Community: feminist.bloggers@brooklynmuseum

SWAP (Supporting Women Artists Project) hosts its Summer Auction at A.I.R. Gallery on June 26th, featuring work by both SWAP artists in residence as well as their student mentee artists from Girls Prep.

(Left: Claire Brassil, untitled, gouache and graphite on paper, 20 x 20″, 2007. Courtesy: Claire Brassil. Right: Announcement for SWAP’s Summer Auction. Courtesy: SWAP.)

Artistic Production and the Feminist Theory of Art: New Debates, an exciting three-day course to assess the state of feminist art and art history, runs June 26 through June 28th at the Montehermoso Cultural Centre. “The objective of this course is to propose a panoramic view of the main contributions of feminist art history, delving into the theoretical and political problems feminist researchers must face in order to continue developing knowledge freed of sexist structures that have guided the construction of social and human sciences.” New Debates features numerous world-renowned feminist art and gender studies scholars including Judith Halberstam and Griselda Pollock.

Opening June 27th, the Guggenheim presents a full-career retrospective of the divine Louise Bourgeois as well as A Life in Pictures: Louise Bourgeois, a collection of images and objects from the artist’s personal archives.

(Louise Bourgeois, circa 1980. Photo: Louise Bourgeois Archive. Courtesy: Guggenheim Museum.)

**Also, on June 28th, Bard College art history professor Susan Aberth will lecture on Bourgeois at Dia:Beacon.

Jackie Gendel: Does She Know? closes June 29th at Moti Hasson Gallery. Gendel forges a new kind of portraiture in which her subjects resist categorization according to physical context, gender, and era.

(Jackie Gendel, At the Beach, 2008, oil on canvas. Courtesy: Moti Hasson Gallery.)

Caterina Bertolotto’s Dresses of Transformation closes June 30th at the Italian American Museum. Bertolotto’s dresses celebrate the “joy, creativity, and playfulness” of the feminine spirit.

(Caterina Bertolotto, Dresses of Transformation, photograph: T. Inagaki & N. Veronesi. Courtesy: Italian American Museum and Caterina Bertolotto.)

Like the Spice Gallery hosts Gay Directions in New Art, a group show of work by gay artists in the “post-everything society,” through July 6th. With all due respect to their predecessors, the gay artists who have greatly influenced the course of art history and pop culture alike–Andy Warhol, David Hockney, and John Waters, to name a few, these artists explore what it means to be gay in a new era, one of integration rather than “hermetically sealed gay culture.”

(Jesse Finley Reed, The Cock: Bathroom, view #1 and #2, New York, NY, 2002. Archival Ultrachrome Digital Inkjet Prints. Courtesy: Like the Spice Gallery.)

Sleep in Spite of Thunder, works by Exene Cervenka, remains open through July 18th at DCKT Contemporary. Widely known as an icon of 1970s L.A. punk and a founding member of the band X, Cervenka here infuses her image and word collages with a punk aesthetic.

(Exene Cervenka, Thesp, 2008, mixed media on canvas panel. Courtesy: DCKT Contemporary.)

For more art by and about the fierce women of the L.A. punk scene, check out VEXING: Female Voices from East L.A. Punk, now open at the Claremont Museum through August 31st.

(Left to right: Shizu Saldamando, Cindi and Asma in the Ladies Room, 2007, colored pencil, collage on paper, Collection of Sam Lee and Karen Rapp. Louis Jacinto, The Bags, 1979, Hong Kong Café, Chinatown, Los Angeles, CA, black and white C-print, Courtesy: drkrm Gallery. Dawn Wirth, Alice Bag, Jensen Rec Center/Silver Lake Film Festival (detail), 2007, silver-halide/C-print, Courtesy: Dawn Wirth. All, Courtesy: Claremont Museum.)

Cancelled, Erased & Removed is open now through August 1st at the Sean Kelly Gallery. With a concept extrapolated from Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning (1953), this group show explores creation borne from negation, featuring innovative and non-traditional artists such as Ana Mendieta, Janine Antoni, and Jenny Holzer.

(Jenny Holzer, PALM LEFT 000113, 2007, oil on linen. Courtesy: Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers.)

This Friday, The Women’s Museum in Denmark opens 64-Occupations and Collections featuring Kirsten Justesen in an historical exhibitition about the daughters of war and a look at anti-authoritarian feminism.

(announcement for 64 – Occupations and Collections. Courtesy: Kvindemuseet.)

Also on Friday, Melanie Herzog, art historian and director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Edgewood College will be speaking at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin. Herzog will discuss MMoCA’s current exhibition, Girls and Company: Feminist Works from MMoCA’s Permanent Collection, on view through July 20th.

(Frances Myers, The Martyrdom, from the portfolio Point of Departure, 1984. Linoleum cut on paper, 20 x 15 inches. Courtesy of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.)

Curated by Joanne Hinkel, LADYLIKE: A proper take on feminist art, just opened at Chicago’s Koscielak Gallery. Featuring a group of ten feminist artists using everything from fiber to video, this exhibition runs through July 30, 2008.

(Jessica Hannah, Red Phone Showroom No.6, 2007, A photo still of a performance within a mixed-media installation from the Columbia College Chicago MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Show. Courtesy of Koscielak Gallery.)

Gender This, a current exhibition at the Andrea Meislin Gallery features artist Shelley Adler. Through the medium of portraiture, Adler focuses on the female gaze and the journey through adolescence in her exploration of gender identity. Don’t miss this artist’s first solo exhibition in New York, closing June 21, 2008.

(Shelley Adler, Party Girl, 2008, Oil on canvas, 96 x 72 inches. Courtesy of the Andrea Meislin Gallery.)

The Frida Kahlo retrospective continues its tour this month at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. This legendary artist had the guts to embark on a career in easel painting at a time in Mexico when macho muralists reined supreme, which perhaps makes her struggles with illness and the drama of her personal life secondary to the impact of her work. This retrospective is definitely worth checking out for feminists and Kahlo fans alike, and will be up through September 28, 2008.

(Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (Autorretrato con collar de espinas y colibrí), 1940. Courtesy of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.)

Closing on June 27, 2008, everydaypeople explores issues of sex and gender in everyday life. Check this exhibition out at Chicago’s estudiotres!

(Doug Ischar, Untitled, Belmont Rocks, Chicago, 1984. Digital Archival Print - 36″ x 24″. Courtesy: estudiotres.)

Photographer, video artist, and associate professor at the California College of the Arts, Tammy Rae Carland is also the author of such titles as Lesbian Art in America and The Passionate Camera; Queer Bodies of Desire. This internationally known feminist artist’s solo exhibition, An Archive of Feelings, is opening June 20th at the Silverman Gallery in San Francisco.

(Tammy Rae Carland, Untitled, Lesbian Bed #1. Courtesy of the artist.)

Last but not least, Susan Hefuna’s exhibition Knowledge is Sweeter than Honey opened yesterday in conjunction with Vito Acconci’s solo exhibition at Albion Gallery’s SoHo location, 102 Prince St, 4th Floor, btw Greene and Mercer.

(Susan Hefuna. Woman behind Mashrabiya I, 1997. Courtesy of the artist.)

A viewing and discussion of the film Suffragettes in Silent Cinema will be taking place this Saturday, June 21st, in the Forum of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. The panel will include Melissa Messina, curator of Votes for Women, writer and television producer Coline Jenkins, and the creator of the film, Dr. Kay Sloan. Premiered in 2003, Suffragettes in Silent Cinema includes propagandizing clips from silent films showing women engaging in extreme activities such as abandoning their babies and stealing bicycles in their pursuit of suffrage. This feminist, for one, cannot wait to see the fear of women’s empowerment so outrageously portrayed in these early films!

(Close up of Suffragettes riding float…New York Fair, Yonkers, 10 August 1913. Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Work by Kathe Burkhart opens June 14th at Galerie Lumen Travo in Amsterdam. Cleverly appropriating a pop art aesthetic for feminist ends, Burkhart visually and verbally elaborates the radical female subject.

(Kathe Burkhart, Blueballs: from the Liz Taylor Series (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), 2007, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 72 x 108 in. Courtesy: Galerie Lumen Travo.)

Four//From Istanbul opens June 14th at Inspiring Spaces Loft. This weekend-only show is co-curated by Mezze and our former graduate intern Saisha Grayson. The show includes work by Turkish artist Hayal Ponzanti, whose stark black and white prints focuses on gender roles, and sexual and moral taboos in Turkish culture.

(Hayal Ponzanti. From the series This Longing. 2008. Serigraph print. 50 x 70 cm. Photo courtesy of the artist.)

A group show entitled Mahrem: Footnotes on Veiling opens June 14th at Tanas. Mahrem explores the disparity between the meanings women subjectively assign to Islamic covering and the significances projected and perceived by the public. This exhibition serves as the visual component to the first edition of “Non-Western Modernities,” an annual series of workshops and panel discussions conceptualized by sociologist Nilüfer Göle.

(Mandana Moghaddam, Chelgis I, 2003. Courtesy: Tanas.)

Also, for work that deals with veiling in a myriad of cultures and contexts, check out The Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces at The Dairy through June 20th.

(announcement for The Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces. Courtesy: The Dairy.)

The first Folkestone Triennial, Tales of Time and Space, has commissioned public works by 23 contemporary artists, including Global Feminisms artist Tracey Emin, Pae White, and Sejla Kameric, for its inaugural exhibition, opening June 14th.

(Sejla Kameric, 30 Years After, 2006, color photograph. Courtesy: Sejla Kameric.)

Summer, a group show that includes work by feminist artist Cyrilla Mozenter, opens June 19th at Knoedler Project Space.

(Cyrilla Mozenter, More Saints Seen #29, 2005. Courtesy: Cyrilla Mozenter.)

On June 19th, a show of work by Susan Hefuna, Knowledge is Sweeter than Honey, inaugurates Albion Gallery’s New York location.

(Susan Hefuna, Woman behind a masrhibiyya, 1997, photographic print. Image: artnet.)

Woman Made Gallery hosts both A Minyan Without Men and Tradition and Transformation: Art by Jewish Women through June 19th.

(Dorothy T. Grunes, The Centre Cannot Hold, 24 x 30 in., included in A Minyan Without Men. Courtesy: Woman Made Gallery.)

Janet Biggs’ Tracking Up: A Presentation of Six Single-Channel Videos remains open through June 21st at Solomon Projects. While Biggs has previously addressed social constructions of gender in her work, in this ambitious video installation she broadens her conceptual concerns to include complex relationships of power and control.

(Janet Biggs, Tracking Up, video stills. Courtesy: Solomon Projects.)

Portrait of Silvia Elena, a collaborative installation by Swoon and Tennessee Jane Watson, remains open through July 5th at Honey Space. This show constitutes a visceral reaction to the death of Silvia Elena; it memorializes and draws attention to the hundreds of women who have been abducted and murdered in Ciudad Juarez over the past decade.

(Swoon, Portrait of Silvia Elena. Courtesy: flavorpill and Honey Space.)

The Selling of the West, new photographs by the well-known male feminist Donald Woodman, is open now through August 2nd at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art. Taken during the course of a prolonged western road trip, Woodman’s photographs challenge the notion of the west as utopian frontier.

(Donald Woodman, announcement for The Selling of the West. Courtesy: Zane Bennett Contemporary Art.)

**To learn more about one of the Sackler Center’s favorite male feminist, check out Woodman’s website.

This just in:

This weekend the Renegade Craft Fair, a multi-city organization that gives artists and artisans the chance to sell their wares in a non-corporate venue, takes place at the McCarren Park Pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Many of the vendors are female craftspeople who support themselves through consigning their works and participating in DIY craft fairs like this one. Keep it up ladies!

(Sarah Neuberger, Nesting Dolls Stamp Set. Courtesy of the Artist.)

(Ghada Amer (American, Born Egypt, 1963). And the Beast, 2004. Acrylic, embroidery, and gel medium on canvas. Collection of the artist, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery. Photo courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.)

The exhibition, Ghada Amer: Love Has No End, continues to occupy our thoughts here at the Museum. In particular, the “Happily Ever After” section of the exhibition has struck a chord recently with its exploration of fairy tales and their impact on the psyche of young girls. Starting in 1992, Ghada Amer began to use some of the most treasured Disney cartoons and story book characters, like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Alice in Wonderland, Tinkerbell, Little Red Riding Hood, and even Barbie in her work. She really began to take an interest in how female stereotypes and roles of submission and passivity are perpetuated in fairy tales, myths, and toys, and how they function in the formation of children’s identities. Amer herself explains, “When we were young girls, fairy tales made us believe that we were all princesses who were going to meet a prince one day and live happily ever after.” If you missed Maura Reilly, Curator of the exhibition and the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art’s talk with the artist this past March, you’ll have another great opportunity to learn more about this topic, and other artworks in the exhibit Ghada Amer: Love Has No End when the artist speaks this weekend as part of the Brooklyn Museum’s Target First Saturday events.

(Barbie Loves Ken, Ken Loves Barbie, 1995/2002, Embroidery on cotton. Collection of the artist, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery. Photo courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.)