#sackler center

[femmesfollesnebraska]

#whyilovewomenartists: Brooklyn Museum acquires 96 works by artists who are women

As my last post, I’ve been loving the Brooklyn Museum’s inclusive offerings as late. In May, they announced the acquisition of 96 works by female artists.  In celebration of this, here is the work of 5 of the works!...

Emma Amos (American, born 1938). Flower Sniffer, 1966. Oil on canvas, 50 × 50 in. (127 × 127 cm). Brooklyn Museum, William K. Jacobs, Jr. Fund, 2017.35. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , 2017.35.jpg)

From Brooklyn Museum press release:

Combining the iconography of the Black Power Movement, political violence, and aspirational middle-class American culture, the assemblage critiques the racist stereotypes of black femininity and speaks to the revolutionary aims of Black liberation movements. Emma Amos’s Flower Sniffer (1966), the first major work by the artist to be acquired by the Museum, was brought into the Contemporary Art collection through the William K. Jacobs, Jr. Fund. In this self-portrait, Amos presents herself alone in an abstract field of paint, enjoying the fragrance of flowers while steadily returning the viewer’s gaze, asserting and defining her own place within her work.

Beverly Buchanan: Double Portrait of Artist with Frustula Sculpture, 1978.

From Brooklyn Museum press release:

During Beverly Buchanan—Ruins and Rituals (2016–17), the inaugural exhibition of A Year of Yes, the Sackler Center collection received the generous gift of Buchanan’s Untitled (Frustula Series) (circa 1978) from Arden Scott. The first work by Buchanan to enter the Museum’s collection, this paradigmatic example of her Frustula series of cast-concrete sculptures places the concise forms of Post-Minimalist art in dialogue with the realities of urban decay and social displacement. Untitled (Frustula Series) was included in both Ruins and Rituals and We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 (2017).

Lauren Ewing: For Magritte,  Digital print from a portfolio of 19 digital prints (12 with lithography, 1 with pochoir, 1 with hand coloring, and 1 with gold dusting) and 1 lithograph, 2007.

Diane Neumaier: Tocatta, from Femfolio,  Digital print and hand lithography , 2007.

Adejoke Tugbiyele (Nigerian-American, born 1977). Gele Pride Flag, 2014. Collection of the artist. Photos courtesy Adejoke Tugbiyele.

With Gele Pride Flag, Adejoke Tugbiyele unites gay pride symbolism with material reference to her home country, Nigeria. Gele is the head scarf worn by Nigerian women for important events or functions and “a defining feature for the typical Nigerian woman… representative of femininity.” Tugbiyele sewed six of these fabrics together to form a large gay-pride flag, which helped to “affirm [her] queerness as a woman of Nigerian heritage, while also speaking to contemporary symbols (the rainbow) that affirm gay pride.” Tugbiyele produced the banner soon after the Nigerian government enacted legislation criminalizing same-sex relationships, and has since carried it in protests and gay pride parades in both Nigeria and the United States.

Posted by Laura Hillegas

(Source: brooklynmuseum.org)

~

Les Femmes Folles is a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world with the online journal, print annuals, exhibitions and events; originally inspired by artist Wanda Ewing and her curated exhibit by the name Les Femmes Folles (Wild Women). LFF was created and is curated by Sally Deskins.  LFF Booksis a micro-feminist press that publishes 1-2 books per year by the creators of Les Femmes Folles including the award-winning Intimates & Fools (Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2014) , The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Laura Madeline Wiseman/Lauren Rinaldi, 2015 and Mes Predices (catalog of art/writing by Marie Peter Toltz, 2017).Other titles include Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 available on blurb.com, including art, poetry and interview excerpts from women artists. A portion of the proceeds from LFF books and products benefit the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Wanda Ewing Scholarship Fund.https://www.facebook.com/femmesfolles/ instagram: @lesfemmesfollesart femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com lesfemmesfollesbooks.tumblr.com

[unabbozzo]

i demand an extended version of the dinner party 2k18 edition

[hgartsemester-blog]

Sackler Center For Feminist Art

To start out, I would like to make it clear I chose to attend this exhibition. My raction to The Dinner Party is charged, but that does not mean I by any means regret going. I chose to go to this exhibition because I want somewhat desperately to explore gender in art, and understanding The Dinner Party is a necessary part of that.

I’m not sure reading Chicago’s own reflection on the Dinner Party as “A Symbol Of Our Heritage” really prepared me for visiting The Dinner Party. In that piece Cicago describes her central imagry as a butterfly only, no mention of the intentional evocation of labia. Still, it’s not as though I was unaware of the vaginal imagry; that was fairly clear from Amelia Jones’s summary of reactions to The Dinner Party. I can’t say I appreciate the vaginal imagry all that much. I would never go so far as to call it pornographic; my discomfort lies not with the overt reference to genitals but rather the place those genitals take in the piece. Even as I was entranced by the skill presented all over the piece, in the runners and the china sculpture and the tiled floor, I was almost sickened by the vaginal symbolism. The plates themselves are beautiful, and the forms are beautiful, but the idea that the vagina is the center of womanhood actually turns my stomach. I am a transgender man with female genitals; if my genitals were really the center of myself, I would be a woman. I find myself at complete odds with Hilton Kramer’s statement that “for anyone more intersted in art than ideology...the esthetic pleasure to be derived from “The Dinner Party” may prove more elusive [than for fans of the feminist art movement].” To me it is the aesthetics that appeal, not the ideology, which rests, for me, like a constant rebuke across my shoulders.

Yet I think also to simply say “We know better now” and move on also misses the point. All of the non-fictional women Chicago chose probably had female genitals. There is nothing inherently wrong with pointing that out. There is nothing inherently wrong with female genitals, period. What bothers me the most is the conflation of genitals with achievement. These women were great, neither despite nor because of their genitals. The Dinner Party places these genitals as the center of their being, representing to Chicago their “core,” whereas they were almost irrelevant to their success, just as a phallic symbol is to a man’s success. The Dinner Party doesn’t just point out that its invisible participants had labia, it places them as the center of their very being. This feeds misogyny than challenges it. The patriarchy points to binary sex as the natural origin of all gender roles, both male and female. Attributing the achievements of these woman to their vaginas simply creates another gender role; it does not challenge the idea of gende roles, or say that there is no such thing as something you cannot do because of your gender or sex. By placing female genitals at the center of their being, Chicago ties the exquisite craftsmanship of the piece together with the female sex. This has a place in the history of feminism, in the reclimation of all things deemed female as no less important than all things deemed male, but in the end plays into a strict binary separation of female and male in all aspects of life far more than it challenges them.

[brooklynmuseum]

Founded in 1988 in the midst of the AIDS crisis, Visual AIDS is an arts organization dedicated to fighting AIDS through their presentation of visual art projects, support of artists living with HIV/AIDS, and preservation of the largest archive of artwork made by artists with HIV/AIDS.

Their Play Smart trading cards and safer sex kits use seductive and playful images to promote HIV awareness and are available for free distribution. Each kit contains cards with information about harm reduction, HIV testing and prevention, and contemporary issues around HIV/AIDS on one side and art on the other, packaged with condoms and lubricant. In its first years Play Smart featured pin-up style men and in honor of its inclusion in Agitprop!, which is being held at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, this edition focuses on women's health, sex positivity, and the connections between the ongoing AIDS epidemic and reproductive justice.

Nominated for the 3rd wave by L. J. Roberts

*As part of the Pride and Agitprop! Target First Saturday on June 4th, Visual AIDS will host a multigenerational and multimedia-based dialogue highlighting the experiences of women artist-activists from the 1980s to the present. With Joy Episalla (ACT UP), Kia Labeija (GrenAIDS), Jessica Whitbread (ART AIDS ACTION), Egyptt Labeija (TransJustice, Audre Lorde Project), and Sue Schaffner and Carrie Moyer (Dyke Action Machine), moderated by LJ Roberts.

Posted by Allie Rickard Visual AIDS (established 1988, United States) Play Smart, 2016 Mixed media Courtesy of the artists and Visual AIDS

[brooklynmuseum]

In celebration of Women’s History Month, the Digital Lab is revisiting the Sackler Center’s 2008 exhibition Burning Down the House: Building a Feminist Art Collection, the first showcase of feminist art from the Museum’s permanent holdings. Inspired by Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, the exhibition featured nearly fifty works by artists who defy patriarchal oppression, especially in regard to the limited and limiting representations of women in Western art. The title “Burning Down the House” references the confrontation of two gendered domains: the museum, historically housing and codifying the works of white male artists, as well as the domestic home, traditionally regarded as the only proper domain for women to occupy.

When the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art was established the year before in March 2007, the Brooklyn Museum pledged to support the visibility and viability of feminist art practice. By carving out exhibition space devoted to the exploration of on-going conversations between past and present that have been variously re-negotiated throughout the historical development of feminism in the arts, the Museum aims to promote social and critical museum practices that provide alternatives to exclusionary Western and male-centric discourses of art.

You can find installation photos, press materials and more information on the works in Burning Down The House on the exhibition’s Digital Archive Record and interviews with artists in the exhibition here.

Posted by Nora Gerien-Chen and Georgieanna Richer

[allisaway]

I believe any woman who is willing to struggle, strive—and if necessary learn karate—to make their mark in the world is a feminist.

Source

[brooklynmuseum]

Two weeks from today The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art will present the Sackler First Awards, honoring women who are first in their fields. This year we honor performer, actor, writer, and icon Miss Piggy for more than forty years of blazing feminist trails with determination and humor, and for her groundbreaking role inspiring generations the world over.

Join us for the evening and see Miss Piggy in conversation with Gloria Steinem. Kermit the Frog will also be in attendance.  ‪#‎sacklercenterfirsts‬

[brooklynmuseum]

As we head into the holiday, things are looking extra festive in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center’s Herstory Gallery. For the past week, I’ve had the pleasure of watching artist Chitra Ganesh and her two assistants transform the space in preparation of the upcoming exhibition, Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time, which opens December 12.

First they added washes of jewel-hued paint, creating three zones of cross-fading color that stretch across the expansive gallery wall. This provides the abstract background for a constellation of her female figures and faces that she’s now projecting and tracing onto the wall. Above the mural, they’ve hung a short string of the handmade silk prayer-flags that will be draped across the room, to make sure none of the painting gets lost. Next up, gold leafing, a skirt of arms and metal gears attached to the wall! With two more weeks of install to go, it is hard to imagine all the layers and levels of detail to come, but I am sure that, come December, this gallery will transport our audiences with its riotous energy and imposing avatars of female divinity.

Posted by Saisha M. Grayson