CAA News Today

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions, panel discussion, and academic conference should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view.

October 2010

Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism
Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10129
September 12, 2010–January 30, 2011

In Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism, such established twentieth-century figures as Louise Nevelson, Eva Hesse, Leon Golub, and Audrey Flack take the stage with more recent practitioners, among them Amy Sillman, Nicole Eisenman, and Dana Schutz. Curated by Daniel Belasco and drawn primarily from the Jewish Museum’s permanent collection, the show presents works from twenty-seven American artists that demonstrate the undeniable influence of feminism on painting from the last fifty years. Relatedly, Anna-Sophia Zingarelli’s essay “A Dynamic Presence: Women Artists at The Jewish Museum, New York, 1947–2010” provides an overview of research into the exhibition history of women at the Jewish Museum since 1947, and an online index catalogues these findings. And don’t miss upcoming talks by Belasco (October 18) and two of the included artists, Deborah Kass (October 25) and Robert Kushner (November 1).

American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s
Neuberger Museum of Art
Purchase College, State University of New York, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10577
September 11–December 19, 2010

Faith Ringgold is best known for starting the African American story quilt revival in the late 1970s, sometimes at the expense of her earlier, more politically charged art. American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s offers another look at her important output from the previous decade. Curated by Thom Collins and Tracy Fitzpatrick with Purchase College students, the exhibition includes Ringgold’s landmark American People paintings (1963–67), which she describes as “super realism,” and her Black Light (1967–71) series, originally shown at Spectrum Gallery in New York. Along with related murals and political posters, American People, Black Light gives a fuller picture of Ringgold’s powerful artistic explorations of race, gender, and class during one of America’s most tumultuous decades.

Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005
October 9, 2010–January 9, 2011

The African American artist and teacher Loïs Mailou Jones (1905–1998) spent seventy-five years producing a diverse body of work in painting, drawing, and textile design. Organized by Carla M. Hanzal of the Mint Museum of Art, Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color gathers more than seventy works for a touring show with a current stop in Washington, DC, the city in which she lived and worked. A professor at Howard University for nearly fifty years, Jones had David Driskell, Elizabeth Catlett, and Robert Freeman as students, and she contributed to several Corcoran Gallery of Art biennials and had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. To read more about the artist, download a companion guide to A Life in Vibrant Color, which includes her biography, images of work, and more.

Books without Words: The Visual Poetry of Elisabetta Gut
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005
September 10, 2010–January 16, 2011

The first solo exhibition in the United States of the artist Elisabetta Gut, born in Rome in 1934, presents twenty-two mixed-media works from 1979 to 2000, with a particular focus on the 1980s. Using humble materials such as thread, sheet music, dried seeds, wood, wire, and wax, Gut creates sculptural collages—or collaged sculptures—inspired by dreams, memories, and her love of music and poetry. Krystyna Wasserman, curator of book arts at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, explains, “Her visual poetry is accessible, and her books do not require reading and the time consumed by reading. Their messages are compressed and universal, expressing love for nature or another person, fascination with music, or a sense of loss.”

“So Different, So Appealing: Women and the Pop Art Movement”
Brooklyn Museum
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, Third Floor, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
October 30, 2010, 2:00–4:00 PM

The cleverly titled “So Different, So Appealing: Women and the Pop Art Movement” is a panel discussion to be held in conjunction with the traveling exhibition Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968, which lands this month at the Brooklyn Museum (see September’s CWA Picks). Moderated by Catherine Morris, curator of the museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the discussion will feature artists from the show as well as the original cocurators, Sid Sachs and Kalliopi Minioudaki of University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Feminist Art History Conference 2010
Katzen Arts Center
American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20016
November 5–6, 2010

It’s been nearly ten years since the last major academic gathering dedicated to feminist research in the discipline, and the first annual Feminist Art History Conference picks up where the Barnard College Feminist Art History Conference—a crucial forum for scholars in the 1990s—left off. Titled “Continuing the Legacy: Honoring the Work of Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard,” the event also celebrates over four decades of work by two pioneering feminist art historians who are both professors at American University. Forty speakers in ten sessions will explore topics ranging from antiquity to contemporary art, and Anna Chave will deliver the keynote address, evocatively called “High Tide: Deploying Fluids in Women’s Art Practice.” The conference is free and open to the public, but advance registration by 5:00 PM on Friday, October 22, is recommended. Download the conference program for a peek at all the events.