CAA News Today

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following conference and four exhibitions should not be missed. Check the CWA Picks archive at the bottom of the page, as several exhibitions listed there are still on view.

September 2010

“Heritage and Hope: Women’s Education in a Global Context”
Bryn Mawr College
101 North Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
September 23–25, 2010

As part of its 125th anniversary celebration, Bryn Mawr College is hosting an international conference to celebrate the empowering heritage of women’s education and to chart a course for its future. The conference will examine issues of educational access, equity, and opportunity in secondary schools and universities in the United States and around the world. Session topics will include: “Leveling the Academic Playing Field”; “Enhancing Global Networks,” a discussion of current and future collaborative connections among women’s colleges around the world; and “Partnering for Global Justice,” an exploration of potential partnerships among schools, colleges, and international NGOs to promote women’s rights and educational opportunities.

Pauline Boty, With Love to Jean Paul Belmondo, 1962, oil on canvas, 48 x 59 7/8 in. Collection of Nadia Fakhoury, Paris (artwork © Pauline Boty)

Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968
Sheldon Museum of Art
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 12th and R Streets, Lincoln, NE 68588
July 30–September 24, 2010

Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968 turns on its head the notion that male artists largely dominated this twentieth-century movement. The first major exhibition of its kind, Seductive Subversion features paintings and sculptures by an international group of artists—including Vija Celmins, Rosalyn Drexler, Niki de Saint Phalle, Joyce Wieland, Marisol, Faith Ringgold, and Martha Rosler—that expand the Pop canon as most know it. Sid Sachs, director of exhibitions at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where the exhibition originated, will deliver a lecture about the exhibition on September 14 at 5:30 PM in the Sheldon’s Ethel S. Abbott Auditorium.

Catherine Opie: Figure and Landscape
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036
July 25–October 17, 2010

Catherine Opie explores issues of masculinity, community, and national identity in her current exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A Southern California–based photographer whose diverse body of work includes images of Alaskan landscapes, challenging self-portraits, and urban street scenes, Opie has visited and documented high school football games, players, and fans in seven states across America since 2007. “The high capture, dramatic tenebrism, vivid colour and density of the landscapes are entirely consonant with commercial sports photography,” wrote Christopher Bedford in Frieze, “but Opie’s insistence on recording the endless passages of tedium and readiness that punctuate the experience of a football game makes these images aniconic and elusive.” A second exhibition at the museum, Manly Pursuits: The Sporting Images of Thomas Eakins, is shown in conjunction with Catherine Opie: Figure and Landscape.

Susie (Sarah) Barstow, Landscape, 1865, oil on canvas, 30 x 22 in. Collection of Elizabeth and Alfred Scott (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site)

Remember the Ladies: Women of the Hudson River School
Thomas Cole National Historical Site
218 Spring Street, Catskill, NY 12414
May 2–October 31, 2010

Focusing on nineteenth-century America, Remember the Ladies: Women of the Hudson River School highlights female artists who were contemporary to figures like Asher Durand and Frederic Edwin Church. Curated by Nancy Siegel and Jennifer Krieger, the exhibition features twenty-five works in painting, photography, and drawing manuals by Julia Hart Beers (sister of William and James Hart), Evelina Mount (niece of William Sidney Mount), Susie Barstow, Eliza Greatorex, Harriet Cany Peale, Josephine Walters, and Sarah and Emily Cole (sister and daughter, respectively, of Thomas Cole).

Experimental Women in Flux
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
August 4–November 8, 2010

Organized by Sheelagh Bevan with David Senior, both of the Museum of Modern Art Library, Experimental Women in Flux focuses on artists’ books, event scores, performance instructions, catalogues, periodicals, and other printed matter from the recently acquired Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Reference Library. Documents of live, ephemeral, and durational work by such artists and performers as Alison Knowles, Charlotte Moorman, Shigeko Kubota, Yoko Ono, and Simone Forti are included. Presented in conjunction with the museum’s publication of Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition boasts a full website with images and descriptions, as well as audio selections from Mieko Shiomi’s musical portraits of her Fluxus associates.