May 25, 1971: “Man for the field and woman for the hearth:
Man for the sword and for the needle she:
Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey:
All else confusion!”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Encompassing the Victorian sentiments of Lord Tennyson as well as the more militant credo of contemporary Women’s Lib, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: A WOMAN’S EXHIBITION which opens at The Brooklyn Museum on June 7th celebrates Woman in her infinite variety. In more than 150 prints, drawings, photographs and illustrations dating from the 15th to 20th century, the myriad complexities of Woman are interpreted by outstanding artists of both sexes. Depicting Woman as seen by women are works by such artists as Mary Cassatt, Peggy Bacon, Angelica Kauffman, Is[a]bel Bishop, Louise Nevelson, Käthe Kollwitz and Georgia O’Keeffe while the male point of view is represented by Albrecht Dürer, Francisco Goya, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Edvard Munch and Toulouse-Lautrec among others.
As varied in mood as its volatile subject, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE combines the serious with the satiric...the fact with the fiction.
Supplementing the visual material are pungent quotes on Woman by outstanding personalities of the past five centuries illustrative of the prejudice and the pride that has been the lot of Woman.
Highlights of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE include an early Picasso drawing of a nude, several lithographs by Toulouse-Lautrec from the great “Elles” series on women of the Paris brothels, Mary Cassatt’s rare aquatints of women, children and an early Georgia O’Keeffe watercolor. There are also photo collages of famous women of all eras, interspersed with pithy comments from both sexes.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: A WOMAN’S EXHIBITION will remain on view in the second floor Print Galleries of The Brooklyn Museum through September 12th.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1971, 033-34.
