Community: feminist.bloggers@brooklynmuseum

Sackler Center intern Lauren Nixon was invited to write for the Joyce Theater’s blog as this month’s Students Talks contributor! As both a dancer and a feminist, Lauren has used this opportunity to speak out on restrictive physical standards and physical homogeneity in contemporary dance. Way to go, Lauren!

Read Lauren’s commentary here

You’re invited! Come explore The Dinner Party with our new Virtual Tour, which provides an amazing 360-degree view of the installation. The tour lets you explore the work in unique ways, even giving a full view of The Dinner Party from the center of the piece!

Judy Chicago (American, b. 1939). The Dinner Party (Mary Wollstonecraft and Sojourner Truth place settings), 1974–79. Mixed media: ceramic, porcelain, textile. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, 2002.10. © Judy Chicago. Photograph by Jook Leung Photography

Our website has been growing all summer! Lauren Palmor, our amazing intern, has been researching scholars who can help expand The Dinner Party Database.

If you haven’t already, see the continually updated Feminist Art Base, which currently includes more than 125 artist profiles with images, video and audio clips, Feminist Artist Statements, and more.

The Feminist Timeline has also been steadily growing– another amazing intern, Keri Oldham, has been working on new entries to add in the fall!

Thanks to Shelley Bernstein and our designer, Monica Paez, the CFA pages are much sleeker and easier to navigate! We appreciate their hard work!

Our new Feminist Art Base currently has over 125 profiles and it is growing daily! We’re super jazzed because as far as we know, there is NO other digital archive dedicated to feminist art out there on the web! It’s a great source for other artists, curators, teachers or just art lovers! And depending on the artist and her/his preferred medium, each profile contains images, video and audio clips–so it’s really fun searching and exploring the database, which we lovingly refer to in-house as the F.A.B.

You can also learn all about each artist’s career by reading her/his bio and CV. And, most importantly, in the artist’s own words, how s/he or her/his work relates to feminism and/or feminist art in the mandatory requirement for each profile, the Feminist Artist Statement.

The Feminist Art Base features feminist pioneers such as Hannah Wilke, Carolee Schneeman, Faith Ringgold; international artists such as Tsuneko Taniuchi (b. Japan; lives in France) and Sutapa Biswas (b. India; lives in England); and a newer generation of feminist artists such as Ximena Zomosa and Aïda Ruilova.

See work from various points in a feminist career such as in Betye Saar’s, Joan Snyder’s, or Harmony Hammond’s profile; or discover someone who is new to the scene like Yun Bai or Swoon. There are also some really rare finds like impossible to locate videos by Mako Idemitsu or Joan Jonas. Where else can you see those for free?

Bottom line, feminist art rocks! And the Feminist Art Base is an ever-growing archive that demonstrates that.

Spread the word! And stay tuned!

(Images Top to Bottom: Hannah Wilke, Rosebud, 1976; Betye Saar, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972. Joan Jonas; Lines in the Sand, 2002.)

In conjunction with Global Feminisms, 46 out 88 international artists featured in the exhibition discussed or performed their works in the Forum of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. These artist talks took place during the Center’s opening weekend, March 23–25, 2007.

Videos of the Artist Talks have now been posted!

Also of note, if you are looking for a list of works in the Global Feminisms exhibition, we’ve posted an illustrated exhibition checklist on the Global Feminisms exhibition page.

Pics from May’s Target First Saturday have been posted to Flickr.

Pics from April’s Target First Saturday have been posted to Flickr.

Due to crowds on opening weekend, The Dinner Party cell phone tour was inactive to give as many visitors as possible a chance to see installation without too long of a wait.

The tour is now active, so if you are coming to the exhibition, bring your phone! The tour includes commentary from Judy Chicago, various curators, scholars, educators, and others. Using the system is as easy as dialing a telephone number and then selecting the code that corresponds to The Dinner Party component you wish to hear about. The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago Cell Phone Gallery Guide is free of charge.

All the audio on each of the 39 place settings is also available on our Web site.

If you came to the exhibition this weekend, you probably missed our comment kiosk. It’s easily missed behind a shopping rack in the exhibition’s shop ;(

In the next week or so, we will be fixing this situation, but in the meantime, if you saw the show, we’d like to know what you think! Comments can be made right from our Web site.

As we open the Center, we’ll be posting photos to our Flickr page of all the opening events. Check out the first photos from this morning’s ribbon cutting ceremony.

In related news, the Center’s Web site component has just gone live and can be viewed here.

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.