CAA News Today

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following artists’ conversation and three exhibitions 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.

March 2011

Margarita Cabrera, contents of Backpack (Green), 2006, vinyl, thread, fabric, and mixed media, 16 x 13 x 4 in. (artwork © Margarita Cabrera; photograph provided by the artist, Walter Maciel Gallery, and the Sweeney Art Gallery)

Margarita Cabrera: Pulso y Martillo (Pulse and Hammer)
Sweeney Art Gallery
Culver Center of the Arts, University of California, Riverside, 3834 Main Street, Riverside, CA 92501
February 5–April 2, 2011

For years, Margarita Cabrera has worked on a number of collaborative projects that combine contemporary art practices, indigenous Mexican folk art and craft traditions, and relations between the United States and Mexico. These projects have actively investigated the creation of fair working conditions and the protection of immigrant rights. This exhibition includes a survey of past works from 2003 to 2008; a performance, called Florezca Board of Directors: Performance; and a new installation, Pulse and Hammer.

Taking place on Saturday, March 5, Florezca Board of Directors: Performance will be the first meeting of the “leaders” of Florezca Inc., a multinational corporation founded by Cabrera for undocumented people in the US. Consisting of Cabrera, students, and others, the performance will mix rehearsed statements with improvisation. Also a collaboration with Juan Felipe Herrera, a creative-writing professor at Riverside, Florezca Board of Directors: Performance is part of daylong series of events exploring issues around the border, undocumented workers, and a maquiladora-based economy.

For Pulse and Hammer, Cabrera will install approximately one thousand copper butterflies in Culver Center’s North Atrium Gallery, creating a swarmlike environment that represents the manic transformation of the Mexican economy.

Yoko Ono and Kara Walker in Conversation
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019
March 8, 2011

In conjunction with the exhibition Contemporary Art from the Collection, the artists Yoko Ono and Kara Walker will discuss their art and how social, political, and gender issues inform their work. Glenn Lowry, director of the museum, will moderate the conversation, which takes place on Tuesday, March 8, at 6:30 PM.

Maira Kalman and Rick Meyerowitz’s cover of the New Yorker

Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World)
Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128
March 11–July 31, 2011

The illustrator, author, and designer Maira Kalma is perhaps best known for the cartoon map of New York City that she created with Rick Meyerowitz for a New Yorker cover from December 10, 2001. Organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, this retrospective exhibition includes works on paper from a thirty-year period and highlights lesser-known photographs, textiles, and performances.

Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution
2 East 91st Street, New York, NY 10128
March 18–June 5, 2011

With her husband Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay founded the early-twentieth-century movement, Orphism. This exhibition focuses on her work with fashion and textiles that display the same strong colors and geometric shapes as her paintings. Included are designs from her fashion line, Atelier Simultané, created in Paris during the 1920s, and textiles she designed in the 1930s for the Metz & Co., a department store in Amsterdam.

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following panels and exhibitions 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 2011

Lorna Simpson: Gathered
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
January 28–August 14, 2011

Lorna Simpson first received critical recognition in the mid-1980s for a series of large-scale works using photography and text to confront and challenge conventional interpretations of gender, identity, culture, history, and memory. Her most recent museum show, Lorna Simpson: Gathered, continues this approach with a series of photographs and a photographic installation created since her retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2007.

TFAP@CAA Day of Panels
Feminist Art Project
Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10019
February 12, 2011

For the sixth year in a row, the Feminist Art Project has organized a series of special events in conjunction with CAA’s Annual Conference. Free and open to the public, the TFAP@CAA Day of Panels will bring together artists, art historians, curators, and critics for dialogues on four topics: “The Problem of Feminist Form,” “Institutions and their Feminist Discontents,” “The Erotics of Feminism,” and “Feminism, Art, and War.” Also on the agenda are two conversations: the artist Zoe Leonard talks to Huey Copeland of Northwestern University; and Ayreen Anastas of Pratt Institute will converse with Jaleh Mansoor of Ohio University.

“Sonic Art and Activism: Exploring the Ties between Feminist Art and Popular Music”
Feminist Art Project
Soho20 Chelsea Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, Suite 301, New York, NY 10001
February 13, 2011

Taking place on Sunday afternoon, 1:00–3:00 PM, this Feminist Art Project–sponsored panel comprises artists and musicians who will discuss the myriad connections between contemporary feminist art and popular music. Organized and moderated by Kat Griefen and Maria Elena Buszek, member of CAA’ Committee on Women in the Arts, the panel features Damali Abrams, Kathleen Hanna, Lorraine O’Grady, and Shizu Saldamando.

Invitation card for Joan Snyder/Intimate Works showing Study for Ancient Night Sounds (1984–85) and Lovers (1989)

Joan Snyder/Intimate Works
Mabel Smith Douglass Library Galleries
Rutgers University, 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
January 17, 2011–June 5, 2011

As the 2010–11 Estelle Lebowitz Visiting Artist in Residence, Joan Snyder has spent the last few months at Rutgers University giving classes and public lectures. The forty-five small paintings in this exhibition, mounted in the Rutgers University Library, show how her work has developed over the past four decades. The New Jersey State Council on the Arts has selected Joan Snyder/Intimate Works as part of the American Masterpieces Series in New Jersey. The exhibition also runs concurrently with Dancing with the Dark: Joan Snyder Prints 1963–2010 (January 29–May 29, 2011) at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers.

Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women, and Art
Chicago Cultural Center
78 East Washington Street, Chicago, IL 60602
January 22–April 13, 2011

Organized by Art Works for Change and curated by Randy Jayne Rosenberg, Off the Beaten Path contains works by thirty-two artists—including Marina Abramović, Laylah Ali, and Yoko Ono—that address violence against women and the right of girls and women to have safe and secure lives. The exhibition was first shown in 2009 in Oslo, Norway, and will travel internationally through 2014

Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following symposium, conference sessions, and exhibitions 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.

January 2011

Women and the Word: Muslim Women Artists Explore Spirit, Form, and Text
Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California
1433 Madison Street, Oakland CA 94612
January 3–March 30, 2011

The art gallery of the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California is the first San Francisco Bay Area space to specialize in Muslim artists and Islamic art. From January to March 2011, the gallery will mount three one-woman shows of work by local artists who explore the Islamic tradition of calligraphy and abstract forms. The artists’s names and dates of presentations are: Rubina Kaz, January 3–February 2; Rabea Chaudhry, February 4–March 2; and Salma Arastu, March 4–30.

!Women Art Revolution
New Frontier at the Sundance Film Festival
Historic Miners Hospital, 1354 Park Avenue, Park City, UT 84060; and Salt Lake Art Center, 20 South West Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
January 20–30, 2011

!Women Art Revolution is a documentary film exploring the feminist art movement in the United States from 1968 to the present. The filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson includes interviews with artists, innovators, art historians, and critics taken over a forty-year period, asking why so many female artists are little known and why museums fill their walls with the works of men. Accompanying the film is RAW/WAR, an interactive, community-curated video collection that allows users to access archival footage about the achievements and practices of women artists and to share their own stories through text, images, video clips, and links.

Hand, Voice & Vision: Artists’ Books from Women’s Studio Workshop
Grollier Club
47 East 60th Street, New York, NY 10022
December 8, 2010–February 5, 2011

Curated by Kathleen Walkup, Hand, Voice & Vision: Artists’ Books from Women’s Studio Workshop features forty books by thirty-six artists created over a thirty-year period. The four artists who founded the workshop—Ann Kalmbach, Tatana Kellner, Anita Wetzel, and Barbara Leoff Burge—wanted to operate and maintain a workspace that would encourage the visions of individual women artists, provide professional opportunities for them, and promote programs designed to stimulate public involvement with and support for the visual arts.

The Grollier Club also presents two tandem events. On Tuesday, January 25, three of the exhibition’s artists (Clarissa Sligh, Susan Mills, and Emily Speed) will talk about their work from 2:00 to 4:00 PM. Jae Jennifer Rossman, assistant director for special collections at Yale University, will moderate the panel. On the following day, Walkup will speak on “Women Making Art: Artists’ Books from Women’s Studio Workshop” from 2:00 to 3:00 PM.

Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women
Cartoon Art Museum
655 Mission Street, San Francisco CA 94105
October 1, 2010–January 30, 2011

The history of women in comics is well documented, and the Jewish contribution to the art form is widely acknowledged. Curated by Michael Kaminer and Sarah Lightman, Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women is the first museum exhibition to combine both groups in a single exhibition. Many of the original artworks on display have never before been shown in public. Among the eighteen American, European, and Israeli artists are Sharon Rudahl of Wimmen’s Comix and Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Diane Noomin of Twisted Sisters—all pioneers from the 1970s and 1980s—alongside younger artists. The exhibition catalogue was designed and published as an eight-page newspaper broadsheet.