Press RoomPhoenix Art Museum exhibition prompts conversation around women artists, gender inequality, and revisionist art histories in the Museum’s collection
Phoenix Art Museum exhibition prompts conversation around women artists, gender inequality, and revisionist art histories in the Museum’s collection
Jun, 08, 2018
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Phoenix Art Museum exhibition prompts conversation around women artists, gender inequality, and revisionist art histories in the Museum’s collection
In the Company of Women presents
nearly 50 works exclusively by women artists to be seen in a new light
PHOENIX (June 8, 2018) –
Beginning on July 7, Phoenix Art Museum presents In the Company of Women: Women Artists from the Collection, an
exhibition of nearly 50 twentieth- and 21st-century artworks from the Museum’s
holdings. In an era of such contemporary phenomena as the #MeToo movement, this
exhibition showcases an array of styles and media, with works on view by Frida
Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Faith Ringgold, Erica Deeman, Daniela Rossell, and
many others, as an engagement with feminist scholarship that, for decades, has
aimed to provide a more complete history of artistic production. In the Company of Women creates a new
context for some of the Museum’s most iconic pieces, prompting conversations
about gender inequality, the systematic exclusion of women from mainstream art
circles, and the idea that artistic production must be understood in the
context of society at large. In the
Company of Women also aims to encourage conversation about the presence of
works by women in the Museum’s collections and exhibitions, as well as the
institution’s commitment to proactively addressing these issues. The exhibition
will open on Friday, July 6 at
6 pm for First Friday festivities, and will be on view July 7 through August 12
in the Museum’s Steele Gallery.
“We
are excited to celebrate the iconic pieces featured in In the Company of
Women,” said Amada Cruz, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art
Museum. “This exhibition casts these works in an engaging new light, reminding
us that museums are meant to be a place where all perspectives are considered
meaningful. We look forward to sharing these beloved works with new and
seasoned visitors alike.”
In the Company of Women was inspired in part by the 1976 Los
Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) exhibition Women Artists: 1550-1950, the first large-scale museum exhibition
in the United States exclusively featuring women artists. Curated by renowned
art historians Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists was revolutionary in the way it utilized the museum
setting to explore barriers that women artists have historically faced. For
example, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth
centuries, women were barred from studying the nude model, which formed the
basis for academic training and representation, despite women’s bodies often
serving as the objects of artistic representation and consumption.
Today,
work
by women artists makes up only 3-5%
of major museum collections in the United States and Europe, and of 590 major
exhibitions by nearly 70 institutions in the United States from 2007-2013, only
27% were devoted to women artists.
In the Company of Women seeks to bring
these facts to the forefront while also shedding light on how some of the
Museum’s most beloved collection items are by women artists. Among them are Frida
Kahlo’s The Suicide of Dorothy Hale,
a graphic depiction of death that, in a similar vein to many of Kahlo’s famous
self-portraits, demands that its viewer acknowledge a female subject in acute
physical and psychological pain; Faith Ringgold’s The Bitter Nest, Part 1: Love in the School Yard, a narrative quilt
that exemplifies the artist’s lifelong and fervent commitment to
African-American history, civil rights, and the ideas of family and roots
through quilt-making and genre painting; and Marguerite Zorach’s Deer in the Forest (1914), a recent
acquisition of the Museum by an under-recognized painter who, in her time, was
one of the earliest innovators of American modernist painting thanks to her use
of intense color and dynamic composition.
“As Phoenix Art Museum’s curatorial
department continues to expand and diversify its curatorial exhibition and
collecting program, it is important to acknowledge that we are empowered as an
institution to oversee and correct the gender imbalance in our programming in a
deeply impactful way,” said Gilbert Vicario, the Selig Family Chief Curator.
“Exhibitions
like In the Company of Women provide
us with the opportunity to talk about reinforced assumptions that pervade
everyday life, such as the idea that women are objects of representation rather
than active producers of art and history, or the fact that the work of women is
often presented in opposition to the ideas of creativity and high culture,”
said Rachel Zebro, the Museum’s curatorial associate of modern and contemporary
art, and the exhibition’s curator. “Art helps us to challenge these norms and
expectations, and in using this series of familiar works from our own
collection, we can share these ideas in a tangible way.”
Additionally,
In the Company of Women calls
attention to a number of the Museum’s recent solo exhibitions by women artists,
including Valeska Soares,
Betsy Schneider,
Iris van Herpen,
Sheila Pepe, Magdalena Fernández,
Patricia Sannit,
and Saskia Jordá.
These instances of visibility for works by women artists provoke questions such
as: What does the increase in institutional representation of women mean, and
how will it be sustained? Why is it important? What is the impact on museums and
audiences? In the Company of Women
encourages visitors to contemplate this and future exhibitions from new angles,
all in an effort to question and transform perspectives on what is considered
great art, and why.
About the Exhibition
In the
Company of Women will be on view from July
7 through August 12 in Steele Gallery.This
exhibition is organized by Phoenix Art Museum and is made possible through the
generosity of donors to the Museum’s annual fund. For more details about the
exhibition, please visit phxart.org/exhibition/inthecompanyofwomen.
Admission
is free for Museum Members; veterans, active-duty and retired military
personnel, and their families; Maricopa Community College students, staff, and faculty
(with ID); and youth aged 5 and under. Entrance to the exhibition is included
in general admission for the general public. During voluntary-donation times,
the exhibition is offered free to the general public. Voluntary-donation times
include Wednesdays from 3 – 9 pm, the first Fridays of every month from 6 – 10
pm, and the second weekend of each month (Saturday from 10am – 5pm and Sunday from
Noon – 5pm). For a full breakdown of general admission prices and hours, see bit.ly/VisitPhxArt.
To request interviews and
high-resolution photography, contact Phoenix Art Museum’s Marketing and
Communications Office, at 602.257.2105 or email margaree.bigler@phxart.org.
Related Programs
First Friday
July 6 | 6 – 10 pm
Celebrate the special First-Friday exhibition preview of In the Company of Women on July 6!
Experience performances and activities led by Phoenix-based women artists and
groups, including:
This
is a free event open during the public during Pay-What-You-Wish hours at the
Museum. Please check phxart.org/events/calendar for updates.
About Phoenix Art Museum
Phoenix Art Museum
has provided access to visual arts and educational programs in Arizona for more
than 50 years and is the largest art museum in the southwestern United States.
Critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions are shown alongside
the Museum’s permanent collection of more than 19,000 works of American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern and contemporary art,
and fashion design. The Museum also presents festivals, a comprehensive film program, live performances, and educational
programs designed to enlighten, entertain, and stimulate visitors of all ages.
Visitors also enjoy vibrant photography exhibitions through the
Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center
for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. To learn
more about Phoenix Art Museum, visitphxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.
