Melissa posing as Wonder Woman, our favorite heroine! (Artwork by Mike Sekowsky, circa early 1970s. Copyright DC Comics)

Before coming to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Melissa Messina earned her MFA from Pratt Institute where she received the Presidential Merit Award in Painting. While there, she coordinated the 2005–06 Visiting Artist Lecture Series, which featured such artists as Vanessa Beecroft, Mariko Mori, Judy Pfaff, and Joan Snyder. During this time, she also worked as a Curatorial and Sales Associate for a private dealer in New York specializing in modern abstraction. Prior to moving to New York, Messina was hired by the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs as an independent curator and executed several regional and national group exhibitions for their public art galleries, City Gallery East and City Gallery at Chastain. In Atlanta, she was also Assistant Director at Comer Art Advisory, LLC, in 2004, and a Curatorial and Marketing Associate for the art consulting firm, Barkin-Leeds Ltd., 2001–2003. She recently was the Assistant Curator to Ernesto Pujol for the exhibition Mediating America (June 2006) at the Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, and was invited to jury the exhibition Adam’s Rib Eve’s Air in Her Hair (January 2007) at the feminist art gallery SOHO20 in Chelsea. Her own artwork has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the Southeast, New England, and New York.

On Saturday, July 21st, a panel discussion was held in the Forum of the Center on The Future of Feminist Art. Four artists, each from different backgrounds, made up the panel: Sheila Pepe, Jaishri Abichandani, Erica Cho, and Em 16. Laimah Osman and Felix Endara, two editors from the queer feminist magazine riffRAG, moderated the event. We would like to thank the panelists, the moderators, and the many who attended the event for a energetic and fascinating discussion!

(from left: Laimah Osman, Jaishri Abichandani, Em 16, Sheila Pepe, Erica Cho)

(from left: Felix Endara, Laimah Osman, Jaishri Abichandani, Em 16, Sheila Pepe, Erica Cho)

(Elizabeth Sackler & Craig Barnes)

We would like to extend a gracious THANK YOU! to our speaker Craig S. Barnes for Saturday’s insightful lecture, In Search of the Lost Feminine: Decoding the Myths That Radically Reshaped Civilization. We hope everyone enjoyed it as much as we did! For those of you who did not make it, or wish to read more, check out Craig’s website here or order his book here.

(Craig’s lecture)

(Craig signing books)

After receiving her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Art History and French from the University of Michigan, Amy Brandt lived and studied in Paris, France, for three years. She obtained a License degree from the University of Paris IV-La Sorbonne in 2003 and went on to complete a Master of Arts degree, also in Art History, from Tufts University in 2005. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Modern and Contemporary Art History at the Graduate Center of City University of New York. During her undergraduate years, she worked as a Preparator’s Assistant for the University of Michigan Museum of Art. In Massachusetts, she was a Graduate Assistant at the Tufts University Art Gallery and an intern at the List Visual Arts Center. Prior to coming to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center, Brandt was Curatorial Assistant to Lisa Dennison, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, for New York, New York: Fifty Years of Art, Architecture, Photography, Film, and Video (July 2006), co-curated by Germano Celant for the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco.