Academic Programs Coordinator Eleanor Whitney and artist Jen DeNike conduct a walkthrough of the Rubin Pavillion and Lobby in preparation for TWIRL.

For months, the city has been eagerly anticipating PERFORMA, the performance art biennial that is literally “happening” all over New York for the month of November. PERFORMA was founded in 2004, with the mission to support the presentation of performance by visual artists and the efficacy of “live art” within the visual arts. The discipline and practice of performance has been important to women artists since the 1960s and 70s, when the art form began to coalesce into a movement in such downtown art pantheons (though then they were just rough spaces and warehouses) as Judson Church, 112 Greene Street and PS1. Performance, like video, is arguably one of the first art forms to be pioneered equally by both men and women artists. Now performance art is generally considered a serious medium, not unlike painting or sculpture, although critics and historians continue to explore ways of defining, codifying and mapping its history and current importance. When PERFORMA organizers approached curators and educators at the Museum last year about hosting events in conjunction with this year’s consortium of arts organizations around the city–and the representation of Brooklyn venues is stronger than ever before –we jumped at the chance to participate!

This Saturday’s program features original performances by Terence Koh, and Brooklyn based artist, Jen DeNike, whose meditative and dreamlike video, Happy Endings, 2006 is currently on view in the Center through January 10th, 2010 in Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video. Jen’s performance on Saturday titled TWIRL, will include an award-winning fifty-piece student marching band from Weehawken, New Jersey, along with baton twirler, Erica Henschel, and a few other surprises. When we met with Jen last spring, all immediately hit it off, and were thrilled at the possibility of hosting her unique spectacle in the beautiful Rubin Pavillion and Lobby. Because Jen’s performance coincides with our monthly blow-out First Saturday, we know that hundreds of people will be milling about the area early Saturday evening. We also hear that local photographers are invited to shoot the bands on Saturday and post photos to the Brooklyn Museum’s flickr group. You can shoot the performances too! Jen is enthusiastic about organizing a critical mass to capture many and varied perspectives, and crowd views of the performance as it unfolds.

Jen DeNike’s performance TWIRL begins at 6PM on Saturday, in and around the Rubin Pavillion and Lobby.

Check out this recent interview with Jen about her art and performance on ArtOnAir.org!

TWIRL artist Jen DeNike visits the Weehawken Marching Band as they prepare for a Halloween parade led by Vice Principal Steven Spinosa.

Two exhibitions of note are closing this Friday, August 14th, at the ARC Gallery in Chicago. Mary Maughelli uses collage and mixed media in her work to reference historical representations of women as depicted in art of the past. In second exhibition, Margaret LeJeune & Sabba Saleem Syal, LeJeune shows her Modern Day Diana series, an examination of the world of female hunters, while Sabba Saleem Syal’s mixed media and fiber installation, A Contested Territory, draws from her personal/familial history, as well as the tumultuous political history of Pakistan.

(Margaret LeJeune, Cindy, from The Modern Day Diana Series, 2008, 22×18 inches, Silver Gelatin photograph, archival inkjet print. Courtesy of ARC Gallery.)

Adriana López Sanfeliu: Life on the Block is open through this Saturday, August 15th at the Randall Scott Gallery in Brooklyn. In this, her first solo-exhibition in the U.S., the artist uses photography to document the life of Puerto Rican women who live on 103rd Street in Spanish Harlem.

(Adriana Lopez Sanfeliu, Amy Getting Ready, From Life on the Block, 2009, Silver Gelatin Print,11×14 edition of 14. Courtesy of Randall Scott Gallery.)

The International Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale, So Close Yet So Far Away is currently up at the Incheon Art Platform at the Incheon Korean-Chinese Cultural Center in Korea. This month long biennale showcases work from 101 international artists including Samira Abbassy and Judy Chicago, among others. Divided into three subsections titled “Personal Space”, “Fluid Interior”, and “Contested Space”, the exhibition explores the idea of space as perceived by contemporary women artists. The show closes August 31st, so if you are in the area, be sure to head on over!

(Exhibition announcement image. Courtesy of the International Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale.)

Sight Unseen: Video from Afghanistan and Iran is made up of two video pieces—The Third One by Afghan artist Rahraw Omarzad and The White Station by Iranian artist Seifollah Samadian. Both artists use images of women dressed in chador-Ormazad to explore physical and metaphysical spaces of contestation, while Samadian’s women embody perseverance as they wait for a bus during a blizzard in Tehran in 1999. This show will be up at the Asia Society Museum in Manhattan until September 13th, don’t miss it!

(Rahraw Omarzad (born 1964, Kabul, Afghanistan). The Third One, 2005. Single channel video, color, and sound. 11 minutes, 31 seconds. Courtesy of the Asia Society Museum)

This summer is proving a busy time for artist Kate Gilmore, whose video With Open Arms, 2005 is currently up at Ramis Barquet in Chelsea. The work is part of a larger exhibition curated by Nick Kilner titled East Coast Video, which includes the work of Caraballo-Farman, Jamie Diamond, Alex McQuilkin and Rashaad Newsome as well. This show is open until August 14th.

(Kate Gilmore, With Open Arms, 2005. Courtesy of the artist.)

Jessica Dickinson’s Here just opened at James Fuentes LLC. Based in Gowanus, Brooklyn, Dickinson explores the exchange between perception and psychology in her paintings, which are filled with portals, thresholds and border spaces. This show will be up until September 20th.

(Jessica Dickinson studio, Gowanus, Brooklyn 2009. Courtesy of James Fuentes LLC.)

GODDESS, a group show including artists Hunter Clarke, Ilene Godofsky, Michelle Orsi Gordon, Matt Harvill, Erin Lee Jones, Georgina Keenan, Raghava KK, Nia Mora, Jennifer Murray and Sara Woolley, is now open at Under Minerva Gallery in Brooklyn. Doubling as benefit for The Hazel K. Goddess Fund for Stroke Research in Women in honor of the late Brenda Navas, this exhibition attempts to reflect on the wisdom and guidance of the divine feminine. GODDESS closes this Friday, August 14th.

(Exhibition announcement image. Courtesy of Under Minerva Gallery.)

I would like to bid a fond farewell to all of you who’ve read the “Picks” over the past year or so. Today is my last day interning here at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, as I will be moving on to grad school and other things. I know, I know, it’s devastating, but don’t worry-the “Picks” will continue on for all you loyal readers out there looking for some good feminist art!

An installation view of The Fertile Goddess intro panel and title taken for archival purposes by our ECAMEA Curatorial Assistant, Kathy Zurek-Doule.

All this time, I had been researching each figurine type intensively in order to understand their original appearance, method of manufacture, and to find out what scholars thought their functions might be. This involved locating information about the provenance and archaeological context of scientifically excavated examples of each figurine type. All this is necessary to write didactic panels and labels that will answer viewers’ questions when they are confronted with the object in the gallery. Piles of books and articles, pages of notes, and countless hours are required to achieve a level of knowledge about the object that can then be reduced to less than a hundred words in the case of an individual label. What a visitor reads there is the product of months of collaboration and review by curators, editors, and our Interpretive Materials Manager, intended to make sure that the content is comprehensible, informative and useful.

What the polished and installed “chat” label for one of our figurines looks like up close.

By this time, we had also agreed upon our vision for the show: we wanted just a few stunning objects displayed in a jewel-box setting and, most importantly, in the round, so that the viewer could see them from every angle. This was crucial because museums so frequently display such ancient female figurines in groups, often literally with their backs against the case wall, and in conjunction with other objects from the cultures that made them. We wanted to make them the focus for a change; we also hoped to highlight the similarities and differences between types over time and geography by displaying them together, something that is seldom done.

The beautiful casework mock up for The Fertile Goddess with our Halaf figure superimposed inside. Designed by Matthew Yokobosky, the Museum’s Chief Exhibitions Designer.

A major step in any exhibition is a so-called “mock-up;” a meeting between curators and designers in storage with the actual objects, when the layout of the cases and the placement of each object is determined. Based on decisions made there, special exhibition mounts are then made for each object and designs from which cases will be made are drawn up. Our Chief Exhibition Designer, Matthew Yokobosky, realized and even improved upon our vision beautifully. We were blown away by the cases he designed for the figurines; he surmounted the challenges of showcasing such small works at approximately eye level and including our label information, without letting either casework or text overwhelm them, with incomparable ingenuity. Matthew and Tomoko Nakano, Assistant Graphics Designer, also did an incredible job designing the graphics for the gallery, particularly the map, which posed its own set of challenges.

During the exhibition mock up, Matthew, photographed here with Barbara Duke, Art Handler, holding the Halaf figure, arrived at the “jewel-box” setting that we envisioned for what would become the sketch above.

Finally, during installation, our expert and very patient Art Handlers brought the objects to the gallery and placed them in their mounts within the cases, making endless adjustments at the request of curators, designer, and conservators to ensure their safety and make sure they looked their best. All around them, the final products of the hard work of so many on the Museum staff, wall panel didactics, labels and graphics like our map, were going up; until, at the very end, Matthew supervised the lighting for each object within each case in order to bring them all fully to life.

The finished product in the gallery. Check out more photographs of the installation here.

Maura and I originally wanted to have thirteen objects in the exhibition, but ended up with only twelve perfect pieces. I soon realized happily, however, that we would in fact have thirteen present in the gallery, as the thirteenth would be you, the visitor, who is, after all, the reason for every exhibition we present.

Interested in seeing more “goddesses” in the Collection? Browse the Museum’s ever growing Collection databank or just click here.

Want to learn more about the Ancient Egyptian “goddesses” in the Collection?  Check out this group.

In an attempt to launch the careers of visual artists in the 1970’s punk scene, Bettie Ringma and Marc H. Miller decided to mount a show with the legendary founder of Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) and cornerstone of the Washington, D.C. arts community at the time, Alice Denney. The 1978 exhibition, titled Punk Art, became what Miller describes as one of “Alice’s more radical moments”, prompting a wave of similar exhibitions in the years that followed. The out-of-print catalogue that accompanied Punk Art is now being released in full with additional interviews, images, and video at 98Bowery.com.

(Alice Denney, former director of WPA. Image from the Punk Art catalogue, available online at 98Bowery.com)

Projects 90: Song Dong is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art here in New York. The elaborate installation fills the museum’s atrium— displaying the structure and entire contents of Song Dong’s mother’s (Zhao Xiangyuan) house. The piece pairs the personal and the political: at once an act of catharsis and a visual manifestation of wu jin qi yong or “Waste not”. The result is an expansive, almost daunting, mosaic of ‘things’— emblematic of a life and this effort to preserve it.

(Song Dong. Waste Not. 2005. Courtesy of Tokyo Gallery + BTAP.)

Currently on view at Robert Morris University in Moon Township, PA, is Women Imaging Women: A Study of Female Portraiture. In conjunction with Woman Made Gallery, this exhibition features a diverse selection of portraits and self-portraits of women all done by contemporary women artists. The exhibition explores the way that representation is effected by the gender of both artist and subject. The array of works incorporate styles ranging from expressionist to naturalistic with mediums ranging from sculpture to painting to photography. The exhibition will be on view through September 13th.

(Susan Tennenbaum, Ellie 19, Skokie, Illinois, archival pigment print,16 x 12 inches. Courtesy of Woman Made Gallery.)

Boxing Gloves and Bustiers opens this week at SOHO20 in Chelsea. Curated by artist Kate Gilmore(who’s artwork is currently featured in Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video), this group exhibition brings together the work of fourteen artists who explore the many faces of heroic female figuration using video as their medium. The show will be up until August 14th, so check it out!

(From Boxing Gloves and Bustiers exhibition. Courtesy SOHO20 Gallery.)

Opening tomorrow at the New Museum is Dorothy Iannone: Lioness, the first solo-exhibition featuring Iannone’s work in the US. The show will feature paintings, drawings, sculptures, and a video box by Iannone, all done between 1965 and 1978, during the height of the second-wave feminist generation. Iannone’s work dispels taboo’s surrounding female sexuality and instead presents it as a transcendent experience; her mixed media work portrays a first-person narrative of spirituality, sexuality and the freedom to express it. The exhibition will be on view through October 18th.

(Dorothy Iannone, I Begin to Feel Free, 1970. Acrylic and collage on canvas, 74 3/4 x 59. Courtesy of New Museum.)

“The Thousand and One Nights” (contemporary artists from Palestine) is currently up at Postmasters Gallery in Manhattan. The show features the work of six contemporary Palestinian artists, including Jumana Manna, who’s video and photographic piece Familiar, 2007, comments on the relationship between generations, showing the artist (an adult in her early twenties) being breastfed by her mother. The show closes August 8th.

(Jumana Manna, Familiar , 2007 – installation video with sound and C-print,13.4 x 19.3 inches. Courtesy of Postmasters Gallery.)

Kate Gilmore’s certainly busy these days!! Currently on view at On Stellar Rays in New York is Lover, an exhibition curated by Gilmore that celebrates and explores the many sides and many kinds of love. The group show features work by Karen Heagle, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Nan Goldin, Deborah Kass, Marilyn Minter, and others. The show CLOSES this Sunday, July 26th.

(Nan Goldin, Jimmy Paulette and Tabboo! undressing, NYC, 1991, c-print, 40 by 30 inches. Courtesy of On Stellar Rays.)

Sikkema, Jenkins & Co is currently exhibiting a weekly rotation of video art titled, Suddenly This Summer, which includes the work of twelve artists. Now in its final weeks, be sure not to miss Kara Walker’s Kara Walker Messing Around with the Ebony Hillbillies, 2007, on view from August 3rd - 7th.

(Pilar Albarracín, Bailaré sobre tu tumba / I Will Dance on Your Grave, 2004 (still). Courtesy of Sikkema, Jenkins & Co.)

This week, on July 24th and 25th, Peltz Gallery in Madison, WI will be holding The Nineteenth Annual Remarkable Women Show. The exhibition will feature collage, paintings, drawings and prints by over 40 contemporary women artists including Kara Walker, Judy Pfaff, and Judy Chicago.

(Judy Chicago, Into the Darkness, 2008. Courtesy of Peltz Gallery.)

Racism: An American Family Value, opens tomorrow, July 8th, at The Center for Book Arts in Manhattan. The show will explore the many ways that book artists have tackled the issue of racism in their work. The exhibition will feature work by feminist artists Maureen Kelleher, Kara Walker, and Carrie Mae Weems as well as many other exciting and innovative artists. The exhibition will be on view through September 12, 2009.

(Shevrone Neckles, A Soldier’s Story. Racism: An American Family Value exhibition announcement image. Courtesy of The Center for Book Arts.)

Daughters of the Revolution: Women and Collage opened this past week at Pavel Zoubok Gallery in Manhattan. The exhibition features the work of over thirty modern and contemporary women artists including Hannah Hoch, Lee Krasner, Louise Nevelson, Carolee Scheemann, Miriam Schapiro and Hannah Wilke. The exhibition reveals the important contributions women have made to modern art through collage and explores the female experience through this often overlooked medium. The show will be on view through August 14th.

(Louise Erhard, So, It’s All Come to This, 2008, Mixed-media collage , 10 x 14 inches. Courtesy of Pavel Zoubok Gallery.)

Currently on view at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts are shoes and plenty of them! On view through January 3, 2010, The Perfect Fit: Shoes Tell Stories, explores shoes as more than footwear but for their potential for expressing issues surrounding sexuality, gender, class and race.

(Jan Hopkins, Orange Peel High Heels. The Perfect Fit: Shoes Tell Stories exhibition announcement image. Courtesy of Fuller Craft Museum.)

Nivi Alroy’s erupting, shattered and often precarious structures are currently on display at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn in a new exhibit: Fruiting Bodies. Her collection of sculptures and drawings investigates the tensions between inner and outer spaces. These structures ultimately become metaphors for the body and for the home and display the ongoing evolution and trauma these spaces undergo when threatened by outside forces. Alroy’s work will be on exhibit through July 19th.

(Work by Nivi Alroy. Courtesy of A.I.R. Gallery)

Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art is a traveling global exhibit that recently opened at the Stenersen Museum in Oslo, Norway. The exhibition, featuring the work of 17 artists from 14 countries, addresses cultural difficulties faced by women while tackling the issue of violence against women. The show can also be seen as a virtual exhibition here.

( Yoko Inoue, Untitled, photograph of a performance. Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art exhibition announcement image. Courtesy of the Stenersen Museum.)

Picturing Progress: Hungarian Women Photographers, 1900- 1945, is currently on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. The exhibition, on view through August 30th, focuses on the way that photography allowed Hungarian women to establish themselves as professional artists during this time. The collection of work focuses on the period of political upheaval during the span in 1900-1945 and these artist’s visual interpretations of that era.

(Olga Mate, Still life with eggs and mushrooms, early 1920’s, Gelatine silver print, 6.57 x 4.02 in. Courtesy of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.)

Alice Wheeler: Women are Beautiful, is currently on display at the Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle, Washington. Wheeler’s series of photographs represent women of varying ages and contexts through the lens of another woman: showcasing them as multi-dimensional, autonomous figures. The exhibition will be on display through August 15th.

(Alice Wheeler, Girl with Stuffed Rabbit Evergreen State Fair, Monroe, WA, 2007,2009, Chromogenic Print, 40.5 x 27 in. Courtesy of Greg Kucera Gallery.)

Fusing science with sexuality: Catherine Stewart’s work, on exhibition at the New Hall Art Collection in Cambridge, UK, focuses on differences in plumage between male and female birds. The exhibition, Catherine Stewart: The Colour of Courtship, includes enlarged images of songbird specimens that highlight the intricacies and differences between the sexes, which play a crucial role in mating rituals in the avian world. The show will be on display through August 1st.

(Catherine Stewart, The Colour of Courtship # 4: Indigo Bunting. Courtesy of New Hall Art Collection.)

Opening this Saturday at Mark Moore Gallery, July 11th, is Weep and Wonder: a fascinating series of paintings by artist Jennifer Nehrbass. The series of seven highly psychological portraits, all of women, deconstruct traditional conceptions of femininity by transferring the ownership of the image from the viewer to the subject herself. The paintings will be on display through August 15th.

(Jennifer Nehrbass, Snake in the Grass, 2009, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 30 in. Courtesy of Mark Moore Gallery.)

Last summer we met in storage for a “bonding” session with the figures we selected from the collection for the show, where Maura, Ellen Belcher (our consultant), and I talked at length about each individual object. Much of what came out of these discussions was incorporated somehow into the labels for the exhibition. Photograph by Sarah Giovanniello.

Once we had established our criteria, nude female figurines with exaggerated or schematized forms, we needed to put together a list of potential objects for the show. This meant including figurines from the entire ancient world, not just Egypt and the ancient Middle East, so first I searched the object records in the Museum’s database and older card files to find appropriate candidates. I also visited other museums or scoured their websites to identify suitable figurine types and put together a bibliography of scholarly sources on these types in order to research them. Finally, I went into the Museum’s storage to look at the actual objects. I must say that, when it comes to ancient pieces, it is always a shock to see the real thing after looking at pictures. In this case, it brought home to me how powerful these figurines are in appearance despite their very small-scale; all of them can be held in one hand.

Most objects were small enough to fit in the palm of our hands! Photograph by Sarah Giovanniello.

After we chose nine objects to include, we had to schedule their examination and any necessary treatment by our conservators. This would determine if they could be displayed and whether there were any special restrictions on how we could display them based on their condition, always a major concern with any ancient object, some of which can be extremely fragile. We also needed to arrange for new color photography of each object, not least because Museum image records are now digital.

Meanwhile, Maura was arranging for loans of Chicago works related to The Fertile Goddess place setting, as is customary for Herstory exhibitions. We were really excited to get a large-scale version of one of Chicago’s figurines to compare with the ancient figurines, especially because it provided a visual reference to the older Paleolithic figurines, like The Venus of Willendorf, that inspired it. Maura and I both talked to Judy Chicago about the sources that inspired her figurines the books she had been looking at when she made them. For me, it was truly unprecedented to be able to consult an artist, as I am usually dealing with works that were made thousands of years ago!

During the exhibition mock-up for the show, we were able to situate the Chicago goddess sculpture and two Chicago Dinner Party sketches alongside the other objects for the first time. Photograph by Sarah Giovanniello.

Chicago’s figurine highlighted the issue of figurine types that were not represented in the Museum’s collection and what we wanted to do about including some reference to them. For example, there are no Paleolithic figurines in American collections, at least that we could find, although the American Museum of Natural History has a case with replicas of famous examples in the Hall of Human Origins. Maura came up with the fantastic idea of a world map on the gallery wall that would demonstrate the incredible range of such figurines over time and throughout the world. Implementing this also involved a lot of research and some surprises. I knew about figurines from the Paleolithic period, Old Europe, and other places in the ancient world, like the Indus valley, that I wanted to include but I had no idea that such figurines existed in China, Japan, and in Ecuador before our cutoff date at the end of the first millennium B.C.E. It was very gratifying to go to storage to see gorgeous examples of the third millennium B.C.E. from Ecuador that are in the Museum’s collection and to include them on the map.

(Shirin Aliabada and Fahrad Moshiri, Intifada Laundry Liquid and Hejab Barbie, Operation Supermarket Series, 2006, Ink Jet Print, both 75 x 100 cm. Courtesy of Chelsea Art Museum.)

The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women, opening this Thursday, June 25th at Cheim & Read seeks to give a varied significance to the female figure in art by presenting a group of women artists depicting the female form. With works from several generations ranging from Julia Margaret Cameron to Ghada Amer this show is a must see for you. Yes, you.

(Berenice Abbott , Mme. Theodore van Rysselberghe, 1926-30 , Vintage gelatin silver print, 10 x 8 in. Courtesy of Cheim & Read.)

Cindy Workman: The Women is currently up at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc. This retrospective of Workman’s art from the nineties up to today demonstrates her commitment to the investigation of sexuality, body image and social identity in her artwork. This show closes August 14th.

(Cindy Workman, Pebbles, 2003, 51 x 40-3/4″, unique digital print, plexiglass and frame. Courtesy of Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.)

The artwork of Tracey Goodman, Kyung Jeon, Shiri Mordechay, Habby Osk, Rocio Rodriguez Salceda, and Joanna M. Wezyk will be featured in an upcoming exhibition at Tina Kim Gallery that opens June 25th. The show, titled I Stepped Into the Room, is named for the final line of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and has unifying attributes which center around identity and relation to physical space. This show closes September 12th.

(Rocio Rodriguez Salceda, Agujero Negro 2, 2008, Pigmented print, 16 x 12 inches. Courtesy of Tina Kim Gallery.)

Declaration of Independence: 50 Years of Art by Faith Ringgold is in its last week at the Mason Gross School of the Arts Galleries at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. This retrospective of Ringgold’s work closes Friday, so check it out before it’s too late!

(Faith Ringgold, Working Women (detail), 1996, Acrylic on canvas, 41 x 31 inches. Courtesy of the Institute for Women and Art at Rutgers.)

Fever Dreams at the Crystal Motel is currently up at Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects. This solo-exhibition of the video and photographic work of Laurel Nakadate can be quite unsettling, particularly her Lucky Tiger series, which documents a performance involving anonymous middle-aged men enlisted via Craigslist, 1950s style camera club photos, and fingerprinting ink. The show closes July 24th.

(Laurel Nakadate, Lucky Tiger #3, 2009, Type-C print and fingerprinting ink, 4” x 6”. Courtesy of Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects.)

Structured Simplicity just opened at Dumbo Arts Center in Brooklyn. Bringing together the work of Mai Braun, Hilary Harnischfeger, Elana Herzog, Fabienne Lasserre, and Amy Yoes, this exhibition seeks to convey how structures take shape using various different approaches and materials, from shredded bed-linens and deconstructed garments to the New York Times.

(Amy Yoes, Modification and Collapse, 2009. Video loop. Courtesy of Dumbo Arts Center.)

Tracey Emin: Those who suffer Love is currently up at White Cube in London. Emin, who had a piece in both Burning Down the House: Building a Feminist Art Collection and Global Feminisms here at the Center, has timed Those who suffer Love to coincide with her new book, titled One Thousand Drawings. The show closes July 4th.

(Those who suffer Love exhibition announcement image. Courtesy of White Cube.)

Through her use of unusual materials such as face powder, spray tan, and lipstick, Karla Black creates an oppositional approach to Minimalist Art in her solo-exhibition, currently up at Migros Musuem in Zürich. The show closes August 16th, so if you are in the area, check it out!

(Karla Black, Principals of Admitting (2009), plaster powder, powder paint, sugar paper, spray tan, chalk, concealer stick. Courtesy of Migros Museum.)

Rachel Harrison: Consider the Lobster opens this Saturday, June 27th, at CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art. This 10 year survey of Harrison’s work will be displayed in conjunction with a re-installation of works from the Marieluise Hessel Collection, chosen by Harrison and a group of invited artists including Nayland Blake, who was recently included in Burning down the House: Building a Feminist Art Collection. The show will be open until December 20th.

(Consider the Lobster exhibition announcement image. Courtesy of CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art.)

Black Madonna, a group show currently up at HP Garcia Gallery, focuses on how one perceives the body in a corporate, celebrity-obsessed culture, seeking to balance the masculine and feminine. This exhibition closes August 1st.

(Marissa Soroudi, Jules, 2009, Photograph in lightbox, 40” x 20”. Courtesy of HP Garcia Gallery.)

At times feminist, anti-corporate, surreal, or simply humorous, the work of artist Amélie Chunleau will be included in a group show opening at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center (CSV) Thursday, June 25th. Presented by Sweethearts and Spies, The Gnomon includes the work of nine emerging contemporary artists and a performance by Cleo Fischl.

(Amélie Chunleau, Untitled, 2009. Courtesy of the Artist.)

An installation view of The Fertile Goddess in the Herstory Gallery. Photograph by Christine Gant.

As we deinstall The Fertile Goddess exhibition, it seems appropriate to reflect on a very good question that numerous visitors have asked me: how do we conceive of, plan, and create an exhibition like this one? So for those who did not get the chance to ask me this in person, here is the (long) answer in three parts.

I should mention here that the Herstory gallery exhibitions in the Center are slightly different from other special exhibitions in the Museum. First, the subjects for all these exhibitions are drawn directly from The Dinner Party, comprising the names of the guests and the related names on the Heritage floor, and second, while the planning phase is often shorter than normal, the shows usually remain on view for longer than the standard three month span of a special exhibition, which can affect the choice of objects, especially with regard to loans. Works in certain materials have restrictions on how long they can be exposed to light, for example, and requests for loans must often be made years in advance.

Another gorgeous photograph taken of the installation of The Fertile Goddess. From this angle you can also see the original didactic “murals” that Judy Chicago created for The Dinner Party. These are installed permanently in the gallery. Photograph by Christine Gant.

The Fertile Goddess began with a shared interest and an invitation. Before the Center opened, its staff undertook the monumental task of devising a web resource of background information about The Dinner Party. I was enlisted to assist with identifying and researching the ancient goddesses and women whose names appear on place settings or the heritage floor—a project that gave me an enormous amount of respect for all the research Judy Chicago did—truly amazing for the time! During this highly enjoyable collaboration, we began an ongoing dialogue on the subject of what is now known about ancient goddesses through scholarship and how feminist artists have drawn upon goddess imagery for their own work. As someone who always felt that contemporary art was “just not my millennium” and something I would just never “get,” this was a revelation for me, opening up a new realm of interest.

Then, in early 2008, Maura Reilly, the founding curator of the Center, contacted me to say that there was an opening in the exhibition schedule for the Herstory gallery and suggested that we collaborate on a “goddess” show. We chose The Fertile Goddess as our subject because, as the second guest in The Dinner Party, she is the first to be embodied in the form of small figurines sewn onto the place setting runner. (The first guest, The Primordial Goddess, is represented by spirals, fur and cowrie shells.) It was immediately clear to me that these figurines were inspired by ancient examples, giving us the perfect forum to illustrate the relationship between ancient art and contemporary feminist art that we had been discussing.

Drawings of letter studies for the Primordial and Fertile Goddess place settings await hanging. One of Judy Chicago’s contemporary goddess figurines was installed nearby. Photograph by Sarah Giovanniello.

I have always been interested in the fascinating—and frustrating—subject of ancient nude female figurines and the questions surrounding their identity and function. While researching and updating records for our ancient Middle Eastern objects as my current project for ECAMEA, I had been taking special note of such figurines, as well as other works that related to names from The Dinner Party. The “star” piece, of course, was our Halaf era figurine, which I discovered was the oldest sculpture in the Museum. Serendipitously, I found out that a friend and colleague I hadn’t seen in a while, Ellen Belcher, was working on Halaf figurines as a dissertation topic and had a lot to tell me about these and other ancient figurine types; she also agreed to serve as a volunteer consultant for the exhibition.

Stay tuned for more on this in the coming weeks, and for a different take on the use of this gallery, visit Patricia Cronin:Harriet Hosmer, Lost and Found, currently on view in the Herstory gallery through January 24, 2010.

Feminist performance and body art pioneer Manon currently has an exhibition up at the Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art in Manhattan. Titled simply, Manon, this retrospective of her work will be on view to the public until June 30th and will include the very first exhibition of her pieces The End of Lola Montez and The Salmon-Colored Boudoir outside of Switzerland.

(Manon, She Was Once Miss Rimini, projection still, 2003. Courtesy of the Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art, New York.)

Curated by Joan Weber, Masked is currently up at School 33 Art Center in Baltimore. Participating artists, including Brooklyn Museum collection artist Bailey Doogan, have used their own bodies or biographies to convey secrecy in this exhibition. The show closes June 27th.

(Masked exhibition announcement image. Courtesy of School 33 Art Center.)

Making Worlds, the 53rd International Art Exhibition opened on June 7th in Venice. The show, directed by Daniel Birnbaum, will feature the work of some 90 artists including that of Susan Hefuna, Joan Jonas, Miranda July, Natalie Djurburg and Yoko Ono. A record of 77 countries will be participating in this year’s Venice Biennial, which will be open to the public until November 22, 2009.

(Susan Hefuna. 4 women-4 views made in Egypt, 2001. Courtesy of the artist.)

Closing Thursday, June 11th, at The Women Made Gallery in Chicago is Lily Mayfield- Intimate Distance. Mayfield’s series of photographs challenges what it means to be “home” by exploring the contradicting desires for intimacy and separateness from those with whom we live.

(Lily Mayfield, Coffee in Bed, archival inkjet print, 20x 30 inches. Courtesy of Women Made Gallery.)

Sketch in Stitch, a solo-exhibition of the work of Shizuko Kimura will be opening at Noho Gallery on June 9th in Manhattan. Fusing textile art with figure drawing, Kimura explores the subtlety of line and form through her use of thread as a medium. Her drawings, executed without preliminary sketches or the aid of photographs, capture the immediacy of the gestures and figures, and can redefine traditional bodily aesthetics. This show closes on June 27th.

(Exhibition announcement image for Sketch in Stitch. Image courtesy of Noho Gallery.)

Open Source Embroidery just opened at Bildmuseet in Sweden. Traversing the link between craft and code, this exhibition features collectively and individually made artworks that examine cultural participation in technologies both old and new. This show will be up until September 6th, so if you are in the area, head on over!

(Becky Stern, LilyPad Arduino Embroidery: A Tribute to Leah Buechley, 2008. Courtesy of BildMuseet.)

Sadie Benning currently has a video up at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Benning has a history of questioning gender and sexuality in her artwork. In this new video, titled Play Pause, she cuts together hundreds of her own gouache drawings of urban landscapes, figures, and abstractions, and uses split-screen and color filters to convey the heightened sense of perception surrounding loss. This exhibition closes September 20th.

(Sadie Benning, drawing for Play Pause, 2001-06. Courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art.)

Currently up at the Museum for Contemporary African Diaspora Arts in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn, is a group show featuring five women artists titled, Perspectives: Women, Art and Islam. Fariba Alam, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Mahwish Chisty, Safaa Erruas, and Nsenga Knight all share a connection to Islam through their various cultural backgrounds which they channel into their artwork. This exhibition ends September 13th.

(Exhibition announcement for Perspectives: Women, Art, and Islam. Courtesy of MoCADA.)

Feminist artist Cristina Biaggi currently has a show up at Ceres Gallery. Cristina Biaggi, A Collage Retrospective: Political Collages from 1977 – Present, will be up through this Saturday, June 13th. Check out Biaggi’s artist page, coming soon to the Feminist Art Base!

(Cristina Biaggi, At Last 1, Color collage on wood triptych, 22″ x 17″, 2009. Courtesy of Ceres Gallery.)

The Other Half of the Sky, an exhibition of the photographic and video work of feminist artist Lili Almog, is currently up at the Andrea Meislin Gallery in Manhattan. Almog’s work in this show focuses on the extraordinary situation of Muslim women and matriarchal societies in China. Check it out before it closes this Saturday, June 13th.

(Lili Almog, Lugu Woman #3, 2007,Chromogenic color print. Courtesy of Andrea Meislin Gallery.)

Kol Ishah, In Her Voice / Elle prend la parole is currently up at the Emet Gallery in Hampstead, Quebec. This exhibition features the work of Lucy Levine, Melissa Shiff, and Devora Neumark. The three artists attempt to reclaim and rewrite aspects surrounding Jewish marriage rituals in this show, which closes September 7th.

(Promotional imagery from Kol Ishah, In Her Voice / Elle prend la parole. Courtesy Emet Gallery.)

Don’t forget, Patricia Cronin: “Harriet Hosmer, Lost and Found” just opened in the Herstory gallery here at the museum-make some time in the coming weeks to see this one!

Also, a big thank you to our newest intern here at the Center, Nina Pelaez, for contributing to this week’s picks!

Excavated examples of figurines such as this one from northern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and Syria, made during the Late Halaf Period in the late fifth millennium B.C.E., have been found, often in groups, among domestic refuse.

We were thrilled to read of the discovery of the oldest known Paleolithic female figure and are fascinated by the widely divergent tone of the coverage from the press, as well as blogs and bloggers from all over the world just as our exhibition The Fertile Goddess nears its end. Although the ancient female figures on view in our exhibition are later, dating from the fifth to the first millennium B.C.E., they too have highly stylized forms that emphasize or reduce to abstraction breasts, bellies, and thighs; older Paleolithic figures are represented on a world map in the gallery.

Matthew Yokobosky, Chief Exhibition Designer, and I spent a lot of time positioning the mounts for each figurine. They were very tricky to steady because none of them, except for the seated Halaf figure, were made to stand by themselves.

Its interesting to compare the coverage of this discovery with the more nuanced views expressed in that of the anniversary of the discovery of the Venus of Willendorf last August, when Venus mania gripped Vienna.  The title of the new book produced for the occasion is Die Frau von W. (The Woman of W.).

Tomoko Nakano, Assistant Graphic Designer, looks over the world map of female figurines.  It took months and months to research and assemble a range of figurines from across the world, but we think it really paid off!

This weekend is your last chance to see nine extraordinary examples of ancient female figurines before The Fertile Goddess closes on Sunday, May 31st in the Herstory Gallery of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.