familiar for people of Latin, Caribbean, and African descent, though not often depicted in Western society, through her renderings of hairstyles, textiles, and tattoos.

Illinois Firelei Báez: Vessels of Genealogies DePaul Art Museum, Chicago Through August 6, 2017

Jan van Raay, Faith Ringgold (right) and Michele Wallace (middle) at Art Workers Coalition Protest, Whitney Museum, 1971; On view at the Brooklyn Museum

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Under-Song for a Cipher New Museum Through September 3, 2017

COURTESY THE ARTIST; CORVI-MORA, LONDON; AND JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY, NEW YORK

The first American retrospective of Marisa Merz’s work spans five decades and allows visitors to explore the prodigious talent and influence of the Italian painter, sculptor, and installation artist, whose work had its beginnings in the Arte Povera movement and grew into complex multimedia installations.

COURTESY OF JAN VAN RAAY, PORTLAND, OR, 305-37; © JAN VAN RAAY

C U LT U R E WAT C H

Culture Watch | Exhibitions

Lynette YiadomBoakye, Willow Strip, 2017; On view at the New Museum

Books In the 1970s, women artists fought to be recognized in the art world. They liberated and empowered themselves and other women in the process. Edited by Gabriele Schor, Feminist Avant-Garde: Art of the 1970s (Prestel, 2016) is a more than five hundred-page testament to these artists and their impact on the feminist art movement. The catalogue captures the spirit of the traveling exhibition that is appearing at several venues in Europe from the Sammlung Verbund collection in Vienna. The exhibition includes two hundred works by forty-eight artists, so the catalogue contains an impressive amount of imagery—photographs and stills that reveal the dynamism of the women working during this time. The text provides a historical and contextual background of the feminist art movement, recounting the women and works breaking barriers and challenging the status quo. The images are stunning and seemingly endless, including iconic feminist works as well as pieces that are less familiar. As a move toward female empowerment is once again at the forefront of culture around the world, the artists and works celebrated in this catalogue feel just as inspiring and relevant as they were forty years ago.—Meghan Masius 4

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2017

The goal of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists (Bloomsbury, 2017), by Donna Seaman, is more nuanced than it first appears. Her subjects are seven twentieth-century women artists who during their lives found substantial renown that has ebbed in the years since their deaths. Presenting their art as ripe for reclamation, Seaman tells their stories to keep their legacies from falling into further neglect. She begins with Louise Nevelson—certainly the best known of the artists she discusses—with a sparkling description of Nevelson’s bravado and popular persona, leading to the disregard from major publications and institutions that followed her death. She makes a case for Nevelson’s enduring relevance: “Her sculptures make what was broken whole, and reveal that what we see as whole is the sum of infinite parts.” In turn, chapters are devoted to Surrealist Chicago painter Gertrude Abercrombie, portraitist Joan Brown, Harlem Renaissance painter Loïs Maillou Jones, installation artist Ree Morton, painter Christina Ramberg, and textile artist Lenore Tawney. Seaman writes passionately and engagingly about each artist’s life, ambitions, and foremost art that deserves to be seen and known.—Elizabeth Lynch

North Carolina

Looking South: Photographs by Eudora Welty North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh Through September 3, 2017 Eudora Welty, A Woman of the Thirties (Jackson), 1930s–early 1940s, printed 1992; On view at the NCMA

Lu Yang: Delusional Mandala MOCA Cleveland Through September 17, 2017

Pia Camil, Installation view of Bara, Bara, Bara, 2017; On view at the Dallas Contemporary

and Keer Tanchak. The themes and works on view address art history, consumerism, political oppression and violence, and the medium of painting. Lu Yang, Wrathful King Kong Core, 2014; On view at MOCA Cleveland

New media artist Lu Yang is known for developing new links between aesthetics, coding, and bioart. A series of striking video works investigating gender, religion, sexuality, and contemporary neuroscience and medicine comprises the Chinese artist’s first solo exhibition in a U.S. museum.

Texas Eighteen iconic images by novelist and short story writer Eudora Welty of the South in the 1930s and early 1940s represent the range of her photography, shedding light on fleeting and authentic aspects of her subjects’ lives.

COURTESY OF DALLAS CONTEMPORARY; PHOTO BY KEVIN TODORA

Ohio

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND BEIJING COMMUNE

In a new series of oil paintings created specifically for this exhibition, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s works use elements of historic European portraiture. She places fictional subjects in monochromatic settings, inviting the viewer’s interpretation of the figures.

Ambreen Butt: What is Left of Me; Pia Camil: Bara, Bara, Bara; Keer Tanchak: Soft Orbit Dallas Contemporary Through August 20, 2017

International Spain Lee Lozano Reina Sofia, Madrid Through September 25, 2017 While Lee Lozano’s short career reflects a choice she made when enacting “Dropout Piece” only twelve years after her rise to fame, this retrospective spans her early drawings and paintings, energy-based “Wave” paintings, and late conceptual and performative works. Lee Lozano, Ream, 1964; On view at the Reina Sofia

Three distinct, concurrent exhibitions feature works by Ambreen Butt, Pia Camil,

“Being a human girl stinks compared to being a monster,” says Karen Reeves, the ten-year-old protagonist of Emil Ferris’s debut graphic novel My Favorite Thing is Monsters (Fantagraphics Books, 2017). “When I’m a monster I won’t have to keep my mouth shut. No, I’ll open my mouth and use my rows of long sharp teeth.” Set in a gritty Chicago neighborhood in the 1960s, My Favorite Thing is Monsters is told from Karen’s perspective as she tries to solve the murder of her upstairs neighbor, a Holocaust survivor. Her investigation unearths a traumatic story, while she embarks on her own coming-of-age adventure. The narrative unfolds across the pages of Karen’s notebook, where she is depicted as a werewolf girl detective, sporting a trench coat and fangs. B-movie monsters and vintage magazine iconography give the reader insight into Karen’s mind. Readers’ eyes will dart across four hundred pages of Ferris’s kaleidoscopic, crosshatched ballpoint pen drawings.

Ferris, a Chicago-based illustrator and toy sculptor, wrote and drew My Favorite Thing is Monsters after contracting West Nile virus, experiencing paralysis, teaching herself to draw again, and earning a master’s degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Ferris’s first published work, with a second volume slated for fall 2017, is the result of six years of painstaking work. Combining elements of murder mystery, social commentary, and astounding drawings, Ferris shows her graphic novel chops—and teeth.—Emily Haight

SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

Philanthropist Madeleine Rast’s Bequest to NMWA On its 30th anniversary, the National Museum of Women in the Arts has been honored by a major gift of $9 million from the Estate of Madeleine Rast. Rast’s bequest will bolster the endowment, strengthening in perpetuity the museum’s mission to bring recognition to the achievements of women artists.

Clockwise from above: Madeleine Rast, circa 1992, 1967, and 1970.

oard President Emerita Carol Lascaris, who co-chairs the endowment with her husband, Climis, says, “This is the largest single cash gift in the thirty-year history of the museum. The Legacy of Women in the Arts Endowment is the lifeblood of our institution. It upholds the founder’s vision and supports our mission for future generations. Climis and I are so grateful to Madeleine Rast for planning

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2017

this remarkable gift, which magnifies our museum’s strength and financial security.” In her honor, on April 19, 2017, the Foundation Board voted unanimously to establish the Madeleine Rast Award, for an outstanding woman artist. NMWA Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay says, “We are inspired and truly grateful for this extraordinary gift. Madeleine and I first met in 1986 when I was giving a talk in San Diego about plans for the museum’s opening

in 1987. Madeleine was absolutely convinced of the importance of establishing a museum for women in the arts, and from that moment forward, she pledged her support. Her conviction never wavered and, over time, she became a steadfast advocate for our mission as well as a dear friend. “Her generous gift to the museum will enable future generations to enjoy the highest standards of exhibitions and programs and help make us more visible throughout the world. This contribution also reflects Madeleine’s belief in the growing significance of women in the arts and her trust that the museum will be a wise and responsible steward of her legacy.” Regarding that first meeting with NMWA’s founder, Madeleine Rast wrote in a letter to the museum’s development director in October 1986, “I was glad to hear her speak and find out that she has the same goals I have. About fifteen years ago I started publishing an art calendar ‘In Praise of Women Artists’ in order to spread these works of art to the general public, hoping that no one will ever say again that there have never been great women artists.” A relatively reserved woman herself, Rast believed strongly in the eloquence and expressive power of art. Rast had stopped publishing the calendar by that time, but she recognized Holladay’s mission as her own, and she quickly decided that she wanted to make an end-of-life gift to the museum. By 1993, she had informed the museum of her intention to create a charitable remainder trust. NMWA announced the planned gift, including a quote from Rast that speaks to her goals: “The achievements of women artists of the past have generally been overlooked and ignored, yet many women

The achievements of women artists of the past have generally been overlooked and ignored, yet many women persisted, developing their talents and producing magnificent works of art. Today’s artist still faces the same set of problems.

and fellow Foundation Board member, describes her as a passionate supporter of women’s causes, particularly in women’s ability to achieve independence and support themselves. Always interested in hearing about NMWA’s exhibitions and programs, Rast was also constantly thinking of its future and financial health. She was devoted to the founders, particularly Wilhelmina Holladay, with whom she formed a close bond over their shared hopes for the institution. In a message in 2005, she wrote to Holladay, “I hope everything is fine with you and the museum (our baby).” She was inspired by Holladay’s ability to gather others to the cause and to build the museum. Rast was also moved by the building itself, which she saw as a prominent, elegant home for a worthy mission. She saw the museum as the physical manifestation of the dream, dear to both Rast and Holladay, of supporting and celebrating women’s achievements in the arts. For Rast, her bequest provided an avenue to combine her love for the arts, her staunch belief in women’s independence, and her financial prowess. Her gift supports the institution in an exceptional and unprecedented way.

barriers to their goals. Rast said that she chose to support NMWA because it is an institution that inspires and encourages women in a way that she would have appreciated in her own career. She told the museum, “Giving is a very personal act, but if you believe as strongly as I do in advancing the cause of women, then there’s no question about it.” Friends from Rast’s life and involvement with the museum remember her as a thoughtful and pragmatic woman. In addition to her belief in equity for women, she also believed strongly in taking action on her principles. Ken Dutter, a NMWA Advisory Board Member

The museum is deeply grateful to all planned giving donors. If you are interested in joining the Women in the Arts Trust and committing to a planned gift to NMWA, please contact Major Gifts Officer Julia Keller at jkeller@nmwa.org or 202-783-7987.

TOM FIELD

persisted, developing their talents and producing magnificent works of art. Today’s artist still faces the same set of problems. She needs the time and place to develop her art. She needs a responsive audience also capable of constructive criticism. She needs a peer group for support and collaboration. And, yes, she needs recognition for her work.” Rast (1924–2017) was born in Zurich, Switzerland, and came to the United States as a young woman, settling in California, where she loved the nearby ocean. In an interview for a profile in Women in the Arts in 2001, she described herself as “fiercely independent.” She was attracted to the entrepreneurial spirit and openness to new ideas in the U.S., and she worked hard to establish herself, working clerical jobs while pursuing a second degree in accounting. She began to excel professionally, eventually becoming a successful management auditor in the public and private sectors, but she was aware of not having the same support or opportunities as men in the field. She became a savvy businesswoman, excelling as an investor and in her accounting career, but she never forgot that she—and other women—faced

SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

June 23â&#x20AC;&#x201C; September 10, 2017

Kathryn Wat

Beverly Semmes, Blue Gowns, 1993; Chiffon and crushed velvet, approx. 30 x 31 Â˝ x 30 ft.; Courtesy of Rubell Family Collection, Miami

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2017

RUBELL FAMILY COLLECTION, MIAMI

evival presents contemporary women sculptors and photo-based artists whose arresting aesthetics and intense subject matter spur the viewer into a transcendent encounter with the art object. Spectacle and visual enchantment undergird much contemporary art. Yet the artists gathered here harness the illimitability of scale, technique, and effect in sculpture and photography explicitly to reanimate deep-rooted emotions related to the human experience. Their imagery elicits a ripple of exhilaration, a shiver of fear, or a wave of anxiety rather than merely tantalizing the eye. Through highly allusive depictions of the body, children, and other animals, each artist in Revival connects to the unconscious. Video projections, large-scale photographs, and hanging sculptures create immersive, mesmeric environments. Smaller, meticulously wrought works made from hair, yarn, velvet, wax, marble, brambles, or taxidermy draw the viewer close, beckoning toward sensations that spark memory and emotion.

SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

NMWA’s

contemporary collection is rich in the mediums of sculpture and photography, which women continue to expand, recharge, and renew. A survey of the museum’s collection in honor of its thirtieth year inspired this exhibition, which is enriched by important loans from public and private collections as well as artists’ studios.

The Body Our lived experience is understood through the physical body. Artists in Revival depict the body not to titillate but to draw us to personal memories or history freighted with emotion and meaning. To evoke that liminal state, they often veil, screen, or fragment the body. Some sculptors extend modernist traditions, presenting fragments of the body as the vibrant nucleus of the whole, while others portray it in evocative positions— crawling, inverted, suspended, or encased. Photographers and filmmakers similarly crop, segment, or enlarge the body to transform it into something slightly unfamiliar, yet powerfully alluring. Artists such as Beverly Semmes (b. 1958) tweak conventional ideas about women, fabric, and craft by evoking the body in surprising ways. In her room-size sculptural installation Blue Gowns (1993), yards of navy velvet spill down a gallery wall and mounds of pale blue chiffon tumble far into the gallery, nudging viewers along the perimeter. Semmes’s gargantuan scale cheekily invokes the stereotypical ideas that drive fashion and feminine identity. In several works in Revival, Alison Saar (b. 1956) portrays the female body framed through themes and archetypes drawn from classical mythology, African art and folklore, and African American history and culture. Many of her sculptures, such as Tippy Toes (2007), speak to the fragility of natural and social environments and to the strength of women. This carved figure is suspended within a seemingly delicate crinoline, but one built from treacherous, thorny branches. The cage-like structure elevates Saar’s figure, yet she appears immobilized within it. Still, she projects a sense of openness and calm. Her outstretched hands seem to beckon us closer. Alison Saar, Tippy Toes, 2007; Wood and cast bronze, 59 x 23 x 23 in.; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, Gift of the Friends of African and African American Art (2008.2) PHOTO © ALISON SAAR, COURTESY L.A. LOUVER

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Anna Gaskell, untitled #5 (wonder), 1996; Chromogenic print, 48 x 40 ¼ in.; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the Young Collectors Council (97.4580)

The Child Biological instinct and cultural norms induce adults to focus on children’s fragility and naiveté. Many artists acknowledge that impulse by creating appealing images that emphasize children’s endearing features and expressions. Yet the narrative content of works in Revival, which sometimes portray youngsters seeming to engage in grown-up behaviors, emphasize adults’ inability to consistently protect and influence children. No matter how artists frame the inner life of the child, they know the impact of their imagery depends on adults’ relationships with children,

which are governed by unconscious feeling and raw emotion more often than rational thought. A photograph by Petah Coyne (b. 1953) epitomizes the sensation and uncertainty of youth. Made with a customized camera, Untitled #885 (Saucer Baby) (1997) depicts a baby in an inner tube being playfully tossed in a pool of water. Coyne presents a moment when the child experiences two disparate emotions— joy, but also fear, as she feels an unfamiliar sensation. The blur within the composition signifies the instantaneous nature of her dueling responses. SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

Joana Vasconcelos, Viriato, 2005; Faience dog and handmade cotton crochet, 29 ½ x 17 ¾ x 15 ¾ in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection. © JOANA VASCONCELOS, PHOTO BY LEE STALSWORTH

Images by Bettina von Zwehl (b. 1971) upend traditional ideas about portraiture as a direct means for exposing character and emotion. Her images of toddlers seem to communicate a bit of each child’s personality, but their profile format keeps much information invisible. We may hope to savor the details of each child’s face, but von Zwehl’s presentation asserts that children are independent, intellectual beings, not simply cuddly objects of desire. In her images of adolescent girls, Anna Gaskell (b. 1969) cultivates a greater degree of mystery and strangeness. The images in her “wonder” and “override” series relate loosely to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Drawing inspiration from Brothers Grimm fairy tales, mythology, ghost stories, and occasionally a chilling real-life event, she carefully plans and stages her images to evoke a dreamlike world.

Other Creatures Contemporary artists observe the genetic kinship we share with other animals, and, similar to ancient fableists, they also see the emblematic value that animals offer in reflecting on humankind. As a culture, we tend to be emotional about animals, alternately forming deep attachments or nurturing phobias. Artists in Revival enfold these connections, using animal motifs to explore some of the most affecting subjects, including frailty and maternal love. Using only found remains for her taxidermy, Polly Morgan (b. 1980) cannily reimagines the energy that drives living beings. With their beaks agape, quail chicks inside a telephone handset are a vibrant visualization of the prattling sound transmitted through a telephone receiver. Her sculptures transcend the taxidermy practice itself, which explores the liminal space between life and death as well as the struggle against decay. Joana Vasconcelos (b. 1971) transforms quotidian objects into visions that strike at the heart of social realities. She often works at large scale as a means of heightening effect and encouraging discourse. The function of the skin-tight crocheted lace covering the oversize garden sculpture Viriato (2005) is ambiguous. The lace is beautiful, but it appears to confine the dog. The animal’s vulnerability signifies the fragility of all living beings. Kathryn Wat is the chief curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Revival is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The exhibition is supported in part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and Share Fund, with additional funding provided by the Judith A. Finkelstein Exhibition Fund; American Airlines, the official airline of the museum’s 30th Anniversary; and NMWA’s Ohio Advisory Group (OAG).

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Recent Acquisitions on view in Revival

Lalla Essaydi, Bullets Revisited #3, 2012; Three chromogenic prints mounted on aluminum, 66 x 150 in. overall; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Purchased with funds provided by Jacqueline Badger Mars, Sunny Scully Alsup and William Alsup, Mr. Sharad Tak and Mrs. Mahinder Tak, Marcia and Frank Carlucci, and Nancy Nelson Stevenson

Several works in Revival are new to NMWA’s collection, showcasing its growth in recent years and providing inspiration for this exhibition. Louise Bourgeois, Spider III, 1995 Sculptures by Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), including Spider III (1995) on the magazine’s cover, serve as a fulcrum for Revival. Bourgeois harnessed the emotive power of animal imagery—as well as depictions of the fragmented body and the young child— throughout her career, obsessively returning to these core images. Bourgeois associated the spider with maternal protectiveness. She frequently remarked that her mother, Joséphine,

shared spiders’ admirable attributes: patience, industriousness, and cleverness. Although Bourgeois perceived a protective, nurturing quality in spiders, she understood that they can evoke a fearful response in others. The cast-bronze medium allowed her to create a rough surface texture that gives this spider a dynamic, pulsating quality that captures arachnids’ characteristic skittering motion.

ART © THE EASTON FOUNDATION/LICENSED BY VAGA, NEW YORK, NY

Lalla Essaydi, Bullets Revisited #3, 2012 Louise Bourgeois, Spider III, 1995; Bronze, 19 x 33 x 33 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wilhelmina Cole Holladay

An arresting triptych photograph by Lalla Essaydi (b. 1956), on view previously at the museum in the 2016 exhibition She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World, is showcased here as a new addition to the collection. In her portrayals of the female body, Essaydi disrupts conventional Western motifs related to the artistic representation of Arab women. Here she mimics the nineteenth-century Orientalist painting tradition of elongating the reclining female body. By presenting it in a triptych format, she abstracts the body, denying the viewer a voyeuristic view of the figure. Essaydi also explores the political and expressive functions of veiling by covering her model’s garments and skin with calligraphy drawn in henna. SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

EMILY HAIGHT, NMWA

E D U C AT I O N R E P O R T

Education Report

Left to right: Educator Ashley W. Harris mesmerizes a tour group through skillful storytelling in the collection galleries; Realistic fiction stories with character portrait covers, created during the Brent Elementary School second-grade partnership with NMWA, are displayed for the entire school community to enjoy

Nasty Women Unite In honor of the convening of the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, the museum opened its doors free of charge Saturday, January 21, and Sunday, January 22. NMWA’s education team offered “Nasty Women” drop-in tours to introduce that Sunday’s visitors to the museum’s mission and collection. Designed to entertain, surprise, and shock, as well as to inject some life into status quo museum programming, these unconventional, edgy, and fast-paced tours mined the newly reinstalled collection. Participants were introduced to nine artworks by and about women who thrived as professionals and influencers despite social norms, and occasionally laws, that condemned such public, “unfeminine” behavior. The selected works spanned time, place, and medium. The featured pieces highlighted the breadth and depth of the museum’s collection of more than 5,000 works, and surfaced the persistent struggles women have faced in their attempts to break through the art-world glass ceiling. Perhaps unprecedented, a museum drop-in tour received national press coverage. The Huffington Post tipped its hat to this tour concept in its article “D.C. Museum’s ‘Nasty Women’ Tour Celebrates Art History’s Feminist Heroes,” which helped draw overwhelming crowds. Approximately 360 people attended the “Nasty Women” tours, most of whom were first-time NMWA visitors. Tour attendees hailed from across the country and around the corner—thirty-three states and Washington, D.C.—as well as from Canada, France, Germany, and the U.K. 14

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2017

Given the popularity of the “Nasty Women” tours, educators will be offering a redux called “Fierce Women” in August and September. Curious? Join us for these fun, fearless, and free tours!

A Portrait in Partnership The Women’s Museum developed and realized a multifaceted portrait-themed partnership with District of Columbia Public Schools’ Brent Elementary School (Ward 6) in January 2017. Associate Educator Adrienne L. Gayoso and Assistant Educator Ashley W. Harris joined forces with Brent’s talented second-grade teachers Jon Berg, Emily Kadash, and Lauren Swissman to create a field experience and classroom visits that tied directly into the students’ language arts standards. NMWA had the pleasure of working with Brent’s entire second-grade population, sixtysix students, over the course of a few weeks during their “Studying Characters and Their Stories” language arts unit. First, the museum welcomed the students for educator-led tours focused on portraits. Then Gayoso and Harris spent three days in school co-teaching a NMWA-written lesson with Berg, Kadash, and Swissman. The multi-project lesson included artmaking, art discussions, and writing exercises that tied into the students’ language arts assignment to write a realistic fiction story. To culminate NMWA’s lesson, each student drew and painted their story’s main character. These portraits became book covers for the students’ written stories and were displayed for the entire school community to appreciate.

A teacher commented: “Our school strives to provide students with field ‘experiences’ rather than ‘trips,’ meaning that the off-campus experience authentically enhances work students are doing in the classroom. Ashley and Addie worked hard to make our students’ experience relevant and complementary to their classroom learning.” Second-graders said: “Thank you so much for the awesome field trip! It helped me learn that the colors in a painting mean different feelings. I also learned that you can mix different colors to describe how your characters feel.” “My favorite part of this project was doing the sketch of our character.” “Thank you for showing us how to mix colors to make whole new colors! Oh, the pictures in the museum were amazing! The trip was awesome and I want to come back.”

Special thanks to the teachers and administrators at Brent Elementary School for recognizing the value of museum experiences for their students and for welcoming museum staff into its classrooms. See you next year!

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

Dedicated Donor | Lee Anne Geiger and the Geiger Family Foundation

It’s important to honor the women who fought their way through and insisted on being shown, and are now recognized.

Clockwise from above: Lee Anne and William Geiger, Liz Geiger Lund, and L. Michelle Geiger

he Geiger family, who are supporters of the National Museum of Women in the Arts through the Geiger Family Foundation, believe that supporting the arts is important for a healthy society. The foundation is led by Lee Anne and William Geiger and supported by their daughters L. Michelle Geiger and Liz Geiger Lund. After the sale of their research and national security company ten years ago, William and Lee Anne formed the foundation and started thinking about how to give back. For their family, giving to the arts was a clear choice since Lee Anne, L. Michelle, and Liz are all artists. Lee Anne’s love of art was cemented when, as a young adult, she was able to live and study in Paris for several years. She studied eighteenthcentury French literature at the Sorbonne, classical painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and at L’institut des Art et Architecture, but she also learned at a less formal atelier, where she could paint, receive guidance, and grow. She says, “I couldn’t get enough. I was excited about learning as much as I could. I was in love with the French Impressionists, so it was wonderful to stand in some of the same places where they stood and paint.” Back in the United States, Lee Anne continued painting. She says, “I changed my focus to watercolor soon after I had our first daughter.” The watercolor medium is transportable, non-toxic, and worked well for her while her husband was serving in the Vietnam War. It allowed her to continue to paint while caring for a young infant without the support and presence of her partner. Lee Anne says, “It was a medium that required you to work it all out in your head in advance, because it’s not very forgiving. I’d be on location, painting, and I’d make sketches to use as references for painting when I got home.” As a result of her passion—and ever-present art supplies—her daughters grew to love art as well. Lee Anne says, “My mother used to say to me, ‘Can you please buy these children some coloring books?’ And I said, ‘No, they have blank paper, they can make their own.’” They grew up with paintbrushes in their hands, and both are now teaching

their own children to love the arts. Her daughter Liz is an artist based near Seattle, Washington, and is on the board at the Schack Art Center. L. Michelle is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, has an MFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and has three works in NMWA’s collection of book arts. She is active on the board of the McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she has a studio as a multimedia artist working in encaustic, watercolor, and other mediums. In addition, Michelle teaches workshops, and individual lessons. Equally significant to the Geiger family is the support of surviving spouses and families of CIA employees killed in service. Due to the nature of CIA work, family members are often not fully cognizant of their loved ones’ jobs. This makes it difficult for surviving families to access financial and emotional support. The Geigers were active in the development of a foundation that was established to better support these families through difficult times. Between William’s career in the military, Liz’s almost eight years at the CIA, and their work in national security, the family felt it was essential for them to support those who serve without recognition. The common thread between these two causes—support for the arts and for surviving spouses—is the connection to the Geigers’ personal beliefs and passions. Their commitment to the museum has grown in recent years. Lee Anne says, “I do think it’s important to honor the women who fought their way through and insisted on being shown, and are now recognized. That is part of what pushed us into supporting this museum. Along with her supportive husband, Mrs. Holladay’s vision took a lot of work in collecting and telling a story that needed to be told.” NMWA Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay says, “Bill and Lee Anne, Leah Michelle and Elizabeth have been such wonderful friends to the museum. I admire their commitment to our country and the arts. I am especially pleased that they have chosen to support emerging artists, with the goal of helping them establish careers.”

SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

Talking &Taking Action Two Seasons of Women, Arts, & Social Change

Alicia Gregory

n a Wednesday night in March in NMWA’s performance hall, designer, architect, and educator Emily Pilloton led a packed room of 175 audience members in reciting a credo she developed for teachers who want to be more creative and courageous in their work. It starts: We are the (trouble)makers / We ask those stupid questions / We faceplant in the mud. A lot. / But we set our fear on fire. Leading the inspiring recitation with Pilloton was Ann Hamilton, the renowned visual artist and creator of immersive, largescale installations—the two were featured speakers at the third Fresh Talk of the 2016–17 season. Their event asked the question, “Can makers change the world?” The conversation, moderated by NMWA Director of Public Programs Lorie Mertes, was a lively exchange that unveiled a strong thread of connection between Hamilton’s poetic environments and Pilloton’s practical design solutions. For both, it turned out, making is as much about fostering human connection and relationships as it is about the physical result—whether it be an otherworldly installation or a practical farmer’s market stand. Making is about transforming lives. We ditch the recipe and trust our gut. The powerful communal reading brought the audience together in a collective commitment to be fearless, open, curious, and actionoriented. This energy carried the crowd downstairs to the Great Hall for Catalyst, a cocktail hour where they dove deeper into discussion with friends and strangers, and participated in an activity that asked them to consider what making means in their own lives.

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2017

On strips of colored paper, participants wrote one thing they had made so far in their lives, and one thing they were inspired to make after the talk. They then wove the strips together through a board to create a collective patchwork of intentions. “I made two human beings,” one participant wrote. “I’m inspired to make creative community,” wrote another. We talk about things and then do them. Two Seasons of Fresh Talk Launched in October 2015, Fresh Talk, the signature program of NMWA’s Women, Arts, and Social Change initiative, has been creating spaces where women can connect, converse, and collaborate over some of our most pressing social issues. In its first two seasons, Fresh Talk has presented more than forty standout women artists, architects, curators, designers, filmmakers, playwrights, policy-makers, scientists, social entrepreneurs, and more together in candid conversation. The topics they touch on have included the intersections of art, design, gender, the environment, identity, education, health, and social and economic opportunity. Fresh Talk unveils the threads of connection between women artists and leaders from other sectors, highlighting the idea that solutions are possible to our challenges when we innovate and work together. Pairing Liz Ogbu, a designer, urbanist, and social innovator, with artist Caledonia Curry (a.k.a. Swoon) activated rich discussion about how to use the creative process to help rebuild after natural disasters, economic devastation, and moments of social crisis. Following this first talk of the 2016–17 season,

participants at the Catalyst cocktail hour played Cards Against Urbanity, a game that helped spark ideas and strategy for changing inequities in their communities. In the first two seasons, more than 1,200 people have participated in Fresh Talks, many coming to the museum for the first time. Audience members range from high school students to veteran members of the museum. “It has been empowering to hear from women working in service to other women,” said one participant, “I’m excited about many of the ideas that have come up tonight and the conversations I’m getting to have.” Looking Ahead There’s talking, yes, but the series is also interested in doing, which is why Fresh Talk’s third season will debut new programming called Fresh Talk Forum, reaching beyond the museum’s walls with interactive art projects and community collaborations. In November, the first Fresh Talk Forum will present a community art project with Mexican artist Mónica Mayer, re-creating one of her most replicated and celebrated projects, El Tendedero/The Clothesline Project. For the original 1978 project, the artist stopped women on the street to ask them to complete the prompt, “As a woman, what I hate the most in Mexico City is . . .” She then asked them to hang their answers on slips of paper on a clothesline for all to read. At NMWA, the project, which provides public validation and visi-

bility to specific female experiences of oppression, violence, and domestic abuse, will consist of artist-led workshops with social service agencies, activists, women’s organizations, and faculty and students from area universities—furthering Fresh Talk’s mission of engagement, outreach, and collaboration. Other third-season highlights include the season’s kickoff on September 17 with pioneering feminist artist Judy Chicago in conversation with Alison Gass, director of the Smart Museum of Art. They explore Chicago’s ongoing dedication to amplifying women’s voices, most famously through her epic work The Dinner Party (1979), the subject of a behind-the-scenes archival exhibition opening at NMWA in the fall and an upcoming exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Join Us! Like Pilloton’s credo, Fresh Talk is inspiring women of all ages and backgrounds to be more creative and courageous, to trust their guts and their voices, to talk about things, and then to do them. Find more information about the season’s kickoff with Judy Chicago on the calendar (page 20), visit https://nmwa.org/ freshtalk4change for videos of past events, and get inspired for the upcoming season. Alicia Gregory is the public programs coordinator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

NMWA Director of Public Programs Lorie Mertes talks about making and courageousness with Ann Hamilton and Emily Pilloton Filmmaker and activist Aishah Shahidah Simmons (center), a featured Fresh Talk speaker, connects with attendees at the November 2016 Fresh Talk, “Righting the Balance—How can the arts advance body politics?” Attendees play Cards Against Urbanity and talk about how to challenge injustice at a Catalyst cocktail hour following the October 2016 Fresh Talk with Liz Ogbu and Swoon

SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

CALENDAR

Calendar Most Days

EXHIBITIONS

2 P.M. GALLERY EXPERIENCE. Conversation Pieces. Join us for 30-minute “conversation pieces” most days at 2 p.m. These brief experiences spotlight two works on view. Check in at the Information Desk to learn more. Free with admission. No reservations required.

Revival June 23–September 10, 2017 Chromatic Scale: Prints by Polly Apfelbaum On view through July 2, 2017 Equilibrium: Fanny Sanín July 14–October 29, 2017 DAKOTA FINE

The Women Arrive: From Masonic Temple to Women’s Museum On view through July 14, in the Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center; Open Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–12 p.m. and 1 p.m.–5 p.m.

6 | 21–9 | 27

GALLERY TALK SERIES. Lunchtime Gallery Talks. Bite-size lunchtime talks are offered most Wednesdays. Museum staff members facilitate interactive conversations, encouraging visitors to look closely and investigate the mediums, techniques, and themes of special exhibitions and works from the museum’s collection. Free. No reservations required. 6 | 2 1 6 | 28 7 | 5 7 | 12 7 | 19 7 | 26 8 | 2 8 | 9 8 | 16 8 | 23 8 | 30 9 | 6 9 | 13 9 | 20 9 | 2 7

THURS 11 A.M.–2 P.M.

MEMBER PREVIEW DAY. Revival. Join us for a special Member Preview Day as NMWA celebrates its 30th anniversary with a transcendent exhibition. Revival presents contemporary sculptors and photo-based artists whose arresting aesthetics and intense subject matter spur viewers into a mesmerizing encounter with the art object. Members enjoy double discounts (20%) in the Museum Shop and 15% off at the Mezzanine Café. Free admission for members and one guest.

Beverly Semmes, Blue Gowns, 1993; On view in Revival

THURS 7:30 –11 P.M.

OPENING PARTY. Revival. Prepare for a miracle! Join us to celebrate the opening of the special exhibition Revival. Enjoy a first look at the exhibition, preview tours, an open bar, and light refreshments. Registration required. $40 general; $30 members, seniors, students. IDs will be checked at the door.

Visit https://nmwa.org for reservations, more information, and a complete calendar of events.

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2017

KEVIN ALLEN PHOTOGRAPHY

6 | 22

Joana Vasconcelos, Viriato, 2005; On view in Revival

Collection Sampler Revival Revival Revival Revival Revival Revival Revival Revival Revival Revival Revival Collection Sampler Collection Sampler Collection Sampler

RUBELL FAMILY COLLECTION

ROBERT LORENZSON

Fanny Sanín, Acrylic No. 2, 2011, 2011; On view in Equilibrium

6 | 22

WED 12–12:30 P.M.

SUN 12 –5 P.M.

DROP-IN TOUR. Collection Selections. Attend a free, docent-led drop-in tour exploring highlights from the museum’s collection. Free. No reservations required.

TEACHER PROGRAM. Art, Books, and Creativity Institute. Empower and inspire your students through art! Join NMWA’s 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. Participants receive free art materials for classrooms and can register for graduate credit through Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C., for an added fee.

SAT 9:30 A.M. –2:30 P.M.

COURTESY DENISE RUDD

FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE WORKSHOP. Mixed-Media Sculptures. Tell stories with sculpture, inspired by the courageous creativity of contemporary artists featured in the special exhibition Revival. Led by guest artist Denise Rudd, this workshop explores mixed-media sculptures as modes of visual communication and provides the tools and time for participants to tap into their own expressive powers. Ages 13 and older. Materials and instruction provided. Reservations required. $25 general; $15 members, seniors, students.

Denise Rudd

7 | 19

MON–FRI 9 A.M. –4 P.M.

WED 6:30 –8 P.M.

CULTURAL CAPITAL. March on Washington Film Festival. The evening at the museum features conversations and programming highlighting women in the arts who are significant voices for social justice. Founded by The Raben Group in 2013, the March on Washington Film Festival uses the power of film, music, and the arts to share the important stories of the events and heroes of the Civil Rights Era and inspire renewed passion for activism. Reservations required. Tickets available in mid-June. Reserve online at http://marchonwashingtonfilmfestival.org.

LAURA HOFFMAN, NMWA

7 | 15

7 | 10– 7 | 14

SUN 1–2 P.M.

7 | 17– 7 | 21

MON–FRI 9 A.M. – 4 P.M.

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. 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.

LAURA HOFFMAN, NMWA

DANIEL SCHWARTZ PHOTOGRAPHY

FREE COMMUNITY DAYS. First Sundays. The first Sunday of every month, NMWA offers free admission to the public. Take this opportunity to explore current exhibitions as well as the museum’s newly reinstalled collection. For a complete schedule, visit the online calendar. Free. No reservations required.

7|2

DANIEL SCHWARTZ PHOTOGRAPHY

7 | 2, 8 | 6, 9 | 3, & 10 | 1

Visit https://nmwa.org for reservations, more information, and a complete calendar of events.

SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

8 | 19

SUN 1 –2 P.M.

DROP-IN TOUR. Fierce Women. Back by popular demand! The “Nasty Women” tour unveiled during the Women’s March weekend is now named “Fierce Women” and is here to stay! Join a museum educator and discover a diverse cast of fierce women who refused to let men define their place; thumbed their noses at the limited roles society accorded them; and blazed a trail as artists, activists, and innovators. No reservations required, but space is limited. First-come, first-served—sign up at the Information Desk upon arrival.

SAT 9:30 A.M.–2:30 P.M.

FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE WORKSHOP. Reviving Two Dimensions. Tap into your expressive powers, inspired by the courageous creativity of contemporary artists featured in the special exhibition Revival. Led by guest artist ROZEAL, this workshop teaches participants ROZEAL in NMWA’s galleries to interweave text and figurative imagery to create dynamic two-dimensional artworks. Ages 13 and older. Materials and instruction provided. Reservations required. $25 general; $15 members, seniors, students.

Judy Chicago, Pasadena Lifesavers Red #5, 1970

9|3

SUN 1–2 P.M.

DROP-IN TOUR. Fierce Women. Back by popular demand! The “Nasty Women” tour unveiled during the Women’s March weekend is now named “Fierce Women” and is here to stay! Join a museum educator and discover a diverse cast of fierce women who refused to let men define their place; thumbed their noses at the limited roles society accorded them; Mickalene Thomas, A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Y, 2009 and blazed a trail as artists, activists, and innovators. No reservations required, but space is limited. First-come, first-served—sign up at the Information Desk upon arrival.

9 | 17

SUN 4:30 –8 P.M.

FRESH TALK. Judy Chicago—Amplify. How can the arts amplify our voices and visibility? Alison Gass, director of the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago, joins in a conversation with one of the pioneers of feminist art, Judy Chicago. Together they discuss Chicago’s ongoing dedication to women’s voices, most famously through her epic work The Dinner Party (1979), the subject of a NMWA Archives exhibition opening in the fall and an upcoming exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. $25 general; $20 members, seniors, students; price includes museum admission and Sunday Supper afterward. Reservations required. Reserve online.

9|9

SAT 9:30 A.M.–2:30 P.M.

FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE WORKSHOP. Paper Engineering and Book Arts. Mix up your media, inspired by the courageous creativity of contemporary artists featured in the special exhibition Revival. Led by guest artist Carol Barton, this workshop encourages participants to handcraft and embellish a “Self-Portrait Figure Book,” a take on traditional Ethiopian talisman books. Ages 13 and older. Materials and instruction provided. Reservations required. $25 general; $15 members, seniors, students.

Carol June Barton

Education programming is made possible by SunTrust, Gladys Kemp Lisanby, and the Leo Rosner Foundation. Additional support is provided by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, Wells Fargo, the Harriet E. McNamee Youth Education Fund, William and Christine Leahy, and the Junior League of Washington. The Women, Arts, and Social Change public program initiative is made possible through leadership gifts from Denise Littlefield Sobel, Lorna Meyer Calas and Dennis Calas, the MLDauray Arts Initiative, and the Swartz Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Bernstein Family Foundation, Marcia and Frank Carlucci, Deborah G. Carstens, the Ray and Dagmar Dolby Family Fund, and The Reva and David Logan Foundation. American Airlines is the official airline of the museum’s 30th Anniversary.

Visit https://nmwa.org for reservations, more information, and a complete calendar of events.

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2017

LAURA HOFFMAN, NMWA

LEE STALSWORTH

8|6

FRANCISCA RUDOLPH, NMWA

CALENDAR

Calendar

PHOTO BY EMILY HAIGHT, NMWA

#5 WOMENARTISTS GOES GLOBAL: A Social Media Campaign for Women’s History Month

A museum staff member, inspired by Frida Kahlo, quizzed NMWA visitors and others in D.C. to test their knowledge about women artists

Emily Haight

IN HONOR OF WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH, NMWA launched the second year of its award-winning #5WomenArtists social media campaign, which asks, “Can you name five women artists?” The museum invited cultural organizations and individuals to share stories about women artists on social media throughout the month. The campaign inspired a discussion about gender imbalance in the art world in the U.S. and internationally, with great success! More than 11,000 people participated, including more than 520 organizations from thirty countries and all seven continents (41% more organizations than last year’s campaign). Individuals and cultural organizations posted more than 17,800 tweets, more than 4,500 Instagram posts, and more than eighty blog posts about the campaign. Nearly 500 people took the BuzzFeed quiz “Which of These 5 Women Artists are You? (Part Two).” More than fifty local, national, and international news outlets featured articles about the campaign, including the Huffington Post, the Gallery Gap podcast, and PBS NewsHour. New York Magazine’s “The Cut” published a three-part interview series inspired by the hashtag, and USA Today visited for a Facebook Live museum tour. NMWA was honored with a Gold MUSE Award from the American Alliance of Museums! This Media & Technology award in Digital Communities honored the campaign’s growth and community engagement.

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edit-a-thon hosted at the museum. Attendees used the museum’s resources to improve entries on women artists. NMWA offered a daily scavenger hunt in the museum and hosted a before-hours InstaMeet for local photographers to explore and snap photos of the museum’s newly reinstalled collection. One staff member dressed as Frida Kahlo and brought the #5WomenArtists challenge to Washington, D.C., streets, captured in a YouTube video. The museum also partnered with other institutions, “taking over” social media accounts with stories of women artists, sharing from Balboa Park’s Instagram account, the Brightest Young Things accounts, and the @52museums handle. NMWA’s collection works also anchored four slots of the all-women “bracket” in #ArtMadness, the Albright-Knox Gallery’s NCAA March Madness-themed competition. Many organizations included #5WomenArtists in their own Women’s History Month programming. The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, South Carolina, invited five women artists to speak about their experiences at a public program, and the Royal British Columbia Museum hosted a museum happy hour event highlighting contemporary First Nations artists. In Maryland, Manor View Elementary School created a “Celebrating Women in Arts” bulletin board. Every month is Women’s History Month at NMWA! Continue to advocate on behalf of women artists and celebrate their accomplishments—stay connected and follow us

The month was filled with consciousness-raising digital initiatives. Led by the Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center, forty-four participants edited eighty-three Wikipedia articles about women artists in the fifth annual Art+Feminism Wikipedia

@WomenInTheArts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Emily Haight is the digital editorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

Gallery

Reboot Kathryn Wat, Virginia Treanor, and Deborah Gaston

n January 2017, the museum reopened its collection galleries after a month-long renovation and reinstallation. NMWA’s collection of more than 5,000 works of art spans from the late sixteenth century through today. The Great Hall and Mezzanine levels now introduce the collection, featuring a selection

that emphasizes women artists’ talent and versatility over centuries. Five thematic groupings on the museum’s third floor emphasize vibrant connections between historical and contemporary art as well as ideas explored by women around the world and through time.

PHOTO BY LEE STALSWORTH

Herstory

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2017

Upon entering the third-floor galleries, visitors find works that showcase portraiture and storytelling, often with historical references. The fundamental skills that historical artists needed to paint events from the past or scenes from mythology and religion were taught in European and American art academies that typically barred or limited women’s access. In turn, many women artists of the past worked as portraitists, such as Lavinia Fontana (1580–1614), whose flattering depictions of wealthy patrons are on view. Conventional thinking held that women possessed the ability to copy single figures but lacked the intellect needed to develop more complex compositions. Contemporary women artists often use portraiture to explore themes of identity related to race, gender, and sexuality. A legacy of exclusion in figurative art has not prevented them from referencing and redefining history, as in Wonderful You (1995), a large-format painting by Jane Hammond (b. 1950) that combines references to popular culture—Mickey Mouse and Superman appear—with a format inspired by religious altarpieces. Nearby, NMWA’s newly reinstalled collection gallery featuring work by Sarah Miriam Peale (back) and Cindy Sherman (front)

PHOTO BY YASSINE EL MANSOURI

Visitors with (left to right) Jane Hammond, Wonderful You, 1995; Oil, gold leaf, and collage on canvas, 81 ½ x 82 in.; Promised gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore, in honor of the artist; and Amy Sherald, It Made Sense … Mostly In Her Mind, 2011; Oil on canvas, 54 x 43 in., Promised Gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore, in Honor of the Artist, and the 25th Anniversary of the National Museum of Women in the Arts

PHOTO BY YASSINE EL MANSOURI

A visitor examines Dorothy Dehner, Rooster, 1970; Mixed wood construction, 36 x 12 x 4 7⁄8 in.; On loan from the Honorable Joseph P. Carroll and Dr. Roberta Carroll

the juxtaposition of an iconic self-portrait by Frida Kahlo (1907– 1954) and works by Amy Sherald (b. 1973) encourages visitors to think about how portraits can tell stories about identity.

Domestic Affairs The domestic sphere, with its quotidian activities and feminine associations, serves as a remarkably rich wellspring for many women artists. In this space, visitors encounter collection works that draw subjects and materials from this generative source in order to uphold—or upend—cultural traditions, gender roles, and boundaries between art and craft. Artists elucidate the often invisible and undervalued labor of

women by engaging with textile, design, and needlework traditions or appropriating imagery from the household realm. Works on view encompass work by early women silversmiths, ceramic “Tupperware” by Honor Freeman (b. 1978), etchings by Miriam Schapiro (1923–2015) that represent historical needlework, and large-scale photography evoking the surroundings and constraints of the home. Set in conversation with one another, these works of art reveal a nuanced concept of “domesticity,” in which the home functions as inspiration, foil, or adversary.

Body Language Through most of Western art history, male artists controlled the representation of the female body. During the feminist art movement in the 1960s and ’70s, women artists claimed ownership over visualization of the body, and artists today explore the expressive potential of the female form. In this gallery, a number of artists adapt art-historical motifs such as the odalisque, a sensuous reclining figure, by transforming its typically passive character. Women artists including Annie Leibovitz (b. 1949) and Daniela Rossell (b. 1973) also modify the traditions of portraiture by shaping their imagery through sources such as mass media photography. Some likenesses convey an individual’s psyche, while others signify broader ideas about culture, gender, and ethnicity.

Natural Women Because of their purported keen powers of observation, women artists historically were encouraged to render the natural world. SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

PHOTO BY LEE STALSWORTH

A view through a “Domestic Affairs” gallery into the “Body Language” space

Still-life painting and botanical illustrations were considered particularly appropriate for women since they did not require the training needed to portray the human body, instruction from which women were largely excluded. Despite these ideological constraints, many women excelled at depicting nature

A visitor explores the “Construction Zone” gallery, with Jane and Louise Wilson, North Corridor, Hoover Dam: Las Vegas, 1999; Chromogenic print on aluminum, 71 x 71 in.; Gift of The Heather and Tony Podesta Collection; and Louise Nevelson, White Column (from Dawn’s Wedding Feast), 1959; Painted wood, 110 x 15 ½ x 12 ½ in.; Gift of an anonymous donor

Construction Zone

PHOTO BY YASSINE EL MANSOURI

with both exacting precision and imagination. Still lifes on view by Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750) and Clara Peeters (active ca. 1607–1630s) exemplify this talent. Modern and contemporary artists continue to draw inspiration from nature. Some create representational depictions, while others such as Alma Thomas (1891–1978) or Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) treat elements of the landscape more conceptually. They analyze its colors and textures or evoke their emotional response to the beauty—or ferocity—of the natural world.

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2017

The museum’s collection demonstrates that women excel as makers, constructing complex forms with innovative materials. Abstract sculptures and paintings, including works by Louise Nevelson (1899–1988), Dorothy Dehner (1901–1994), and Chakaia Booker (b. 1953) demonstrate how women embrace the technical challenges of assembling materials and also test the expressive effect of pure texture, color, and form. Artists in the collection also interpret and critique built spaces. Their depictions of architecture, including a painting of nearby D.C. streets by Georgia Mills Jessup (1926–2016) and photographs by Jane and Louise Wilson (b. 1967), form a corollary to representations of the body, as these spaces reflect and shape human activity. Some images refer directly to architecture’s function, particularly in institutional and urban spaces, as a means to assert power and control movement. Kathryn Wat is the chief curator, Virginia Treanor is the associate curator, and Deborah Gaston is the director of education and digital engagement at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Recent Acquisitions on View: Jo Baker’s Bananas by Faith Ringgold

everal works new to NMWA’s collection are displayed prominently in the refreshed gallery space. Jo Baker’s Bananas (1997), by Faith Ringgold, is on view in the “Body Language” gallery. In acrylic on canvas with a fabric border, it depicts the famous American entertainer Josephine Baker (1906–1975), who became a stage legend in France, where she lived most of her life. Trained as a painter, Ringgold originated the African American story quilt revival in the late 1970s by com-

bining the traditional “craft” of quilting with the “fine art” of painting. Baker’s figure is represented five times across the top of the quilt, implying a sense of movement across a stage. The so-called “Banana Dance” that she performed in 1926 at Paris’s Folies Bergère music hall cemented her fame. Off-stage, Baker supported the burgeoning Civil Rights movement in the United States and used her fame and fortune to bolster support for the cause.

PHOTO BY LEE STALSWORTH

Faith Ringgold, American Collection #4: Jo Baker’s Bananas, 1997; Acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 80 ½ x 76 in.; Purchased with funds donated by the Estate of Barbara Bingham Moore, Olga V. Hargis Family Trusts, and the Members' Acquisition Fund

SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

JULY 14 THROUGH OCTOBER 29, 2017

Equilibrium Fanny Sanín Virginia Treanor with interview excerpts by Patterson Sims

or more than forty years, Fanny Sanín (b. 1938) has methodically pursued symmetry, harmony, and equilibrium in her geometric abstractions. Sanín was born in Bogotá, Colombia, where she

began her artistic training at the University of the Andes, studying with noted Colombian modernists from 1956 to 1960. Her education continued at the University of Illinois (1962–63) and the Chelsea School of Art and the Central School of Art in London (1967–68). In 1971, Sanín moved to New York City, where she lives to this day, although she travels regularly to Colombia, where, most recently, she was honored with a year-long retrospective at the Colombian National Museum in Bogotá. Fanny Sanín, Acrylic No. 2, 2011, 2011; Acrylic on canvas, 62 x 60 in.; Courtesy of the artist PHOTO BY ROBERT LORENZSON

SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

PHOTOS BY WHITNEY BROWNE

Left to right: Fanny Sanín, Study for Composition No. 1 (1), 2016, 2016; Study for Composition No. 1 (3), 2016, 2016; and Study for Composition No. 1 (4), 2016, 2016; All: Acrylic on paper, 14 x 16 ½ in.; Courtesy of the artist

n interview with Fanny Sanín edited for a 2012 exhibition publication gives insight into her artistic choices and working method.1

of colors. The tonal value itself does change and develop slowly over long periods of time. I start a painting with some color in mind, for example I may decide that the painting will have an emphasis on reds. It is a very abstract and emotional decision, often as an alternative to the color emphasis of my last painting.

Q. When did you become an abstract painter? A. I realized during the final years at the university in Colom-

Q. What has drawing and the making of studies on paper meant in

bia, after being encouraged and exposed to the abstract works of my teachers David Manzur [b. 1929], Armando Villegas [1926– 2013], and Juan Antonio Roda [1921–2003], as well as seeing the works of Édgar Negret [1920–2012], Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar [1922–2004], and Guillermo Wiedemann [1905–1969], that I didn’t want to do academic and figurative art. Landscapes were more interesting than painting objects, but I soon started doing abstractions. Since my last year in college in 1960, there has been no intentional reference to figuration or landscape in my art. Abstraction forced me to think of color and form independently of theme and figure. I felt I was creating, no longer copying as before. For over forty years I have been concerned with geometric structure and color. Living in London in the late sixties I had the opportunity of traveling and seeing European museums and became acquainted with the great European school of art of the first half of the twentieth century. The great MoMA The Art of the Real show, which I saw at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Paris in the fall of 1968, confirmed my choice of abstract painting. I will never forget the scale and color of the paintings by Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Barnet Newman, Kenneth Noland, Mark Rothko, and Frank Stella.

Q. What role does color play in your art? A. I do not have any [color] preferences, though there are certain types of brighter and more contrasted color tonal values I didn’t want to use at the start. I always create my colors by mixing. I work within a certain tonal value making use of a full spectrum 28

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your life as an artist and painter? A. Drawings are the first and most important part of my creation. Every painting I begin is a new problem, and the drawings help me come to terms with the problem. Works on paper are fundamental to the process of [my] creation. I use them to plan and reach the image that I finally would love to paint on canvas. Color and structure go hand-in-hand in my work. It isn’t until they are both worked out in detail in my drawings that they can have meaning. Using acrylic on paper permits working a certain area over and over. All of this functions interdependently, as the concept and other specifics. The scale of the eventual painting is in my mind from the very first study. The painting starts as soon as I define the final study. Sometimes there are points in the work when it is still unresolved, but I will decide to start the painting and leave the solution to that area for later.

Q. Because of the kind of geometric abstract art you make, people might imagine you exist in a sealed world, untouched by exterior experience, reference, and influence. How do you respond to that? A. No, I am not removed. Going to museums, movies, concerts, plays, and reading books, and visiting parks and nature preserves and sharing some of these experiences with friends is vital for me and my art. When I [leave my studio], I don’t think about my paintings and drawings. But many hours for most days of the week, I must be alone, with my time undisturbed, so I can focus on the protracted, sometimes intense, process of the creation of my art. I spend a lot of this time in a visual conversation with the painting to be clear what needs to be done. The

experience of creating can be difficult and anguishing as I make my drawings and then the paintings.

Q. Geometric abstraction and especially symmetry seems essential in your mature work, though you started as an expressionist: what does symmetry communicate for you? A. Symmetry provides a sense of order, harmony, and perhaps a peaceful image. My life and the world are not symmetrical, but since 1974 the orderliness, balance, and repletion in my drawings and paintings gives them their presence and power.

Q. Does your use of geometric abstraction and symmetry come from

purity in the colors. I want color, tone, and structure to guide the eye in different ways; some viewers go on to infinity while for others movements and space are truncated. There is also a static feeling in the way color appears somewhere in the drawings and paintings, disappears, and then emerges elsewhere. You can almost read the painting by colors and find its spiritual content. Virginia Treanor is the associate curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Patterson Sims is an independent curator and the president of the board of Independent Curators International. Note: 1. Interview excerpts edited by Virginia Treanor, from Patterson Sims, Fanny Sanín: Drawings and Studies 1960 to Now (New York: Frederico Sève Gallery, 2012), 7–8. Drawn from a conversation between Sanín, Rose Marie Sader, and Luisa Valenzuela, which was moderated and edited by Robert A. Parker, and published in Revista Avianca, No. 57, Bogotá, Colombia (1981) and merged with unpublished interviews with Sanín by Carla Gottlieb (1978) and Betsy Haahr (1987). These sources were edited and augmented with additional interviews with Sanín by Patterson Sims (2011). Equilibrium: Fanny Sanín, presented in the Teresa Lozano Long Gallery of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, is organized by the museum and generously supported by the Judith A. Finkelstein Exhibition Fund and the members of NMWA.

PHOTO BY WHITNEY BROWNE

math, science, or spiritualism? A. No, it does not come from any of those sources. All these sources are components, but my forms and the rigorous symmetry I use come from other personal sources. I can relate my work [more] to the interplay of sounds, harmonies, and tonalities in music than to most of what I know in the visual world. Big turning points for me were reading Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art [1912] and auditing a course on Henri Matisse at the University of Illinois, Urbana, with the art historian Carla Gottlieb and seeing Matisse’s paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Q. What do you want viewers to see in your art? A. I am seeking order in my work, harmony in the elements, and

Fanny Sanín, Composition No. 1, 2016, 2016; Acrylic and pencil on paper, 25 ½ x 40 in.; Courtesy of the artist

SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

ON VIEW

Through July 14, 2017

The Women Arrive: From Masonic Temple to Women’s Museum Jennifer Page

t 1250 New York Avenue, in Northwest Washington, D.C., the sculptural Renaissance Revival building that houses the museum today was originally constructed in 1908 as the National Masonic Temple. In fitting contrast, what was originally a structure dedicated only to men is now devoted exclusively to women’s artistic achievements. As part of the museum’s thirtieth anniversary celebrations, the Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center presents a selection of historical highlights before the women arrived and opened the museum’s doors in 1987.

The Neighborhood in the Nineteenth Century The square where the museum now stands—designated number 287 by city planners—was part of a large spread of farmland owned by Samuel and John Davidson when the city was founded in 1790. In the early 1800s, a stream ran down 13th Street, passing a knoll and “seven noble oaks” on what became the corner of H Street. The land there was named Seven Oaks. The area was also known as “Cover’s Tanyard” and “Parson Baker’s Church.” Surrounding blocks were home to a tannery, an orchard, carpenters, a flower garden and greenhouse, and a grocery, feed store, and wagon yard. A whiskey bottle labeled “Hotel Evelyn” was discovered when structural engineers recently probed the museum’s attic. At the turn of the century, the hotel stood 30

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2017

directly across New York Avenue from the museum. The hotel, owned by Leo Oedekoven, can be found on a 1903 Sanborn Fire Insurance map. An ad described the establishment as a “buffet stocked with the finest wines and liquors.”

The Era of the Freemasons The land was purchased from John Davidson’s heirs by the Masonic Temple Organization in 1899 for $115,000. The oddly shaped lot was created by Pierre L’Enfant’s design for Washington, D.C., in which diagonal avenues cross a street grid, so it is bordered by three

streets: New York Avenue, H Street, and 13th Street. Architect Waddy Wood, part of the firm Wood, Donn & Deming (who later designed the Department of the Interior) designed the structure. He placed particular emphasis on the wooden floor and acoustics of the firstfloor auditorium, intended for use as an entertainment space. Thompson-Starrett Co., builders of Union Station, were hired for the construction. The cornerstone was laid by President Theodore Roosevelt, using the same gavel and trowel that George Washington used to lay the cornerstone

A whiskey bottle found in the museum’s attic came from the Hotel Evelyn, which was just across New York Avenue from the museum when it was first built as a Masonic Temple

Right: This 1903 Sanborn Fire Insurance map shows the block with structure types and business names: the Hotel Evelyn, beer garden, tailor, drug store, several laundries, and print shops.

Marking Time in a Landmark From the ground up: • Time spent to build: 1.5 years • Time spent to renovate in the 1980s: 3 years

The building has twice played a role in neighborhood revitalization: • The City Beautiful movement, an urban planning philosophy popular during the 1890s and early 1900s that emphasized orderliness, symmetry, building’s original architectural design. • Wilhelmina Cole Holladay wrote in 1987, “The decision to renovate and locate the museum in the historic landmark Masonic Hall was made, in part, because of the conviction that the presence of the museum would add significantly to shaping growth in the area.” The building under construction on April 21, 1908

of the Capitol building in 1793, in a lavish ceremony on June 8, 1907. The June 8, 1907, edition of the Evening Star, a prominent local daily newspaper, covered the cornerstone-laying ceremony in great detail, including the items deposited in the stone, such as “steel portraits” of George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt, the Act of Incorporation of the Masonic Temple Association of the District of Columbia, a Masonic calendar, plans for the building, and copies of current newspapers. Work progressed rapidly on the construction. The design allowed for open interior spaces, with fifty-foot steel plate girders spanning from wall to wall, and massive self-sustaining exteriors. The architects’ 1904 pamphlet The Proposed Masonic Temple stated, “The three façades, by their several parts, convey to the mind

the uses to which each part is put—the public part by large openings architecturally framed, and the secret by small openings and large, simple wall surfaces.” Masonic symbols can still be seen on the exterior today, the most evident above the fourth-floor windows.

Fit for a Museum Much like the building’s original occupants, this stately landmark still serves the D.C. community—albeit for a different cause—benefitting from its central location and eye-catching architecture. As former deputy director Catherine Tuggle wrote, “How fitting that it should become the home of the world’s most impressive collection of art by women.”

What was the building used for in addition to Freemasonry? • The Office of the Mutual Life Insurance Company, the National Savings and Trust Company, Imperial Tire and Rubber Company, and the George Washington Law School rented office space in the building in the beginning of the twentieth century. • Newspaper ads in the early twentieth century announced motion picture lectures in the first-floor auditorium on a variety of topics: the Dutch East Indies, Egypt, Southeast Asia, world history, the Studebaker auto factory, an airplane journey over South America, and wild birds, among others.

Jennifer Page is the library manager at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

MUSEUM NEWS AND EVENTS

Committee News

Panelists at the discussion “The Many Faces of Simone de Beauvoir: Author, Philosopher, Feminist”

On April 2, NMWA hosted the panel discussion “The Many Faces of Simone de Beauvoir: Author, Philosopher, Feminist.” The panel was moderated by Gail Weiss of George Washington University, and speakers included Susan Suleiman of Harvard University,

From January 18 to April 16, Whitechapel Gallery in London featured Terrains of the Body: Photography from the National Museum of Women in the Arts. This milestone exhibition showcasing contemporary photography from the museum’s collection was made possible by the leadership of the UK Friends of NMWA. The exhibition welcomed 75,000 visitors and received significant attention from the press, including coverage in the BBC, British Vogue, the London Times, and CNN. On April 12, the Ohio Advisory Group held its first Fresh Talk in Cleveland, inspired by the museum’s Women, Arts, and Social Change programming. Hosted by MOCA Cleveland, the evening’s theme was “How Do the Arts and Design Inspire Change?” The panel was moderated by NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling and featured Marika Shiori-Clark, Jennifer Coleman, Lillian Kuri, Terry Schwarz, and Ann Zoller. The event sold out within hours of releasing tickets, and it garnered positive and energized responses from its audience. Members of committees in France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom attended the International Committee Conference in London on March 3. Sterling and NMWA Deputy Director Ilene Gutman spoke to the group. The 32

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 20177

conference reinforced the museum’s missionbased values and the roles of the committees. It provided a platform for attending committees to report on their recent activities as well as an opportunity to discuss upcoming programming at the museum. On April 17, the Chile Chapter of NMWA presented Women in Music II, the second installment of their lyrical singing contest. This year’s winner, mezzo-soprano Maria Luisa Merino, made her American debut in the museum’s Performance Hall with a wide

BETH COLOCCI, UK FRIENDS OF NMWA

Committee Activities: Planning Programs, Sponsoring Exhibitions, and Celebrating Anniversaries

Debra Bergoffen of American University and Professor Emerita of George Mason University, and Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, translators of The Second Sex. One hundred twenty engaged attendees listened and contributed to the topics of freedom, ambiguity, and language in Simone de Beauvoir’s work. This refreshing discussion was organized in conjunction with the museum’s interactive installation, From the Desk of Simone de Beauvoir, which was enthusiastically supported by Les Amis du NMWA after the museum was awarded the prestigious Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom in 2015. This spring Les Amis du NMWA also visited the Paris studio of artist Françoise Pétrovitch, whose work was exhibited in Organic Matters—Women to Watch 2015. On May 9, the committee visited the studio of another Women to Watch artist, Laure Tixier, whose works were on view as part of High Fiber: Women to Watch 2012. Both artists also generously donated works to the museum’s 30th Anniversary Spring Gala auction.

UK FRIENDS OF NMWA

EMILY HAIGHT, NMWA

Les Amis du NMWA

Top to bottom: Whitechapel opening with Chief Curator Kathryn Wat and artist Charlotte Gyllenhammar; Susan Fisher Sterling, Ilene Gutman, and committee members from France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom at the committee conference in London

Save the Date! Fall Member Preview: Magnetic Fields Members are the first to see the exciting upcoming exhibition Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today, the first U.S. exhibition to focus on formal and historical abstraction by women artists of color, organized by the Kemper Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Mark your calendar for October 12, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. to preview the exhibition, featuring work by more than twenty women. Including progenitors like Mavis Pusey and contemporary artists such as Shinique Smith, Magnetic Fields is intergenerational in scope and highlights the longstanding presence of black women artists within the field of abstraction in America. Members and their

photographers in New Mexico such as Abbey Hepner, Jessamyn Lovell, Delilah Montoya, Cara Romero, Kali Spitzer, and Laurie Tumer. Throughout the exhibition, the committee and gallery are hosting accompanying panel discussions, film screenings, and artist talks.

Members from our committees in Arkansas, Northern California, Chile, France, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Ohio, Peru, Texas, and the United Kingdom came to Washington, D.C., to kick off the museum’s 30th Anniversary at the Spring Gala on April 21.

guests will enjoy tours throughout the day and special discounts in the Museum Shop!

30th Anniversary Honor Roll Thank you to those donors who are honoring women artists with their contributions to the 30th Anniversary Honor Roll campaign. It is with the support of friends like you that the National Museum of Women in the Arts celebrates this important milestone as the only major museum in the world solely dedicated to recognizing women’s creative achievements. Please view the list at nmwa.org/honor-roll.

Member News

Members of the Northern California Committee, based in San Francisco, in Washington, D.C., before the 30th Anniversary Spring Gala ELLEN HOWES, NMWA

selection of beloved opera variations and Chilean music. The Greater Kansas City Area Committee is exhibiting Women to Watch 2018 artists at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, June 16, 2017–January 28, 2018. Associate Curator Virginia Treanor attended the opening. One of the artists will be selected to have her work shown in the next Women to Watch exhibition at the museum in Washington, D.C., in June 2018. The New Mexico State Committee is celebrating its 20th anniversary by arranging the exhibition History/Her Story, on view June 23–July 29 at the David Richard Gallery in Santa Fe. It highlights contemporary women

On view in Magnetic Fields: Chakaia Booker, El Gato, 2001; Rubber tire and wood, 48 x 42 x 42 in.; Collection of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection, Museum purchase, Enid and Crosby Kemper and William T. Kemper Acquisition Fund, 2004.

Circles Members support the National Museum of Women in the Arts at the highest level As NMWA expands its impact during our 30th Anniversary year, we invite you to support our work as a member of the Circles. You will join a dynamic group of individuals who recognize NMWA’s vital role in shining a light on women artists, past, present, and future. Members enjoy exclusive access to the museum and its oneof-a-kind collection, as well as to acclaimed and emerging artists through engaging events and behind-the-scenes opportunities. As a Circles member, you provide essential support for advocacy, outreach, conservation, special exhibitions, innovative

programs, and scholarly research, as well as day-to-day operations of the museum. Your generosity will be recognized in Women in the Arts magazine, and on the Mezzanine level of the museum (the site of more than 100 private events every year). Membership in the Circles begins at $1,000 Donor Circle (formerly the President’s Club). For more information, please call Christina Knowles, Director of Membership, at 202-783-7984, or visit https://nmwa.org/support/membership#circles.

BE A PART OF THE CIRCLES TODAY!

SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

MUSEUM NEWS AND EVENTS

Museum Events Opening reception for Border Crossing: Jami Porter Lara and New Ground: The Southwest of Maria Martinez and Laura Gilpin 1. Artist Jami Porter Lara and Clara Lovett 2. Jami Porter Lara leads an exhibition tour 3–4. Attendees enjoy work on view by Jami Porter Lara (left) and Laura Gilpin (right) 2

YASSINE EL MANSOURI

FRESH TALK: Ann Hamilton and Emily Pilloton—How can makers change the world?

KEVIN ALLEN PHOTOGRAPHY

5. Ann Hamilton gives a talk on her art and the experience of making things 6. NMWA Director of Public Programs Lorie Mertes moderates a conversation with Ann Hamilton and Emily Pilloton 7. Lorie Mertes, Ann Hamilton, NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling, and Emily Pilloton 8. Attendees making crafts and shopping booths featuring local makers

Reception for Berthe Morisot’s Jeune Femme en Mauve (Young Woman in Mauve)

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2017

MARGOT SCHULMAN

9. NMWA Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, Joe Long, and Teresa Long with Jeune Femme en Mauve (Young Woman in Mauve) (1880), by Berthe Morisot, a recent donation to the collection from the Longs

30th Anniversary Spring Gala 10. NMWA Founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay (center) with Gala co-chairs Kristin Cecchi, Jamie Dorros, Amy Baier, and Board President Cindy Jones 11. Hap Holladay and NMWA Board Vice Chair Winton Holladay 12. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser welcomes attendees 13. Jane Sullivan Roberts, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, and Wilhelmina Cole Holladay 14. Eugene Adams, Gina Adams, Cindy Jones, Evan Jones, Abeer Al Otaiba, and Yousef Al Otaiba 15. Judy Chicago and Donald Woodman 16. Susan Fisher Sterling, Tony Podesta, and Artemis Zenetou 17. NMWA Trustee Hon. Mary V. Mochary, NMWA Board President Emerita and Endowment Chair Carol Lascaris, Debbie Sigmund, and NMWA Advisory Board member Barbara Richter 18. D.C. Council member Jack Evans, Cindy Jones, and Ambassador of Great Britain to the U.S. Nigel Darroch 19. Dana Bash and Michelle Kosinski 20. Wilhelmina Cole Holladay and Reggie Van Lee

TONY POWELL

SUMMER 2017 | WOMEN IN THE ARTS

SUPPORTING ROLES

Board of Trustees

Legacy of Women in the Arts Endowment Campaign

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay—Chair, Winton S. Holladay— Vice Chair, Cindy Jones—President, Gina F. Adams— First Vice President, Susan Goldberg—Second Vice President (Community Relations), Joanne C. Stringer— Treasurer, Nancy Duber—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— The Alice West Director*, Janice Lindhurst Adams, Pamela G. Bailey, M. A. Ruda Brickfield, Charlotte Clay Buxton, Rose Carter, Diane Casey-Landry, Mary Clark*, Gilan Tocco Corn*, Lizette Corro, Ashley Davis, Betty Boyd Dettre, Deborah I. Dingell, Martha Lyn Dippell, Karen Dixon Fuller, Sally L. Jones, Marlene Malek, Jacqueline Badger Mars, Juliana E. May, Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, Jacqui Michel, Marjorie Odeen, Jackie Quillen, Andrea Roane, Sheila Shaffer, Kathleen Elizabeth Springhorn, Jessica H. Sterchi, Mahinder Tak, Annie S. Totah, Sarah Bucknell Treco*, Frances Luessenhop Usher, Ruthanna Maxwell Weber, Alice West

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

*Ex-Officio

NMWA Advisory Board Sarah Bucknell Treco—Chair, Noreen M. Ackerman, Sunny Scully Alsup, Jean Astrop, Jo Ann Barefoot, Gail Bassin, Sue Ann Berlin, Catherine Little Bert, Brenda Bertholf, Eva M. Borins, Nancy Anne Branton, Margaret Boyce Brown, Deborah G. Carstens, Paul T. Clark, Donna Paolino Coia, John Comstock, Linda Comstock, Byron Croker, M.D., Lynn Finesilver Crystal, Liz Cullen, Verónica de Ferrero, Belinda de Gaudemar, Katy Graham Debost, Betty Boyd Dettre, Elizabeth J. Doverman, Kenneth P. Dutter, Gerry E. Ehrlich, Elva Ferrari-Graham, Lisa Claudy Fleischman, Rosemarie Forsythe, Jane Fortune, Claudia Fritsche, Julie Garcia, Lisa Garrison, Barbara S. Goldfarb, Jody Harrison Grass, Sue J. Henry, Anna Stapleton Henson, Caroline Rose Hunt, Jan Jessup, Alice D. Kaplan, Arlene Fine Klepper, 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, Dee Ann McIntyre, Cynthia McKee, Suzanne Mellor, Milica Mitrovich, Claudia Pensotti Mosca, Jeannette T. Nichols, Kay W. Olson, Katherine D. Ortega, Margaret Perkins, Patti Pyle, Drina Rendic, Barbara Richter, Elizabeth Robinson, Elizabeth A. Sackler, Stephanie Sale, Consuelo Salinas de Pareja, Steven Scott, Marsha Brody Shiff, Ann L. Simon, Kathern Ivous Sisk, Geri Skirkanich, Dot Snyder, Denise Littlefield Sobel, Patti Amanda Spivey, Kathleen Elizabeth Springhorn, Sara Steinfeld, Jo Stribling, Susan Swartz, Cheryl S. Tague, Lisa Cannon Taylor, MaryRoss Taylor, Deborah Dunklin Tipton, Nancy W. Valentine, Sara M. Vance Waddell, Paula S. Wallace, Harriet L. Warm, Krystyna Wasserman, Island Weiss, Tara Beauregard Whitbeck, Patti White, Betty Bentsen Winn, Rhett D. Workman (all lists as of all lists as of May 10, 2017)

WOMEN IN THE ARTS | SUMMER 2017

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, The Geiger Family Foundation, Barbara A. Gurwitz and William D. Hall, Caroline Rose Hunt/The Sands Foundation, Cindy and Evan Jones, 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 McElveenHunter, Irene Natividad, Jeannette T. Nichols, Nancy O’Malley*, 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, Elzbieta Chlopecka Vande Sande 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, Donna Paolino Coia and Arthur Coia, 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, 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, Stuart and Chancy West, 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, 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, PepsiCo., Inc., Anne and Chris Reyes, Savannah Trip, Mary Anne B. Stewart, Paula Wallace/Savannah College of Art and Design, Marjorie Nohowel Wasilewski, Jean S. and Gordon T. Wells * Deceased

MUSEUM SHOP

Museum Shop

Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (In That Order) Broad Strokes

Revival Exhibition Catalogue

(no relation to NMWA’s similarly titled blog) offers a corrective to the omission of women artists from the canon. Art historian Bridget Quinn delves into the lives and careers of brilliant artists. $29.95/Member $26.95 (Item #4118)

NMWA’s summer exhibition Revival showcases women working in sculpture, photography, and video who regenerate their mediums to profound expressive effect. The fullcolor catalogue features illuminating artist quotes and detailed imagery. Softcover, 96 pages. $21.95/Member $19.76 (Item #4124) Cars, Item #2108)

In the Company of Women: Inspiration and Advice from over 100 Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs Grace Bonney’s

Enamel Pins These fun, quirky, and retro accessories are outlined in gold

new book features interviews and portraits of exceptional leaders across a races, ages, backgrounds, and industries. Inspiring interviews and lush original photographs paint a beautiful picture of what female entrepreneurs can achieve. $35/ Member $31.50 (Item #4093)

Frida Depicting the

metal and come with a gold butterfly clutch, with a backing and sleeve for safe shipping. Perfect for your jacket, blouse or backpack. Approx. 1–1.25-in. pin.

incredibly fierce woman and artist Frida Kahlo. $12/Member $10.80 (Item #29465)

The Future Is Female This empowering slogan has lasted through decades, harking back to a T-shirt design made in the 1970s for Labyris Books, in New York City. $12/Member $10.80 (Item #1046)

Louise Bourgeois Eye Mask This silk eye mask was dreamed up by Third Drawer Down Studio to honor the artist who described the state of slumber as “paradise.” Reversible design echoes one of her fabric drawings from 2003. 100% silk, beautifully gift-packaged on Bourgeois’s portrait. 7.8 x 3.4 in. $28.50/Member $25.65 (Item #29534)

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Summer 2017

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Guerrilla Girls Mug The Guerrilla Girls confront inequity through art featuring facts, humor, and outrage. This mug reproduces their iconic work “Do Women Have to be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum?” Produced in collaboration with Third Drawer Down Studio. Bone China, dishwasher safe. $22.50/Member $20.25 (Item #30077)

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NATIONAL MUSEUM of WOMEN in the ARTS 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20005-3970

COMING SOON

Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today October 13, 2017–January 21, 2018

Mary Lovelace O’Neal, “Little Brown Girl with your Hair in a Curl”/Daddy #5, 1973; Charcoal and pastel on paper, 18 x 24 in.; Mott-Warsh Collection, Flint, Michigan, © Mary Lovelace O’Neal

Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today is organized by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, and is supported in part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

MWA’s 30th-anniversary celebration continues with Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today, the first U.S. exhibition to explore the formal and historical dialogue on abstraction among women artists of color. Featuring work by more than twenty women, including progenitors like Mavis Pusey and contemporary artists such as Shinique Smith, Magnetic Fields is intergenerational in scope and highlights the longstanding presence of women artists of color within the field of abstraction in America. From the brilliant colors and energetic brushwork of Alma Woodsey Thomas’s paintings to shredded tire sculptures by Chakaia Booker, works in this exhibition testify to the enduring ability of abstraction to convey both personal iconography and universal themes. This landmark project underscores the diversity of abstract art, which lies in its material construction as well as in its practitioners.