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Anita Steckel: Equal Exposure
In the 1960s and 1970s, Anita Steckel fought for the public acceptance of explicitly sexual art made by women, as part of the broader feminist art movement that was pushing for a revolution in the...
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Judy Chicago: Boldly Going Where No Woman Has Gone Before
Judy Chicago (née Judy Cohen) was born on July 20, 1939, in Chicago, Illinois, into a household that supported her creative and intellectual interests. In her autobiography, Through the Flower, Chicago...
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The Common Thread: Quilt Grids
In Quilts as Women’s Art: A Quilt Poetics, quilter and activist Radka Donnell discusses an organizational feature of the quilt—its “grid”—which she defines as the element that is “not locking but only...
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Anita Steckel: Fighting Censorship and Double Standards
According to materials from the archive of artist Anita Steckel, before she revealed her solo exhibition The Sexual Politics of Feminist Art at Rockville Community College in 1973, a female faculty...
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Controversial Representations of Sexuality in Feminist Art
Judy Chicago’s installation The Dinner Party premiered in San Francisco on March 1979. Soon after, it received backlash from the public because the recurring “butterfly” motif in Chicago’s dinner...
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One is Silver and the Other’s Gold: Meret Oppenheim’s Friendships at NMWA
Now on view at NMWA, a selection of Meret Oppenheim’s art, correspondence, and archival materials provide insight into this prolific artist. Meret Oppenheim: Tender Friendships documents friendship as...
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Spotlight on Oppenheim: Inspiration, Repetition, and Surrealism
Meret Oppenheim often explored one subject through a variety of mediums. A favorite theme was the legend of the eighth-century queen Genevieve of Brabant, who was unjustly accused of adultery and...
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The Art of Contradiction: Nazi Reception of Käthe Kollwitz
The Downtrodden (1900), an etching by German printmaker and sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, is back on view in NMWA’s exhibition galleries. This work by Kollwitz—whose art was labeled “degenerate” by the...
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LRC Book Review: Life Stories of Women Artists, 1550–1880
Julia K. Dabbs opens her book, Life Stories of Women Artists, 1550–1880 (Ashgate, 2009), with the following quotation from Christine de Pizan’s Livre de la Cité des Dames (Book of the City of Ladies):...
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Hands as an Artist’s Tools: Meret Oppenheim
While living in France as an art student, Meret Oppenheim made many unusual sketches for gloves. She designed gloves covered with fur in 1934 and gloves showing the hand’s bone structure in 1936. Elsa...
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NMWA’s New York Avenue Sculpture Project: Magdalena Abakanowicz
To honor Magdalena Abakanowicz (b.1930) on her 84th birthday, NMWA anticipates the upcoming public installation of her work on New York Avenue for one year beginning this September, as the third artist...
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Artist Spotlight: Dara Birnbaum—Video as Subject and Form
On view in Total Art: Contemporary Video, Dara Birnbaum’s Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–79) opens with several minutes of footage showing intense explosions, transformations, and...
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Artist Spotlight: Pipilotti Rist’s Red Room and Blue Bodily Letter
One of the nine gallery spaces in Total Art: Contemporary Video is vividly painted with an oblong white space centered on a red wall. This was not a random design decision, but rather a feature of the...
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Artist Spotlight: The Collaboration of Ingrid Mwangi and Robert Hutter
In 2005, spouses Ingrid Mwangi (b. 1975, Nairobi, Kenya) and Robert Hutter (b. 1964, Ludwigshafen, Germany) began working as a collaborative artistic force. Today, they exhibit their joint works under...
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Meret Oppenheim’s “Schoolgirl’s Notebook”
On view in Meret Oppenheim: Tender Friendships, the artist’s early work Schoolgirl’s Notebook (Cahier d’une Écoliere) provides insight into her spirit and ambition as a young artist, as well as her...
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Judy’s Diamond Jubilee
Today is a very special day for the legendary Judy Chicago—her 75th birthday! Over her 75 years, Judy Chicago has made a prominent name for herself as an artist, author, educator, and source of...
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Artist Spotlight: The Magical Erasure of Michal Rovner
Upon entering the exhibition Total Art: Contemporary Video, your attention may be drawn to the large blue artwork on the opposite wall. From a distance, it is challenging to determine the print’s...
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Artist Spotlight: Janaina Tschäpe, Goddess of Water and Melancholy
Janaina Tschäpe (b. 1973, Munich) is a Brazilian-German artist who creates paintings, drawings, photographs, and video art. Inspired by landscapes of the Amazonian rainforest in Brazil, as well as...
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Artist Spotlight: Behind the Scenes with Eve Sussman, the Rufus Corporation,...
When first exhibited at the 2004 Whitney Biennial, 89 Seconds at Alcázar (2004) was a runaway success. Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation, a collaborative of actors, choreographers, technicians, and...
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Artist Spotlight: Margaret Salmon’s Video Ode to New Mothers
In 2005 Margaret Salmon (b. 1975, NY) received the inaugural Max Mara Art Prize for Women, which awarded her the opportunity to complete a six-month residency in Italy to further develop her filmic...
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