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Academic Programs Coordinator Eleanor Whitney and artist Jen DeNike conduct a walkthrough of the Rubin Pavillion and Lobby in preparation for TWIRL.

For months, the city has been eagerly anticipating PERFORMA, the performance art biennial that is literally “happening” all over New York for the month of November. PERFORMA was founded in 2004, with the mission to support the presentation of performance by visual artists and the efficacy of “live art” within the visual arts. The discipline and practice of performance has been important to women artists since the 1960s and 70s, when the art form began to coalesce into a movement in such downtown art pantheons (though then they were just rough spaces and warehouses) as Judson Church, 112 Greene Street and PS1. Performance, like video, is arguably one of the first art forms to be pioneered equally by both men and women artists. Now performance art is generally considered a serious medium, not unlike painting or sculpture, although critics and historians continue to explore ways of defining, codifying and mapping its history and current importance. When PERFORMA organizers approached curators and educators at the Museum last year about hosting events in conjunction with this year’s consortium of arts organizations around the city–and the representation of Brooklyn venues is stronger than ever before –we jumped at the chance to participate!

This Saturday’s program features original performances by Terence Koh, and Brooklyn based artist, Jen DeNike, whose meditative and dreamlike video, Happy Endings, 2006 is currently on view in the Center through January 10th, 2010 in Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video. Jen’s performance on Saturday titled TWIRL, will include an award-winning fifty-piece student marching band from Weehawken, New Jersey, along with baton twirler, Erica Henschel, and a few other surprises. When we met with Jen last spring, all immediately hit it off, and were thrilled at the possibility of hosting her unique spectacle in the beautiful Rubin Pavillion and Lobby. Because Jen’s performance coincides with our monthly blow-out First Saturday, we know that hundreds of people will be milling about the area early Saturday evening. We also hear that local photographers are invited to shoot the bands on Saturday and post photos to the Brooklyn Museum’s flickr group. You can shoot the performances too! Jen is enthusiastic about organizing a critical mass to capture many and varied perspectives, and crowd views of the performance as it unfolds.

Jen DeNike’s performance TWIRL begins at 6PM on Saturday, in and around the Rubin Pavillion and Lobby.

Check out this recent interview with Jen about her art and performance on ArtOnAir.org!

TWIRL artist Jen DeNike visits the Weehawken Marching Band as they prepare for a Halloween parade led by Vice Principal Steven Spinosa.

Last summer we met in storage for a “bonding” session with the figures we selected from the collection for the show, where Maura, Ellen Belcher (our consultant), and I talked at length about each individual object. Much of what came out of these discussions was incorporated somehow into the labels for the exhibition. Photograph by Sarah Giovanniello.

Once we had established our criteria, nude female figurines with exaggerated or schematized forms, we needed to put together a list of potential objects for the show. This meant including figurines from the entire ancient world, not just Egypt and the ancient Middle East, so first I searched the object records in the Museum’s database and older card files to find appropriate candidates. I also visited other museums or scoured their websites to identify suitable figurine types and put together a bibliography of scholarly sources on these types in order to research them. Finally, I went into the Museum’s storage to look at the actual objects. I must say that, when it comes to ancient pieces, it is always a shock to see the real thing after looking at pictures. In this case, it brought home to me how powerful these figurines are in appearance despite their very small-scale; all of them can be held in one hand.

Most objects were small enough to fit in the palm of our hands! Photograph by Sarah Giovanniello.

After we chose nine objects to include, we had to schedule their examination and any necessary treatment by our conservators. This would determine if they could be displayed and whether there were any special restrictions on how we could display them based on their condition, always a major concern with any ancient object, some of which can be extremely fragile. We also needed to arrange for new color photography of each object, not least because Museum image records are now digital.

Meanwhile, Maura was arranging for loans of Chicago works related to The Fertile Goddess place setting, as is customary for Herstory exhibitions. We were really excited to get a large-scale version of one of Chicago’s figurines to compare with the ancient figurines, especially because it provided a visual reference to the older Paleolithic figurines, like The Venus of Willendorf, that inspired it. Maura and I both talked to Judy Chicago about the sources that inspired her figurines the books she had been looking at when she made them. For me, it was truly unprecedented to be able to consult an artist, as I am usually dealing with works that were made thousands of years ago!

During the exhibition mock-up for the show, we were able to situate the Chicago goddess sculpture and two Chicago Dinner Party sketches alongside the other objects for the first time. Photograph by Sarah Giovanniello.

Chicago’s figurine highlighted the issue of figurine types that were not represented in the Museum’s collection and what we wanted to do about including some reference to them. For example, there are no Paleolithic figurines in American collections, at least that we could find, although the American Museum of Natural History has a case with replicas of famous examples in the Hall of Human Origins. Maura came up with the fantastic idea of a world map on the gallery wall that would demonstrate the incredible range of such figurines over time and throughout the world. Implementing this also involved a lot of research and some surprises. I knew about figurines from the Paleolithic period, Old Europe, and other places in the ancient world, like the Indus valley, that I wanted to include but I had no idea that such figurines existed in China, Japan, and in Ecuador before our cutoff date at the end of the first millennium B.C.E. It was very gratifying to go to storage to see gorgeous examples of the third millennium B.C.E. from Ecuador that are in the Museum’s collection and to include them on the map.

Excavated examples of figurines such as this one from northern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and Syria, made during the Late Halaf Period in the late fifth millennium B.C.E., have been found, often in groups, among domestic refuse.

We were thrilled to read of the discovery of the oldest known Paleolithic female figure and are fascinated by the widely divergent tone of the coverage from the press, as well as blogs and bloggers from all over the world just as our exhibition The Fertile Goddess nears its end. Although the ancient female figures on view in our exhibition are later, dating from the fifth to the first millennium B.C.E., they too have highly stylized forms that emphasize or reduce to abstraction breasts, bellies, and thighs; older Paleolithic figures are represented on a world map in the gallery.

Matthew Yokobosky, Chief Exhibition Designer, and I spent a lot of time positioning the mounts for each figurine. They were very tricky to steady because none of them, except for the seated Halaf figure, were made to stand by themselves.

Its interesting to compare the coverage of this discovery with the more nuanced views expressed in that of the anniversary of the discovery of the Venus of Willendorf last August, when Venus mania gripped Vienna.  The title of the new book produced for the occasion is Die Frau von W. (The Woman of W.).

Tomoko Nakano, Assistant Graphic Designer, looks over the world map of female figurines.  It took months and months to research and assemble a range of figurines from across the world, but we think it really paid off!

This weekend is your last chance to see nine extraordinary examples of ancient female figurines before The Fertile Goddess closes on Sunday, May 31st in the Herstory Gallery of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

Co-curator Maura Reilly, consultant Ellen Belcher, and the Halaf figurine.

During the planning stages of special exhibitions or permanent installations, it is a common practice in museums to involve consultants; scholars with specialized knowledge who assist the curators in researching objects. For The Fertile Goddess, we were very lucky to have Ellen Belcher as a volunteer consultant. Ellen came and spent a glorious and fun early September afternoon in storage with us looking at all the figurines and shared hours of editing with me on the labels and wall texts for the exhibition. She is an Ancient Near Eastern archaeologist and art historian whom I have known for years. We have been in classes and seminars together at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and at Columbia University, where she is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Art History and Archaeology - along with working full time as a librarian at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Early in 2008, I attended a lecture at Columbia titled, “Embodying the Halaf: Prehistoric figurines from Northern Mesopotamia,” that Ellen gave on her dissertation topic. Co-curator of The Fertile Goddess Maura Reilly and I were already discussing the possibility of focusing on the Fertile Goddess for the next Herstory Gallery exhibition and featuring the Halaf period figurine from our collection. I came away from that lecture - and a subsequent one in May - with a greatly increased understanding of these figurines and other types that existed in Neolithic Mesopotamia. Ellen’s perspective was particularly important because of her work in the field; since 1995, she has excavated in Syria, Jordan and Turkey, where she has been a field supervisor and small finds specialist at the 6th millennium site of Domuztepe for the past decade. Many questions remain about the functions of these figurines in ancient societies and current scholarship has come to consider provenance and archaeological context crucial issues for any understanding of these objects.

Pondering the “Bird Ladies.”

I also was inspired by the work of another colleague (and good friend) in a more indirect way while I was researching our so-called Bird Lady figurines from Predynastic Egypt. Aware that other figurines types existed in Egypt during this period, I was able to see some actual examples In the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egyptian galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with extremely informative chat labels written by Diana Craig Patch, an Associate Curator of Egyptian Art there. I felt that Diana, like Ellen, had thoughtfully framed the questions of function and interpretation that still surround these objects. The Predynastic period is one of Diana’s specializations and, having worked extensively in the field in Egypt, she has a strong understanding of archaeological background and issues. I was therefore delighted when both Ellen and Diana agreed to speak at a panel which will take place tomorrow in the Forum. This is a chance for them to show the numerous other types that were contemporary with the two earliest figurines in the exhibition, the Halaf figurine from Mesopotamia and the Bird Ladies from Egypt and to discuss their latest thoughts about the possible functions and interpretations of these objects. Perhaps they will also share their thoughts about being a feminist archaeologist in the 21st century.

From a conversation with actor George Takei (Star Trek’s Captain Sulu) and his husband, to a discussion about love with a pair of sword swallowers, Kick My Hearts Ass: Short Films About Love, investigates the trials of love and heartbreak. Curated by Davy Rothbart, this exhibition opens February 11th at Apex Art.

(Kick My Heart’s Ass: Short Films About Love exhibition announcement. Courtesy of Apex Art.)

“Miss Taxi”, a three-channel video and photography installation by artist Cecilia Jurado, is currently featured as part of QUEENS INTERNATIONAL 4, the Queens Museum Biennale. This latest project from Jurado shows images and footage from a beauty pageant held each year in Queens for relatives of taxi workers. This exhibition will be on view until April 26th.

(Cecilia Jurado, Film still from “Miss Taxi”. Courtesy of Y Gallery.)

Our City Dreams, a new documentary by Chiara Clemente, documents the lives of five feminist artists- Swoon, Ghada Amer, Kiki Smith, Marina Abramovic, and Nancy Spero- and is now playing at the Film Forum in Manhattan. Check it out, the last day to see it is February 17th!

(Promotional image for Our City Dreams. Courtesy of the Film Forum.)

IMMATERIAL is in its last week at Black and White Gallery in Chelsea. This show includes artists Kaoru Hirano, Tamara Kostianovsky, Kristian Kozul, Derick Melander, Jason Clay Lewis, Adam Niklewicz, Shimon Okshteyn, and Jean Shin, as well as artist Orly Cogan, whose site specific thread wall drawing, Quantum Entanglement, explores the trappings of womanhood. This show closes February 14th.

(Installation view of Quantum Entanglement, photo by Alessandra Okshteyn. Courtesy of Black and White Gallery.)

The Mood Back Home: An exhibition inspired by Womanhouse opens at Momenta Art in Williamsburg this Friday February 13. Womanhouse was a women-only art installation and performance at a 17 room mansion in 1970s Hollywood, California. Organized by feminist artists Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, Womanhouse used the various rooms of the building to explore household activities and spaces that had been viewed as exclusive to women. The work of Alyson Aliano, Pam Butler, Leslie Brack, Nicole Eisenman, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Karen Leo, Karyn Olivier, Tara Mateik, Bea Romeo, Suzy Spence, Kirsten Stoltmann, Jeanne Tremel, and Pinar Yolacan, as well as Johanna Demetrakas’s film Womanhouse, 1972, will be featured in this show.

(Leslie Brack, Presenting Three New Lively Ones, oil on canvas, 6″ x 8″, 2008. Courtesy of the Artist.)

Nayland Blake: Behavior, curated by our very own Maura Reilly, is in its last week at Location One in Manhattan. Head over to this great show before it closes February 14th!

(Nayland Blake, Magic, 1991. Courtesy of Location One.)

In honor of International Woman’s Day (March 8th), The Clark Museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts, will be opening Special Installation: Women’s Work on February 21st. The exhibition will feature works on paper from the collection by such trailblazers as Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Berenice Abbott.

(Julia Margaret Cameron, The Red and White Roses, 1865. Albumen print. Courtesy of Scottish National Photography Centre.)

Life Has Not Even Begun, a new exhibition featuring the work of artist María Magdelena Campos-Pons, opened recently at Columbia College’s Glass Curtain Gallery in Chicago. In this new body of work, Campos-Pons uses a wide variety of media to investigate how history and memory inform identity. This show will be up until March 6th, so if you are in the area, check it out!

(Postcard Image: María Magdelena Campos-Pons, Prayer for Obama I (detail), 2008, Polaroid prints. Photo by Clements/Howcroft. Courtesy of Columbia College Glass Curtain Gallery.)

Tonight, February 10th, CUNY’s Graduate Center is holding a LGBTQ studies panel on queer South Asian art. Tell Me a Story…, presented by SAWCC (South Asian Women’s Creative Collective) and CLAGS (The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies), will feature filmmaker/photographer Sonali Gulati, visual artist Chitra Ganesh, performance artist D’Lo, as well as DJ/promoter, Desilicious.

(Sonali Gulati, Film still from Out and About, to be released in 2010. Courtesy of the artist.)

Carolee Schneemann: Painting, What it Became opens Saturday, February 21st at P.P.O.W. in Chelsea. Curated by our very own Maura Reilly, this exhibition explores how Schneeman’s work in a variety of mediums (including performance) remain true to her pictorial, painterly approach to art. This show will be up until March 28th - don’t miss the opening reception this Saturday from 6-8pm!

(Carolee Schneeman, Meat Joy, 1964, gelatin silver print, 23 3/4 x 20 1/4 inches. Courtesy P.P.O.W.)