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Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art Opens in Brooklyn, New York Three cheers for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art which opened on March 23, 2007. Housed in New York’s Brooklyn Museum, the Sackler Center represents a milestone for women artist. At last, one of the most respected museums in the country has installed a permanent exhibition and education center that recognizes feminist art as an ambitious, influential, and enduring artistic movement. The Sackler Center will provide a permanent home for Judy Chicago’s, The Dinner Party, a ground-breaking multi-media installation piece that sparked tremendous controversy when it opened in 1979. The work fascinated the public, but it was viciously condemned by many male critics. The Dinner Party elevates female achievement in Western history to a heroic scale traditionally reserved for men. It presents a massive ceremonial banquet table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. The place settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates. Each plate features an image based on the butterfly, symbolic of a vaginal central core, rendered in a style appropriate to the individual woman being honored. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table which is forty-eight feet on each side. The Dinner Party was created by Judy Chicago and hundreds of volunteers between 1974 and 1979. It is a wonderful triumph for Judy Chicago and for all of us, that there is now a permanent home for this landmark piece and the proud affirmation of women’s history that it embodies. In a museum world that is still heavily dominated by men, it is a major breakthrough that the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art will now join the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., as a substantial ongoing showcase for art by women. In addition to The Dinner Party, the Sackler Center’s 8,300-square-foot space has a gallery for exhibitions of feminist art; a biographical gallery to present exhibitions highlighting the women represented in The Dinner Party; a computerized study area; and additional space for the presentation of related public and educational programs. The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, established through the generosity of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, is located on the fourth floor of the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York. For more information, please phone (718) 638-5000 or visit: For more information about Judy Chicago and The Dinner Party, please visit www.throughtheflower.org. Global Feminisms – Running March 23 – July 1, 2006 For the opening of the Sackler Center, curator Maura Reilly worked with art historian Linda Nochlin to create an exhibit called Global Feminisms. Global Feminisms is the first international exhibition exclusively dedicated to feminist art from 1990 to the present. The show consists of work by approximately eighty women artists from around the world and includes work in all media—painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, installation, and performance. Some 50 countries are represented, including many that seldom figure in discussions of contemporary art, such as Sierra Leone, Kenya, Russia, Yugoslavia, Costa Rica, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Taiwan. The survey coincides with the 30th anniversary of the first major exhibition to explore the role of women in the history of Western art. Organized by Nochlin, with Ann Sutherland Harris, Women Artists: 1550–1950 was presented at the Brooklyn Museum in 1977. “In Global Feminisms, we are attempting to construct a definition of ‘feminist’ art that is as broad and flexible as possible,” says Reilly. “Linda and I kept asking what it means to be a feminist in radically different cultural, political and class situations. And we found not one definition, but many; hence, the term ‘feminisms.'” Despite differences in the life situations and preoccupations of the artists, Reilly and Nochlin found that common concerns emerged. The exhibit is organized thematically to show the ways that women around the world have explored issues such as life cycle stages, identity, and politics as the subject matter of their art. To see sample images or order the catalogue, please visit: www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/global_feminisms WACK! Art & the Feminist Revolution – March 4 – July 16 Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California WACK! Art & the Feminist Revolution, which is currently at the Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles, focuses on art that was created during feminism’s “second wave” in the 1960’s and 1970’s. WACK! is an international survey of 120 artists, activists, filmmakers, writers, teachers, and thinkers. It honors the power of the feminist art movement that emerged in the U.S. in the late 1960s and early ’70s and it also explores what feminists in other countries were doing. The title of the exhibit, WACK!, is a reminder of the iconoclastic energy of this period and the countless activist groups that were usually identified by their initials only. For many of the artists in WACK!, feminism often coexisted with political commitments on other fronts such as race, class, and sexual orientation that, at times, superseded feminism as their main theme. The exhibit demonstrates that almost forty years ago, feminist visual artists all over the world were pushing the envelope in terms of the subject matter of their art (often creating art in response to social issues), and they were pioneering the use of performance and audiovisual media in their work. It makes the case that when the “simultaneous feminisms” around the world are viewed together, they represent the most influential movement in postwar contemporary art. WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution will be at at the Geffen Contemporary branch of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles through July 16. It will travel to P.S. 1 in Long Island City, Queens, next year. The Geffen Contemporary is at 152 North Central Avenue (at First Street), Los Angeles, CA 90013. Phone: (213) 626-6222 Be sure to visit the WACK! website which has many video interviews with the artists in addition to pictures of the artworks: www.moca.org/wack Other Resources for Visual Artists Women Artists Archives National Directory (WAAND) For scholars and students doing research on woman visual artists, Rutgers University has launched an important new online tool. The Women Artists Archives National Directory (WAAND) is the first online directory of the people and places holding the papers of women artists active in the United States since World War II. Developed by Rutgers University Libraries, with initial funding by The Getty Foundation, the directory is available at http://waand.rutgers.edu. If you have primary source materials (letters, pictures, artworks, etc.) of any woman visual artist active in the United States after 1945, please visit the WAAND website at http://waand.rutgers.edu and register your information. Art historian and librarian Ferris Olin and Professor Emerita Judith K. Brodsky have led the effort to build the directory. WAAND is a project of the Institute for Women and Art and the Rutgers University Libraries. National Museum of Women in the Arts Provides Online Educational Materials The National Museum of Women in the Arts is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. It has a long-standing commitment to educating the public about women artists, and there is a wealth of helpful information about women artists on their website at www.nmwa.org. The museum’s permanent collection contains works by more than 800 artists, including Judith Leyster, Maria Sibylla Merian, Mary Cassatt, Camille Claudel, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Elizabeth Catlett, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, and Louise Bourgeois. Their website includes images of work by the artists in their collection, as well as biographical information on each one. Study guides are available for teachers who wish to include women artists in their courses. The museum’s Library and Research Center has a vast collection of original and printed research materials about historic and contemporary women artists. The museum is in the process of creating a searchable online directory that will dramatically increase public access to these source materials. Other News Martha Richards, the Executive Director of The Fund for Women Artists, will team up with Jan Lisa Huttner, a Chicago film critic and the founder of WITASWAN (Women in the Audiences Supporting Women Artists Now) this spring. Martha and Jan will do a presentation at the Illinois state convention of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in Bloomington, Illinois on Saturday, April 28. The title of the presentation will be Building a Culture to Call Our Own: Our Power as Women in the Audience. If you would like to attend this presentation but you are not a current member of AAUW, please write to us. WITASWAN (www.films42.com/witaswan.asp) is an informal alliance of women who have pledged to help women filmmakers break through the barriers that restrict their opportunities in Hollywood and beyond. WITASWAN members make a commitment to do their best to see at least one film every month directed and/or written by a woman, either in a theater or on DVD/VHS. We will be asking the members of AAUW-Illinois to take the WITASWAN pledge and encouraging them to support women in other art forms as well. Meet Executive Director Martha Richards Martha Richards will be travelling this spring to various conferences and meetings around the country. If you would like to meet her while she is in your area, please email us at info@WomenArts.org. Since she will be raising funds and seeking input about our programs and services, your help in organizing a gathering of artists or a fundraising event will be especially valuable. Her current travel schedule is: March 30 – April 1 – In Louisville, Kentucky, for the Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. This year’s festival will feature full length plays by Alice Tuan, Sherry Kramer, and Naomi Iizuka, as well as short pieces by Constance Congdon, Kia Corthron, Kathryn Walat, Deb Margolin, and Julie Marie Myatt. (Humana Festival of New American Plays) April 24 – 26 – In Seattle, Washington, for the Women’s Funding Network annual conference and other meetings. April 28 – May 1 – In Bloomington, Illinois, for the American Association of University Women’s Illinois State Convention on April 28, and in the Chicago area for other meetings from April 29 – May 1. (www.aauw-il.org/index.html) May 2 – May 4 – In New York City for the Montblanc de la Culture Award ceremony and the Tribeca Film Festival. |
Martha Richards Nominated for International Arts Award Martha Richards, the Founder and Executive Director of The Fund for Women Artists, is one of three U.S. nominees for the 2007 Montblanc de la Culture Award. The other two U.S. nominees for this prestigious award are Quincy Jones & Wynton Marsalis. Created in 1992, the Montblanc de la Culture Award is an “Oscar of the Arts” designed to honor people around the world who sustain the arts for future generations. The award is one of several initiatives sponsored by Montblanc, a company with a 100-year history of supporting art and culture worldwide. “The Fund for Women Artists is thrilled by the growing international recognition of women’s cultural contributions,”said Martha Richards. “This nomination is another wonderful affirmation of all the women artists that we work so hard to serve.” Montblanc is a proud sponsor of New York’s Tribeca Film Festival this year, and the Montblanc de la Cuture Award will be presented at a special star studded invitation- only ceremony at the festival. The Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 25 to May 6. For more information, visit:tribecafilmfestival.org For more information about Montblanc, see: |
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