CAA News Today

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events 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 or touring.

February 2012

Alina Szapocznikow, Petit Dessert I (Small Dessert I), 1970–71, colored polyester resin and glass, 3 3/16 x 4 5/16 x 5⅛ in. Kravis Collection (artwork © Estate of Alina Szapocznikow/Piotr Stanislawski/ADAGP, Paris; photograph by Thomas Mueller and provided by Broadway 1602, New York, and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne)

Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972
Hammer Museum
University of California, Los Angeles, 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024
February 5–April 29, 2012
Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972 is the inaugural United States museum survey for this underrepresented Polish artist. A Holocaust survivor who died in 1973 at the age of forty-seven, Szapocznikow is widely acknowledged by her artist peers as one of the most significant sculptors of the twentieth century. She pioneered the use of unconventional sculptural materials, such as polyester and polyurethane, and constructed a visual language that addressed the body’s pain and regeneration. The exhibition includes approximately sixty sculptures, fifty works on paper, and numerous photographic works, demonstrating the tremendous range of Szapocznikow’s vision and continuing influence on twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists.

Maya Lin
Heinz Architectural Center
Carnegie Museum of Art, 4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
February 11–May 13, 2012
An exhibition of work by Maya Lin explores her diverse career as architect, artist, and dedicated environmentalist. The twenty-one sculptures and drawings on view range from room-sized installations evocative of geological topography to intricately designed wall installations. Lin has made one new work inspired by Pittsburgh’s three rivers, Pin River – Ohio (Allegheny & Monongahela), specifically for the Carnegie Museum, and her new memorial video project, What is Missing?, will be screened in the museum’s Scaife Lobby.

Shares and Stakeholders: The Feminist Art Project Day of Panels
Abramson Auditorium
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 250 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012
February 25, 2012
This year’s Feminist Art Project Day of Panels, organized by the artists Audrey Chan and Elana Mann and held in conjunction with the CAA Annual Conference, asks the question: What are the stakes—and who are the stakeholders—of the feminist future? The conversations will address the greater inclusivity of a contemporary feminist art that embraces a multiplicity of identities and philosophies. Topics of discussion will include: feminist art educational models, the roles of men in feminist art, interventionist art strategies, radical queer art making, and feminism as a daily humanist practice. This event is free and open to the public.

Katharine Pyle, “He knocked against a tin pan that clattered down with a tremendous din,” from Three Little Kittens by Katharine Pyle (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1920), 1920, graphite, ink, and gouache on illustration board, 7⅞ x 6⅜ in. Lent by David and Sarah Wyeth (photograph provided by the Delaware Art Museum)

Tales of Folk and Fairies: The Life and Work of Katharine Pyle
Delaware Art Museum
2301 Kentmare Parkway, Wilmington, DE 19806
February 18–September 9, 2012
This exhibition presents seventy-one works by the celebrated children’s book author and illustrator Katharine Pyle (1863–1938). A native of Wilmington, Katherine Pyle was encouraged from a young age to pursue poetry and illustration by her older brother, the famed illustrator Howard Pyle. She studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and at the Drexel Institute of Art and Science, also in Philadelphia. Her work was stylistically aligned with her brother, and also with Beatrix Potter, Walter Crane, and Aubrey Beardsley. Pyle’s subjects were taken from Norse and Greek mythology, fairy tales, and animal stories, and her 1923 illustrations for Anna Sewell’s novel Black Beauty are among her best-known work.

A Complex Weave: Women and Identity in Contemporary Art
Perlman Teaching Museum
Weitz Center for Creativity, Carleton College, 320 Third Street East, Northfield, MN 55057
January 13–March 11, 2012
This exhibition, curated by Martin Rosenberg and J. Susan Isaacs, looks at the current state of feminist art practices and the range of materials and theories used by contemporary artists. Personal and political identity is explored in painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and needlework. The roster of artists include: Blanka Amezkua, Sarah Amos, Helene Aylon, Siona Benjamin, Zoe Charlton, Sonya Clark, Annet Couwenberg, Lalla A. Essaydi, Judy Gelles, Sharon Harper, Julie Harris, Fujiko Isomura, Tatiana Parcero, Philemona Williamson, April Wood, and Flo Oy Wong.

Kathryn Spence, Short sharp notes, a long whistled trill on one pitch, clear phrases (detail), 2010–11 (artwork © Kathryn Spence; photograph by Rick Schwab and provided by Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco)

Kathryn Spence: Dirty and Clean
Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
258 Main Street, Ridgefield, CT 06877
January 29, 2011–June 10, 2012
The German-born, San Francisco-based artist Kathryn Spence uses found, dirty, and discarded materials to explore the complexities of humanity’s relationship to garbage and its place in our ecosystem. Spence, an avid bird-watcher and nature enthusiast, creates life-sized animal models from scraps of paper, fabric, string, and wire. Her work plays with the idea of dirt and dirtiness as both a purifying source and as a by-product of human waste and greed.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events 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 or touring.

January 2012

Jenny Saville, Bleach, 2008, oil on canvas, 99 5/16 x 73 11/16 in. Collection of Lisa and Steven Tananbaum (artwork © Jenny Saville)

Jenny Saville
Norton Museum of Art
1451 South Olive Avenue, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
November 30, 2011–March 4, 2012

Jenny Saville is the inaugural exhibition of the Norton Museum of Art’s Recognition of Art by Women (RAW) series, and the first solo American museum exhibition of the British figurative artist. This exhibition will bring together her most recognizable monumental figure and portrait paintings along with drawings from her recent series Reproduction drawing (based on the Leonardo cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and John the Baptist from the National Gallery, London) depicting mother and child images. The presentation will include twenty-eight canvases and drawings dating from 1992 to 2011 and smaller studies, not previously shown, from the artist’s studio.

In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036
January 29–May 6, 2012

The Surrealist movement in art is most often identified with male artists, many of whom objectified women in their paintings. Numerous female artists at the time, however, developed their own identity-based imagery. This exhibition looks at female Surrealists working in the United States and Mexico and contains 175 works in a variety of media that were created between 1931 and 1968 by artists such as Lee Miller, Yayoi Kusama, and Frida Kahlo.

Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels: Sunset, 1976, Great Basin Desert, Utah, 1976, detail of composite of four photographs reproduced from original 35mm transparencies, (artwork © Nancy Holt)

Nancy Holt: Sightlines
Tufts University Art Gallery
Aidekman Arts Center, Tufts University, 40 Talbot Avenue, Medford, MA 02155
January 19–April 1, 2012

Since the late 1960s, Nancy Holt has created a far-reaching body of work, including Land Art, films, videos, site-specific installations, artist’s books, concrete poetry and major sculpture commissions. Nancy Holt: Sightlines showcases the artist’s transformation from the perception of the landscape through the use of different observational modes in her early films, videos, and related works from 1966–80.

Cathy Wilkes
Carnegie Museum of Art
4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
November 12, 2011–February 26, 2012

Carnegie Museum of Art presents the first solo American museum exhibition to combine the painting and sculptural installations of the Irish artist Cathy Wilkes. Often examining personal experiences, including motherhood, Wilkes is best known for vulnerable, haunting sculptures and installations in which sculpted and found objects are altered and arranged into humanistic—if sometimes disturbing—domestic scenes. Including nine paintings, a recent sculpture, and a newly commissioned installation, this exhibition provides a comprehensive view of Wilkes’s practice.

Margaret Murphy, Reclining Woman (after Kurosawa), 2007, watercolor and acrylic on paper, 20 x 14 in. (artwork © Margaret Murphy)

Margaret Murphy, A Ten-Year Survey; Decoding the Marketplace: coupons, dollar stores, and eBay
Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery
New Jersey City University, Hepburn Hall, Room 323, 2039 Kennedy Boulevard, Jersey City, NJ 07305
January 30–March 7, 2012

This exhibition highlights varied bodies of work created during the last decade by the artist Margaret Murphy. Included in the exhibition are the Tarot Cards series (1997–2000), the Sweet 16 series (2005–7), and the Parlor Paintings (2006–7). Seen together for the first time, these paintings and collages demonstrate Murphy’s insightful feminist critique of the American consumer culture and misrepresentation of women as seen through commodity objects such as porcelain figurines and product packaging.

Andrea Fraser, Men on the Line, KPFK
National Center for the Preservation of Democracy
111 North Central Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012
January 23, 2012

Vaginal Davis, My Pussy is Still in Los Angeles (I Only Live in Berlin)
Bullock Department Store Wilshire
3050 Wilshire Boulevard, Fifth Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90010
January 29, 2012

In late January, West of Rome Public Art will host performances by two legendary and controversial feminist artists as part of Pacific Standard Time’s Performance and Public Art Festival. Both works are part of a series inspired by the Los Angeles–based Woman’s Building (1973–81), whose history and influence is currently explored in the PST exhibition Doin’ It in Public.

Zoe Strauss, South Philly (Mattress Flip Front), 2001/2003 (negative/print), chromogenic print, image: 6⅞ x 10⅛ in./sheet: 8 x 10⅜ in. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Purchased with funds contributed by Theodore T. Newbold and Helen Cunningham, 2003 (artwork © Zoe Strauss)

Zoe Strauss: Ten Years
Philadelphia Museum of Art
26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19130
January 14–April 22, 2012

This midcareer survey of the work of Zoe Strauss, a resident of south Philadelphia, focuses on her decade-long public art project in which each year on the first Sunday in May she exhibited more than two hundred of her photographs in a space beneath a section of Interstate 95 in south Philadelphia. Most of her subjects are disenfranchised people or places.