Community: feminist.bloggers@brooklynmuseum

Linda Nochlin and Maura Reilly, co-curators of the Center’s inaugural exhibition, recorded the introduction to the Global Feminisms audio tour today. This tour, free to our visitors and delivered via cell phone, will feature many of the artists in the exhibition responding to their relationship to feminism.

Cell phone audio has helped us in many ways. One of the nice things about the new production method is that tour stops can be recorded via phone, similar to leaving a standard voice mail message. Since the show consists of work by approximately eighty women artists from around the world, we found this aspect incredibly helpful in producing our tour. We could send questions to many of the artists and ask them to record their answers via phone. We didn’t have to worry about arranging for a studio offsite or asking them to make a special trip to do a recording.

If we can arrange to do the recording onsite, the quality is often more predictable, so we try and take advantage of this when we can. For this session, Maura and Linda also took the opportunity to try out a new shade of MAC Cosmetics lipstick, Plumful.

Shelley Bernstein
Manager of Information Systems

We started off this week with a full round of recordings for The Dinner Party audio tour. This tour, free to our visitors and delivered via cell phone, will feature a range of voices, including curators, educators, scholars, and others.

Judy Chicago dropped by to record the introduction.

Susan Zeller, the Brooklyn Museum’s Assistant Curator for the Arts of the Americas, recorded the piece for the Sacajawea place setting.

Radiah Harper, Vice Director for Education, recorded one of Sojourner Truth’s most famous speeches “Ain’t I a Woman.”

Bob Nardi, our resident sound wizard, set us up and watched over the recordings in progress. Thanks, Bob!

As we install our upcoming exhibition Pharaohs, Queens, and Goddesses, the Museum’s conservation team has been working on several of the objects that will be part of the exhibition. Check out what Jakki Godfrey has to say about this Egyptian copper alloy statue of Wadjet in her Dig Diary Blog posting.

A fully illustrated catalogue, published by the Brooklyn Museum in association with Merrell, accompanies the exhibition Global Feminisms. Reflecting the global reach of the exhibition, the catalogue features essays by the two organizing curators, Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin, along with essays by an international team of critics and scholars that includes: N’Goné Fall, an independent curator born and raised in Senegal; Geeta Kapur, an independent art critic and curator in New Delhi; Elisabeth Lebovici, a Paris-based independent scholar and art critic; Charlotta Kotik, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum; Joan Kee, an independent critic, curator, and art historian specializing in modern and contemporary art of East Asia; Michiko Kasahara, Chief Curator of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; and Virginia Pérez-Ratton, Director of the TEOR/éTica art project in San Jose, Costa Rica. The 304-page book features more than 250 color illustrations as well as biographies of the 86 participating artists. Pre-Order online now!

As part of New York University’s International Symposium on the Arts in Society, Linda Nochlin and Maura Reilly will be speaking together about Global Feminisms next Sunday, February 25, from 3:25 to 4:25 p.m. at the NYU Center for Art and Public Policy. Full details, including additional speakers, schedule, and directions can be found here.

College Art Association is honoring Linda Nochlin today as the Distinguished Scholar at the 2007 Annual Conference in New York. The Distinguished Scholar Session, entitled “Feminism: Fantasies, Memories, Futures,” chaired by Tamar Garb of the University College London, explores the legacy of Nochlin’s work to raise questions about the historiography, dreams, and aspirations of the ongoing project of feminist art history. Participants include Molly Nesbit, Vassar College; Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Harvard University; Abigail Solomon-Godeau, University of California, Santa Barbara; and Moira Roth, Mills College. Read more about this great news!

12 video projectors, 20 monitors and 32 DVD players were just delivered for the load-in of the Center’s inaugural show, Global Feminisms. The show consists of work by approximately eighty -seven women artists from around the world and includes work in all media—painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, installation, and performance. 34 women are working within the realm of video art. The exhibition will include 7 video installations , 9 single-channel videos, and 19 videos presented within several different thematic programs.

We just noticed this Web site and had to share. Check out Goddess Conversations. Goddess Conversations invites you to engage in the study of the Divine Feminine through spiritual journeys and pilgrimages to see some of the most spectacular art, architecture, and sacred lands on Mother Earth.
They are planning a pilgrimage to come see us!

When the Center’s Web component goes live in March, one of the most integral parts will be a virtual tour of The Dinner Party. The virtual tour and panorama are being produced by 360VR Studio, a firm specializing in this type of photography. Jook Leung, 360VR’s founder and photographer, is shown here with his special equipment that will capture this installation. Thanks to Jook’s assistant Peter Barnett for taking this photo of Jook in action.

Jook and the Center’s curator, Maura Reilly, review the first set of photographs that will eventually be stitched together to become the virtual tour.

We are very happy to be working with Jook and his team! You can check out more of his work here.

Check out the February issue of ARTnews:

This February, our focus is women in the art world. On the occasion of major shows, books, and conferences on feminist art at the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, we assess the state of feminist art today. We interview renowned scholar Linda Nochlin, co-curator of the inaugural exhibition at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art opening at the Brooklyn Museum. And we profile Korean-born artist Kimsooja, whose labor-intensive fabric projects, performances, and installations comment on female identity and exile.

Read selected articles online or pick up the issue on newstands for even more.