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.

June 2011

“Women and the Arts: Dialogues in Female Creativity in the U.S. and Beyond”
June 15–17, 2011
University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies
Centro de Saúde de Sete Rios, Lisbon, Portugal 1600-214

This three-day international gathering, organized by the American Studies Group of the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies, will promote a reflection on women’s artistic production, contrasting the US context with other cultures. Featured sessions address such topics as “Dreaming, Doing, Being, & Seeing: The Woman Artist as Seen, Invisible, Witnessed and Observer”; “Women and the Crafts”; “Performance Arts”; “Art and Gender Politics”; “Portraits of the Artist as Woman”; “Women in Contemporary Art in the U.S. and Beyond”; and “Boundaries and Crossings in Theory and Art.”

!Women Art Revolution
Various locations across the United States

This eight-three-minute documentary film, directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson (and a CWA Pick in January 2011), relates the feminist art movement to the 1960s antiwar and civil rights causes and explains how historical events sparked feminist actions against major cultural institutions. Detailing major developments in women’s art of the 1970s, the film looks at early feminist art-education programs, political organizations and protests, and alternative art spaces such as A.I.R. Gallery and Franklin Furnace in New York and the Women’s Building in Los Angeles. Leeson also turns her attention to publications such as Chrysalis and Heresies and to landmark exhibitions, performances, and installations of public art that changed the direction of contemporary art.

In June, the following theaters and cultural institutions will screen the film:

• June 1–8: IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10014
• June 2: Manhasset Cinemas, Gold Coast International Film Festival, 430 Plandome Road, Manhasset, NY 11030
• June 2–9: West End Cinema, 1 M Street NW, Washington, DC
• June 3: New Hyde Park Cinemas, Gold Coast International Film Festival, 3324 Hillside Avenue, New Hyde Park, NY 11040
• June 10: Institute of Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Avenue, Boston, MA 02210
• June 10: The Screen, Santa Fe University of Art and Design, 100 Saint Michaels Drive, Santa Fe, NM 87505
• June 14: Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024
• June 15–19: Museum of Fine Arts, 100 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02116
• June 17–23: Laemmle’s Music Hall 3, 9036 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90211
• June 17–23: Northwest Film Forum, 1515 Twelfth Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122
• June 23–26: Noble Theater, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive, Oklahoma City, OK 73102
• June 24–27: Northwest Film Center, 1119 Southwest Park Avenue, Portland, OR 97205
• June 24–30: Denver FilmCenter, Denver Film Society, 2601 Blake Street, Denver, CO 80205
• June 24–30: Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor Street, Hartford, CT 67401
• June 24–30: Salina Art Center, 150 South Santa Fe, Salina, KS 67401

Talks by the director and guest speakers—such as Howardena Pindell and Carey Lovelace in New York, Carrie Brownstein in Portland—and other special events will accompany selected screenings.

Guerrilla Girls, Untitled, from the series Guerrilla Girls Talk Back: The First Five Years, 1985–1990, 1986, color photolithograph on paper, 17 x 22 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore, in honor of Wilhelmina Cole Holladay (artwork © Guerrilla Girls; photograph provided by the National Museum of Women in the Arts)

The Guerrilla Girls Talk Back
June 17–October 2, 2011
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington DC 20005

The Guerrilla Girls—anonymous females who take the names of dead women artists and appear in public wearing gorilla masks—use humor to expose sexism and racism in the art world, film, politics, and culture at large. This exhibition presents posters and ephemera from the group, including works from two portfolios, Guerrilla Girls Talk Back: The First Five Years, 1985–1990 and Guerrilla Girls Talk Back: Portfolio 2.

Tracey Emin: Love Is What You Want
May 18–August 29, 2011
Hayward Gallery
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, England

The first major survey in London of Tracey Emin’s work occupies both floors and two outdoor sculpture terraces at the Southbank Centre. Works from every period of her career and in diverse media—painting, textiles, work on paper, photography, neon, film, and sculpture—will accompany a new series of outdoor sculptures made especially for the Hayward Gallery installation.

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.

May 2011

Poster for a Mahalia Jackson concert in Topeka, Kansas, 1962 (photograph provided by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum)

Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
1100 Rock and Roll Boulevard, Cleveland, OH 44114
May 13, 2011–February 26, 2012

The eight sections of Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power will highlight how women have driven the engines of creation and change in popular music since the early twentieth century. Blues women from the 1920s such as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith set the stage for those who followed: Brenda Lee, the Ronettes, Janis Joplin, Carol King, Donna Summer, Siouxsie Sioux, Madonna, Bikini Kill, Queen Latifah, and Lady Gaga. In addition to displays of artifacts and memorabilia, as well as videos and listening stations, the interactive exhibition will set up a recording booth where visitors can record a short story or moment of inspiration related to women in rock.

“From Portraits to Pinups: Women in Art and Popular Culture”
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
May 14, 2011

On Saturday, May 14, the Brooklyn Museum will hold a daylong symposium in conjunction with the exhibition Lorna Simpson: Gathered (a CWA Pick from February). Graduate students will present their research on topics such as the implications of women artists using images of women in their work, the connections between women’s history and contemporary art, and perceptions of race and gender. In addition, Wendy Steiner, an English professor and the founding director of the Penn Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania, will speak about concepts of beauty, while a panel discussion will feature the comedian Erica Watson, the drag king Shelly Mars, and the illustrator Molly Crabapple.

Uta Barth
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60603
May 14–September 14, 2011

The photographer Uta Barth once intriguingly said that her contemplative images of domestic scenes devoid of action “are really not of anything in that sense, they register only that which is incidental and peripheral implied.” Curated by Elizabeth Siegel of the Art Institute of Chicago, this exhibition presents her latest series, called … and to draw a bright white line with light, alongside two earlier bodies of work: white blind (bright red) from 2002 and Sundial from 2007.

“Illustrated Lecture and Book Signing: Dr. Gail Levin”
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
May 15, 2011

On Sunday, May 15, the art historian Gail Levin, who teaches at Baruch College and the Graduate Center in New York, will discuss her most recent book, Lee Krasner: A Biography (New York: William Morrow, 2011), which looks beyond Krasner’s relationship with her husband Jackson Pollock to detail her own brilliant career as a painter in New York. A book signing will follow the 2:00 PM talk.

Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color
Women’s Museum
3800 Parry Avenue, Dallas, TX 75226
May 21–July 23, 2011

This traveling exhibition surveys Loïs Mailou Jones’s seventy-five years as a painter, tracing the development of her work from her early career into her signature mixture of African, Caribbean, American, and African American iconography, design, and thematic elements. Comprised of over sixty paintings, drawings, and textile designs from public and private collections, Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color also includes, for the first time, major holdings from the late artist’s estate for public presentation. A CWA Pick in October 2010, the exhibition originated at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC.