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Women in Modernism Colloquium at
The Museum of Modern Art
October 25, 2007

Do you still believe there is such a thing as all men’s field? Do you count architecture as one of them? If you do, think again, and there is a colloquium coming up to open your eyes to women in modern architecture. It will be a great chance to broaden your knowledge on prominent women architects and how women have been strive to make a place within the profession.

Moderator: Barry Bergdoll

Speakers: Gwendolyn Wright, Sarah Herda, Toshiko Mori, Karen Stein

Thursday, October 25, 2007. 6:30 pm

The Museum of Modern Art

The Celeste Bartos Theater

40 West 54th St. NYC

To reserve tickets, go to:

http://www.moma.org/calendar/adult_programs.php

then scroll down to Thursday, October 25, 2007, 6:30 p.m., click on Women in Modernism: Making Places in Architecture, then click on Ticketweb and scroll to the Women in Modernism program.

Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love opens October 11th at the Whitney Museum of American Art. This exhibition, Walker’s first full-scale American museum survey, features the artist’s signature cut-paper silhouettes as well as her film animations and works on paper which elegantly confront oppression, liberation, violence, and sexuality.

(Kara Walker, Excavated from the Black Heart of a Negress (detail), 2002. Courtesy: Sikkema Jenkins & Co.)

New Photography 2007: Tanyth Berkeley, Scott McFarland, Berni Searle is at MoMA through January 1st. In particular, Berkeley approaches questions of gender and conventional beauty in her portraits of transgender women and striking local characters.

(Tanyth Berkeley, Grace in Window, 2006. Courtesy: Bellwether Gallery.)

In Chicago, at Columbia College’s A+D Gallery, Girl on Guy: the object of my desire shows that there is no contradiction in being a feminist and loving men. The show includes work by over twenty female artists in various mediums and aims to engage in the national dialogue of feminism from a Midwestern perspective.

(Sylvia Sleigh, Max Warsh Seated Nude, 2006. Courtesy: A+D Gallery)

The F Word is an all-day symposium being held Friday, October 26 at the Alexander Library Teleconference Room. Registration is required, free and open to all disciplines.

Feminism in the visual arts remains as fiercely contested today as it was thirty-five years ago. Despite recent backlash against feminist concerns and even an atmosphere of anti-feminism among younger scholars, in terms of both artistic representation and criticism, feminism remains highly relevant. The legacy of 2nd generation feminism has been explored in several recent art historical conferences. This symposium seeks to extend this investigation by examining how feminism currently informs a broad range of discourse within the visual arts. We hope to create a view of feminism that acknowledges society’s systematic exclusion of minorities as well as women. This perspective will dispel stereotypical portrayals of feminists while also examining feminism’s relationship to institutional critique, queer theory, and issues of race, class, and gender. These issues are distilled in the subjects of body, space, and performance, which are the three panels that comprise our symposium. We aim both to reaffirm and re-appraise the state of feminism today and its direction for the future. Our title invokes the boat-rocking, bold attitudes of our 2nd generation feminist forbearers, whose spirit informs and inspires this process of new discovery.

<Schedule>

8:30 AM Registration and coffee
8:50 AM Opening Remarks Dr. Joan Marter, Rutgers University
9:00 AM Keynote Address: “Fillies and Nags: Feminism and Art Today”
Dr. Kristine Stiles, Duke University

10:00 AM Break

10:15 AM “A Woman’s Place: Female Territory and Feminine Status”
Panelists: Dr. Abby van Slyck, Connecticut College
Dr. Despina Stratigakos, State University of New York, Buffalo
Discussant: Andres Zervigon, Rutgers University

11:45 PM Break for lunch

1:00 PM “On Display: The Role of Performance”
Panelists: Coco Fusco, artist
Dr. Midori Yoshimoto, New Jersey City University
Discussant: Dr. Elin Diamond, Rutgers University

2:30 PM Break

2:45 PM “Body: Feminist Self and Non-Self”
Panelists: Dr. Anna Chave, City University of New York
Aviva Rahmani, artist
Discussant: Susan Sidlauskas, Rutgers University

4:15 PM Closing remarks: Joan Marter

4:45 PM Reception

<Registration>

Registration is required, free and open to all. Pre-registration by October 19 is required to join the speakers and organizers for a catered lunch held on-site, at a cost of $10

Te Register, please send the following information to rufeminist@gmail.com:

Name ________________

Would you like to register for lunch?
Yes __ No__

Payment for the lunch is by check only, which must be received by October 19, 2007. Please send checks to:

The F-Word Symposium
Department of Art History
Rutgers University
Voorhees Hall
71 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Attn: Olivia Gruber

Checks should be made out to Rutgers University, with “F-Word Lunch” written in the subject/memo line.

Openings…

Tiger By the Tail! Women Artists of India Transforming Culture opens October 2nd at the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University. Three generations of Indian artists, including Pushpamala N. and Anita Dube, challenge the representation of women as symbols of fertility. Dube’s work is also currently on view, through January 20th, at The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh.

(Pushpamala N. and Clare Arni, The Native Types-Cracking the Whip, 2004. Courtesy: Bose Pacia.)

What We Saw Upon Awakening, a film by feminist artist Lida Abdul, opens October 4th at Location One. On October 9th, Abdul will speak about her body of work, including What We Saw Upon Awakening, in conversation with Pieranna Cavalchini.

(Lida Abdul, What We Saw Upon Awakening, 2006, video stills. Courtesy: Location One.)

The California premiere of Mary Kelly’s Circa 1968 opens October 4th at University Art Gallery of UC Irvine. Kelly’s show launches the UAG’s “Canonical Works of Art Series.” For more information…

My Life with Nam June Paik, video sculptures and installation by Fluxus and Feminist artist Shigeko Kubota is showing at Maya Stendhal Gallery through October 20th. Kubota began working with video in the late 1960’s and is often cited as influential in the fight to legitimize video as an art form. Her work Nude Descending a Staircase (1976) became the first video sculpture acquired by the Museum of Modern Art for its permanent collection. In this show of numerous video works, Kubota specifically pays homage to her artistic partner and husband, Nam June Paik, with two new sculptures evocative of and named after Paik.

(left: Shigeko Kubota, Korean Grave (detail), 1993. right: photo by Peter Moore, Shigeko Kubota/Three Mountains Sculpture, 1979, (at the artist’s studio). Both images: courtesy Maya Stendhal Gallery.)