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 Ernhard, 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.

Körpermuster, a solo-exhibition of the work of Sybille Hotz, opens May 27th at Green Contemporary in Manhattan. Hotz uses imagery of wrestling girls in this show to blur the line between power and submission, adorning the girls with repeated imagery of biological, clinical, and medicinal graphics sewn directly onto her pieces.

(Sybille Hotz, Neuronenohr, 2009, Wool on cotton cloth, 51″ x 62″. Courtesy of Greene Contemporary.)

In its last week at Fred Torres Collaborations, Little Pretty is an exhibition of the artwork of Gretchen Ryan. In her oil portraits, Ryan attempts to imbue her young subjects-all regular participants in child beauty contests-with a sense of their own autonomy despite the culturally constructed ideals imposed on them. Little Pretty closes Saturday, May 23rd.

(Gretchen Ryan, Lucky Six, from Little Pretty. Courtesy of Fred Torres Collaborations.)

Commune, curated by Dominique Nahas opens May 21st at Black and White Gallery’s Chelsea location. Feminist artist Chitra Ganesh will be among the twenty-four nationally and internationally recognized artists included in this exhibition who will examine the varied effects of social bonds.

(Chitra Ganesh, Her Shimmering Pulse, 2008, Digital collage, 66 1/4 x 50 inches. Courtesy of Black and White Gallery.)

Dionysus in Love, a retrospective of the work of artist Marco Silombria is currently up at Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation. Silombria combines classical motifs with modern subject matter in this show, which closes June 27th.

(Marco Silombria, D’après Botticelli, 1984, Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation.)

Alice Neel: Nudes of the 1930s is currently up at Zwirner & Wirth in Manhattan. Neel’s honesty in her portraits gave individuality back to the idealized female nudes of art history. This show runs concurrently with Alice Neel: Selected Works at David Zwirner, both closing June 20th.

(Alice Neel, Rhoda Myers with Blue Hat, 1930, Oil on canvas, 27 1/2 x 23 1/4 inches. Courtesy of Zwirner & Wirth.)

Strong Suit: Armor as Second Skin shows feminist artist Linda Stein exploring her concept of the body as armor. The show will be up until June 19th at National Association of Women Artists in Manhattan.

(Exhibition announcement image for Strong Suit: Armor as Second Skin. Courtesy of national Association of Women Artists.)

Looped & Layered: A Selection of Contemporary Art from Tehran just opened at Thomas Erben Gallery. Twelve artists are included in this group show, up until June 27th.

(Amirali Ghasemi, from the Coffee House series. Courtesy of Thomas Erben Gallery.)

The True Body Project. Photograph courtesy True Body Project. Copyright Esther Freeman, True Body class of 2005.

This Mother’s Day program has grown out of a yearlong collaboration between the Brooklyn Museum and the True Body Project. Originally based in Cincinnati, the organization began conducting workshops with various New York-based community organizations in 2008 including Women of Storahtelling, We Got Issues, and the Arab American Association of New York to gather stories about women’s relationships with their bodies. The organization’s goal is to utilize art and performance as a means to facilitate promoting positive body image in young girls and women. During April’s Target First Saturday, representatives from the True Body Project shared their art-making process with Museum visitors by placing journals containing workshop participants’ reflections on each chair. The visitors were encouraged to leaf through the journals and read aloud entries that they personally connected with. The audience’s response was amazing with participants ranging in age from 10 to 65 reading to the group. Innovative and inspirational, the activity created a sense of connection across age, background, and experience. The Museum is thrilled to promote art projects which have grown directly out of collective voices and community collaboration. And, in a time of limited resources, this is a wonderful model for organizing quality and meaningful public programs on a shoestring.

The True Body Project captures workshop participants’ reflections on specific prompts in these shared journals. Photograph courtesy of the True Body Project.

This Sunday, May 10, the True Body Project will premiere their site-specific performance Body Language: Brooklyn Museum throughout the galleries. The performers will be responding to different installations in the Museum - including Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the Museum’s well-known female figurine (known by most as the ‘Bird Lady’) in the Ancient Egyptian Art Galleries, and the Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Pavilion - with their own interpretive dance, new video, original song, and homemade replica sistra . Each piece combines Brooklyn women’s reflections on their bodies and lived experience with responses to the Museum’s artwork.

Take a sneak peak of the brilliant intergenerational theatrical work that will be in the Glass Pavilion. Here, the performers work out their spacing in advance of the program. Photograph by Cameron Anderson.

Many thanks to Lyndsey Beutin in Education for the following, and for her efforts to promote and co-organize the program. The True Body Project performs Body Language: Brookyn Museum throughout the Museum this Sunday, May 10th. For further details about the program please click here.

(Mequitta Ahuja, Spark, 2009. Waxy chalk on paper, triptych, 50 x 114 inches. Courtesy of BravinLee Programs.)

Aqui Estamos (Here We Are) opens May 1st at Projects Gallery in Philadelphia. Works by Cirenaica Moreira, Marta Maria Perez Bravo, Sandra Ramos and feminist artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, among others, are featured in this exhibition of contemporary Cuban artwork.

(Cirenaica Moreira, “La Libertad es una palabra enorme” (Freedom is a huge word), Gelatin Silver Print. Courtesy of Projects Gallery.)

Ward Shelley’s solo-exhibition Who invented the Avant Garde (and other half-truths) is currently up at Pierogi in Brooklyn. This show continues Shelley’s exploration of timelines and includes the piece Matriliniage, 2008, a celebration of American women painters. Who invented the Avant Garde (and other half-truths) closes May 17th.

(Ward Shelley, Matrilineage, ver. 1, 2008, Oil and toner on mylar, 30 1/16 x 58 inches. Courtesy of Pierogi.)

Global Feminisms artist Elke Krystufek currently has a show up at Galerie Meyer Kainer in Vienna. Elke Krystufek: the female gaze at the male or unmale man closes tomorrow, April 25th, so if you’re in the area, head on over!

(Exhibition announcement for the female gaze at the male or unmale man. Courtesy Galerie Meyer Kainer.)

Mi Vida – From Heaven to Hell is open now at Műcsarnok Kunsthalle in Budapest. The impressive roster of artists includes Pipilotti Rist, Tracey Moffatt, Shirin Neshat and Marina Abramovic, among others, in this exhibition of almost 100 works by thirty-six contemporary artists. This show will be up until May 17th.

(Tracey Moffatt, Scarred For Life, 1999, 10 offset prints. Courtesy Műcsarnok Kunsthalle.)

In Take Care of Yourself, an exhibition currently on view at the Paula Cooper Gallery, Sophie Calle asks 107 women (including one parrot) to respond to a break-up letter she once received. The responses show the range of individual emotion and subtlety of reaction possible in such a situation. Take Care of Yourself closes June 6th.

(Sophie Calle,Take Care of Yourself, Amira Casar, Actress, 2007. Courtesy of the Paula Cooper Gallery.)

The work of Nathania Rubin, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons and Karen Yasinsky is brought together in Surveillance from the Doll House, currently up at Mireille Mosler Ltd. Through both drawing and puppet animation, these four artists will consider identity and the inanimate in this show, on view until May 23rd.

(Laurie Simmons, The Music of Regret, 2005-6. DVD 44:14 min. Edition of 10. Courtesy of Mireille Mosler Ltd.)

Chantal Joffe opens at Cheim & Read on May 7th. Joffe paints directly from sources in which her subjects are objectified–magazine ads, fashion spreads, snapshots–imbuing them with an emotional and psychological intensity that undermines their original portrayal.

(Chantal Joffe, KELSEY, 2009, Oil on board, 84 x 55 inches. Courtesy of Cheim & Read.)

Opening May 1st at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, The Emotional Body includes the work of thirty-seven female artists. Using a variety of different media, these artists explore the intersections between the emotional and physical body in this group exhibition.

(Mary Rachel Fanning, Me and Grandma with Mama’s Quilt, archival inkjet print, 17 x 11 inches. Courtesy of Woman Made Gallery.)

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

\ ‘flō \ : art, text, new media opens April 15th at The Center for Book Arts in Manhattan. Feminist artist Jessica Lagunas, among others, will be investigating the flow of text and image in various different media in this group show.

(Exhibition announcement image. Courtesy of Jessica Lagunas.)

Kurban, an exhibition of the photography and video of Almagul Menlibayeva closes this Saturday, April 11th, at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art. In a feminist take on mythology, Menlibayeva reassigns the male roles of traditional myths to women in this exhibition. Don’t miss it!

(Almagul Menlibayeva, Before the Solar Eclipse, III, Lambda print mounted on alu-dibond, 2009. Courtesy of Priska C. Juschka Fine Art.)

Gravity Buffs, a group show including the work of feminist artist Amy Cutler, closes this Saturday, April 11th, at the Thomas Robertello Gallery in Chicago. The exhibition features artists who reveal their narratives and content through the unusual use of gravity in their work.

(Amy Cutler, Arrangement, 2002. Courtesy of the Thomas Robertello Gallery.)

In conjunction with the exhibition I Am Art, curated by Anthony Berlet, M.D., Dr. Virginia Braun will be giving a talk at Apexart on Wednesday, April 15th at 6:30 pm. In Cosmetic surgery, commercialization and culture: The case of the ‘designer vagina’, Braun will discuss the social implications of the growing trend of female genital cosmetic surgery. I Am Art will be on view until May 9th.

Guest of Cindy Sherman is showing now at Cinema Village in Manhattan. This documentary film gives an intimate look into the life of artist Cindy Sherman through the eyes of her lover, Paul H-O. For more information on the film, click here.

(Movie poster image. Courtesy of Cinema Village.)

Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape is currently on view at the Aperture Gallery. In this exhibition, the photography of Jonathan Torgovnik introduces women and children who live the various consequences of another’s heinous acts. This show closes Thursday, May 7th.

(From Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape. Courtesy of Aperture Gallery.)

Artist, feminist, and writer Mira Schor will be giving a talk at 8pm tonight at Momenta Art in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This talk will be in conjunction with her exhibition Suddenly, on view at the gallery through April 20th.

(From Suddenly,. Courtesy of Momenta Art.)

Also, on April 20th at 8pm, feminist artist Vernita N’Cognita will be performing her Ghost Traveler at Judson Church . One of four performances that night, Ghost Traveler will explore the ironies of aging. Don’t miss it!