#wewantedarevolution

[drawdownbooks]

We Wanted a Revolution: ⁣ Black Radical Women, 1965–85 — A Sourcebook⁣ ⁣ We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 examines the political, social, cultural, and aesthetic priorities of women of color during the emergence of second-wave feminism.⁣ ⁣ It showcases the work of black women artists such as Emma Amos, Maren Hassinger, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O'Grady, Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, and Betye Saar, making it one of the first major exhibitions to highlight the voices and experiences of women of color. In so doing, it reorients conversations around race, feminism, political action, art production, and art history in this significant historical period.⁣ ⁣ #WeWantedaRevolution #BlackRadicalWomen #BrooklynMuseum #protest #blacklivesmatter #blm (at Brooklyn Museum) https://www.instagram.com/p/CBA1CBrnsFB/?igshid=1kdahqb5p5rew

[brooklynmuseum]

If you ask someone to name five artists, they will likely name prominent male artists, but how many people can list five women artists? Throughout March’s Women’s History Month, we will be joining institutions around the world to answer this very question posed by the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NWMA). We will be featuring a woman artist every day this month, and highlighting artists in our current exhibition Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection which explores a wide range of art-making, focusing on enduring political subjects—encompassing gender, race, and class—that remain relevant today. The show is on view until March 31, 2019.

Together we hope to draw attention to the gender and race imbalance in the art world, inspire conversation and awareness, and hopefully add a few more women to everyone’s lists.

Stacy Lynn Waddell’s practice is characterized by her use of fire, gilding, and alchemical processes, and explores issues of personal experience and American culture and history. In recent years, her work’s physical and material transformations are utilized in works that honor under-recognized African American figures, primarily in portraiture. This particular portrait is of Maren Hassinger, an artist featured in the acclaimed EASCFA exhibition, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85, creating an intergenerational connection between female artists of color and honoring the legacy of Hassinger and her peers. Hassinger is wearing a “WWAR” t-shirt, the title of which glows like a protest slogan from the complex, gold-leaf background. The work also engages in contemporary discussions of memorialization, monuments, and the Black Lives Matter movement, as Hassinger stands above the empty plinth that carried Confederate General Beauregard and that was dismantled during Waddell’s New Orleans residency that produced this work.

Posted by Chiara Mannarino Stacy Lynn Waddell (American, born 1966). We Radical Women Wanted a Black Revolution (for M.H.), 2017. Composition gold and aluminum leaf with gouache, watercolor, acrylic, and Sumi ink on paper, 100 1/2 × 52 in. (255.3 × 132.1 cm). Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Gift of the Contemporary Art Committee and purchased with funds given by Deborah Rechler, TL2018.26.

[bhsutton]

Two days ago I was sitting here in this idyllic pocket of the south of France thinking about how little work this nation has done to address its history of colonialism, racism, and genocide; how, for all the country's flaws, at least people in the US are sometimes able to have honest conversations about those issues. The hateful events of the past 24 hours in #chalottesville are a devastating reminder of how little has been done to dismantle the mechanisms of white supremacy in the US. They make art that stands up to that rhetoric, like Elizabeth Catlett's "Homage to My Young Black Sisters" (1968) from #wewantedarevolution at the @brooklynmuseum, feel as vital and poignant as it must have felt five decades ago. #blacklivesmatter (at Roussillon, Provence-Alpes-Cote D'Azur, France)

[emkens]

"Women should be able to do anything. They can do anything! They can lead revolutions." - Faith Ringgold during her discussion with curator Catherine Morris about her work and specifically her work "For the Women's House" (pictured) painted for the incarcerated women of the Riker's Island Women's Prison. #WeWantedARevolution (at Brooklyn Museum)

[brooklynmuseum]

👋 Boston! We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85 opens today at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and will be on view until September 30. It is the first exhibition to highlight the voices and experiences of women of color in order to reorient conversations around race, feminism, political action, art production, and art history in this significant historical period. If you have a friend in Boston who you think will enjoy this show, tell them to check it out!

Posted by Gwen Arriaga Jan van Raay (American, born 1942). Faith Ringgold (right) and Michele Wallace (middle) at Art Workers Coalition Protest, Whitney Museum, 1971. Digital C-print. Courtesy of Jan van Raay, Portland, OR, 305-37. © Jan van Raay

[brooklynmuseum]

👋  Buffalo! We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 opens today @albrightknox and will be on view until May 27. The exhibition features a wide array of work, including performance, film, and video art, as well as photography, painting, sculpture, and printmaking by a diverse group of artists and activists who lived and worked at the intersections of avant-garde art worlds and radical political movements during this period. If you have a friend in town who you think will enjoy this show, share this with them and tell them to show up.

Posted by Gwen Arriaga Lorraine O’Grady (American, born 1934) Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire), 1980-83/2009. Gelatin silver prints, 1 of 14 works total. Courtesy of Alexander Gray Associates, New York

[brooklynmuseum]

Filmmaker Julie Dash is renowned for breaking boundaries of race and gender in Hollywood. Her first feature film Daughters of the Dust (1991) is a landmark in American cinema, as it was the first feature film directed by an African American woman to be distributed theatrically in the United States. Set in 1902, the film explores the black Gullah communities of the South Carolina Sea Islands. Alva Rogers—a member of the Rodeo Caldonia performance collective—starred as Eula Peazant, one of the leading roles. Dash is a part of the L.A. Rebellion, a group of black filmmakers who attended UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television starting in the late 1960s. 

Her first three films Four Women (1975), The Diary of an African Nun (1977), and Illusions (1983) are on view in We Wanted a Revolution and Daughters of the Dust was screened this past April as part of our opening weekend celebrations.

Still from Daughters of the Dust (1991). Photo courtesy of Julie Dash.

[brooklynmuseum]

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 closes this Sunday, September 17—but not without a final celebration! Join artists, activists, and scholars today for our daylong Closing Celebration honoring the trailblazing artists in the exhibition.

Click here for details and tickets!

Jan van Raay (American, born 1942). Faith Ringgold (right) and Michele Wallace (middle) at Art Workers Coalition Protest, Whitney Museum, 1971. Digital C-print. Courtesy of Jan van Raay, Portland, OR, 305-37. © Jan van Raay | Detail: Howardena Pindell (American, born 1943). Installation view of Free, White and 21, 1980. In Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States, A.I.R. Gallery (September 2–20, 1980). 12 min.15 sec. Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York | Barbara Chase-Riboud (American, born 1939). Confessions for Myself, 1972. Painted bronze and wood, 120 x 40 x 12 in. (304.8 x 101.6 x 30.5 cm). University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, purchased with funds from the H. W. Anderson Charitable Foundation, 1972.105. © Barbara Chase-Riboud, courtesy of her representative Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLY, New York, NY. (Photographed for the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive by Benjamin Blackwell) | Lona Foote (American, 1948–1993). Blondell Cummings performing “Blind Dates” at Just Above Midtown Gallery, November 1982, 1982. Photograph, 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm). Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries. © Estate of Lona Foote, courtesy of Howard Mandel