Feminisms/Museums/Surveys E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1658

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The first anthology of feminist art exhibition essays and museum publications, providing an exciting and valuable overview of recent developments in feminist curation

Feminisms-Museums-Surveys: Exhibition Curating 2005-2022 brings together works from exhibition catalogs and museum publications to provide a comprehensive and timely view of the modern approach to feminist curating. Offering insights into how curators from around the world engage with different feminisms and select and exhibit feminist art, this one-of-a-kind anthology exemplifies the diversity of feminist thinking and curatorial approaches in the contemporary art museum.

This important volume comprises articles and essays drawn from publications which accompanied major curatorial projects from different regions around the globe, and each essay offers a unique critical interpretation of feminist art. Organized chronologically, the book presents the essays — the majority in print for the first time since their initial publications and some for the first time in English — with the dates and venues of the exhibition and a brief introduction by the editors. All the artists in the exhibitions and the curators involved are indexed in the supplementary material. Making key examples of feminist curating easily accessible to a wider audience of scholars and students, this unique anthology:

• Offers a transnational perspective on feminist curating, featuring exhibitions from across Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and the Americas
• Highlights the diverse ways in which curators have attempted to bring feminist theory into the museum exhibition format
• Illustrates how feminist ideas have evolved in diverse ways in the international community of museum professionals
• Includes an index of artists and curators whose work is represented in the volume

Offering deep insights into how curators have approached the documentation and representation of art informed by feminist politics and thinking, Feminisms-Museums-Surveys: Exhibition Curating 2005-2022 is an ideal resource for courses in feminism and art, curation, LGBTQ art, art and politics, museum studies, art history, cultural studies, feminist and gender studies, and related courses across fine arts and visual arts programs.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Sources

On Feminisms, Museums and Surveys: An Introduction

Notes

1 Life Actually; the Works of Contemporary Japanese Women – Love and Solitude, and Laughter for Survival in Japan

Introduction

Representations of Sexual Pleasure

An Exhilarating Solitude

Family Troubles and War

Individualized Subjectivity

And Where Are We Going?

In Conclusion

Notes

2 The Accursed Rib

Female Subordination and Power: Brief Bird’s‐Eye View Introductory History

Latin American Women, Art, Gender Identities and/or Feminism

Notes

3 Introduction

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

4 The Eighth Square: Observations on an Exhibition Experiment

The Time Frame

A Baffling Prelude

The Realms of the Exhibition

Establishing Identity Through Signs

Female to Male to Female

Sexy Machismo

Accursed Worlds

Transsexuality

Identity and Portrait

Outsiders, Discrimination, AIDS

Places of Desire – Cruising

No Finale, But Instead Two Ends

5 Art and Feminism: An Ideology of Shifting Criteria

Notes

6 Curators’ Preface

7 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: 86 Steps in 45 Years of Art and Feminism

8 Intimate Distance: Tracing Feminist Discourse in Indonesian Art*

A Necessary Evil? Feminism, Women and Indonesian Art

Silence Revolution: Women, identity and Art

Notes

9 The Benefit of Discord: Apropos of Gender Battle

Notes

10 “elles@centrepompidou”: Addressing Difference

The Collections in Question

The Paradox of “elles” Is a French Paradox

Addressing (Women’s) Difference: A Specifically Twentieth Century Issue

Thematic Organisation: A Strategy of Openness

The Intentions Behind the Title “elles@centrepompidou”

Notes

11 Introduction

Notes

12 Proletarians of All Countries, Who Washes Your Socks? Equality, Dominance and Difference in Eastern European Art

“Eastern Europe” for Beginners

Remaking Art History? Yes, But How?

Making Sex in State Socialism

A Venus in the Cosmos – a Token of Equality?

Nesting Gender in Socialist Iconosphere

Capital and Gender

Notes

13 The Feminist Present: Women Artists at MoMA

Notes

14 The Feminist Avant‐Garde: A Radical Transformation

Against the Cult of Genius

Against the Hegemony of Painting

Claiming Terrain

Photography, Film, Video and Performance

The Personal Is Political

Against the Dictates of Beauty

Paradigm Shift: The Image of Women

Notes

15 The Will as a Weapon – Review 1970–1980*

Notes

16 The History of Women’s Art: Archives, Theories and Actual Artistic Practice

Notes

17 Dream and Reality: Modern and Contemporary Women Artists from Turkey

Notes

18 Tzena Ure’ena

Why “Matronita”?

One Last Word

Notes

19 This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s

The End Is Near

Democracy

Gender Trouble

Desire and Longing

Notes

20 Here and Now

Notes

21 Women Adventurers: Five Eras of Taiwanese Art, 1930–1983

The Inception of “Modernity” and “Progressive Orientation”

I. 1930–45: The Flowering of Women Artists in the Era of the Official Exhibition

II. 1945–50s: The Inspirational Influence of Mainland Émigré Women Artists

III. 1957–60s: The Contemplation and Transformation of Women Artists in the Modern Painting Movement

IV. 1970s: The Rise and Rumination of Native Consciousness

V. 1980s: The Age of the Art Museum Begins

Conclusion

Notes

22 The Beginning Is Always Today: Contemporary Feminist Art in Scandinavia

The History of Feminism

Images of Women

Confronting Stereotypes

Sexuality and Interpersonal Relationships

Worldviews

Nordic Nature

Notes

23 Joining the Ranks of the Invisible Struggle

1

Culture and the Boundaries of Sisterhood

Relativizing Patriarchal Oppression

Feminism and the Colonial Legacy

Art and Gender on Disputed Ground

Our Sister Next Door

Notes

24 East Asia Feminism:

FANTasia

FANTasia

I: Curatorial Concept

FANTasia

II: Participating Artists and Works

25 Imagination Machine

Resonance

Sisterhood

Wages for Housework

A Bodily Perspective

New Forms of Action/Awareness of the Medium

The Socialist Documentary

World‐Ecology: The Eyes that Saw Ties Binding the Mineshaft beyond the Equator to the Prison at the City’s Heart

Care

Notes

26 MAGMA: A Revolt for Us

The Singing Revolution Continues

Notes

27 Introduction

Notes

28 Curatorial Statement

South Africa Presenters’ Statement

Angola Presenters’ Statement

29 Body to Body: What Is Left?

In Search of Roots: Dance L’Attico, for Example

Performance

What Is Left?

Notes

30 Introduction

Notes

31 Irreconcilable Difference

Notes

32 From The Housewife to the Nana‐Maison: Domesticity as a Key Theme for Women Artists

The House of Women: Prison, Refuge or Creative Space?

Doomestique

: Transforming the Inevitable into an Artistic Project

From the Programmatic Tent to the House of Memory

From Body‐House to Text‐House; from Exhibition to Catalogue

Notes

33 Texts from the Auckland Art Gallery 2017

Wall Text

Display Case Labels

34 Unfinished Business

Blak Female Futurisms and Yte Feminism Waves

Notes

35 Gender, Empire and Decolonisation: Four Generations of Kazakh Women Artists

I. Kazakhstan: A Background

II. Role Models: Amazons, Venuses, Shamans and Balbaltas

III. Colonisation, Decolonisation and Gender

IV. The Anatomy of Identity

V. Epilogue

Notes

36 Niepodległe: Women, Independence and National Discourse

37 Why the Insurrection, Medea?

Prologue on the Train

Why Look to the East?

Women in Art

Art History – Contemporary History

The Exhibition as Systemic Criticism and a Cognitive Act

Fields of Inquiry

Painting

Small Formats

Seriality

Art Photography

Body Work

Textiles

Fashion

Open Space

Intermedia

Notes

38 Rippers: Women, Affect and Desire, Between Figuration and Abstraction*

Notes

39 Kiss My Genders: A Conversation

Notes

40 Her Own Way ‐ Female Artists and the Moving Image in Art in Poland: From 1970s to the Present

Object: Why Women Artists?

Timeframe: From the 1970s to the Present

Genre: Why Moving Image?

Subject: What Is “Typically Polish (Art)”?

Moving Image’s Performativity and Empowerment

Conclusion: The Public and the Personal

Notes

41 Feminist Histories: Artists After 2000

Notes

42 Feminnale: 1st Feminnale of Contemporary Art

Note

43 Performing Masculinities

Notes

44

Earthkeeping/Earthshaking

: Art, Feminisms and Ecology

Volcanoes

Earth, Sand, and Other Minerals

Stones – an Interlude

Botanic Entanglements

Planting Seeds of Change

Poetry – as a Way of Conclusion

Notes

45 Foreword

Guiding Principles for Gender Equity

46 Contemporary Female Identities in the Global South

Worlds, Warriors and Hybrids

Conclusion

Liminal Identities in the Global South

Modernist Identities in the Global South

Historical Background

Notes

47 I Remember, Therefore I Am

Notes

48 About the Exhibition

49 Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda

On Voices

On Bodies

On Language

On Aunties

On Land

On Leadership

Notes

50 Empowerment: Art and Feminisms – Introduction

Critical Reflection on the Term “Feminism”

Critique of the Hegemonic Art Industry and Art Historiography

Empowerment in the Transnational Context of Art and Feminisms

Notes

51 Introduction: The Personal Is Political

Rising with Fury

The Marxist Wife Still Does the Housework

Oh Bondage! Up Yours!

Greenham Women Are Everywhere

Black Woman Time Now

No Such Thing as Society

A New World?

Notes

Index of Curators

Index of Artists

Introduction

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover Page

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Begin Reading

Index of Curators

Index of Artists

Index

Wiley End User License Agreement

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Feminisms/Museums/Surveys

An Anthology

Edited by

Hilary Robinson

Lara Perry

Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per‐copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750‐8400, fax (978) 750‐4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748‐6011, fax (201) 748‐6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data applied for

Paperback ISBN: 9781119897576

Cover Design: WileyCover Image: View of exhibition “Feminist Histories” (2019) at MASP, including the artworks “Brazil” (2016‐2018) © Santarosa Barreto, and “Wedding Dress” (2006) © Daspu. Photo: © Eduardo Ortega. Collection of Research Center of MASP ‐ Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand

Acknowledgements

The editors offer their thanks to all the curators, assistant curators, museum front of house workers, educators, and artists and other workers whose labour is represented in these pages: before we started researching this we hadn’t understood the breadth and depth of the commitment to the intersection of feminism and art that has been demonstrated around the world.

The editors would also like to thank our respective institutions, Loughborough University and the University of Brighton for supporting the creation of the artist index, and Marlous van Boldrik and Áine McKenny for completing the work.

We are grateful to acknowledge our circle of local feminist friends, writers and readers whose ongoing interlocution on matters pertaining to art, feminism and exhibitions have been an important impetus for this book:

Althea Greenan

Alexandra Kokoli

Amy Tobin

Catherine Grant

Ceren Özpınar

Felicity Allen

Helena Reckitt

Jo Stockham

Lenka Vrábliková

Lina Dzuverovic

Lucy Reynolds

Oriana Fox

And finally huge thanks to Rachel Greenberg, Sarah Milton, Alta Bridges, Liz Wingett, Umar Saleem, Juhitha Manivanaam and their teams at Wiley for the excellent production of a complex volume.

Sources

The editors and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce copyright material in this book:

Chapter 1

Kasahara Michiko (also author) and Yonezaki Kiyomi (curators), “Life Actually, The Works of Contemporary Japanese Women,” 15 January–21 March 2005. Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 2

Margarita Aizpuru (curator and author), “La Costilla Maldita (The Accursed Rib),” 25 January–27 March 2005. Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Gran Canaria, Spain / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 3

Louise Andersson, Magnus Jensner, Anna Livion Ingvarsson, Anna Nyström, Barbro Werkmäster, and Niclas Östlind (curators and authors), “Konstfeminism: Strategier och effekter i Sverige fran 1970‐talet till idag,” 14 October 2005–22 January 2006. Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, Sweden. Reproduced with permission of Atlas and Dunkers Kulturhus.

Chapter 4

Frank Wagner (curator and author), “The Eighth Square: Gender, Life and Desire in the Arts since 1960,” 19 August–12 November 2006. Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany. Reproduced with permission of Hatje Cantz Verlag GmbH.

Chapter 5

Cornelia Butler (curator and author), “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” 4 March–16 July 2007. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 6

Linda Nochlin and Maura Reilly (curators and authors), “Global Feminisms,” 23 March–1 July 2007. The Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA. Reproduced with permission of Merrell Publishers.

Chapter 7

Xabier Arakistain (curator and author), “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: 45 Years of Art and Feminism,” 11 June–9 September 2007. Museo de Bellas Artes Bilbao, Spain. Reproduced with permission of Xabier Arakistain.

Chapter 8

Wulan Dirgantoro (curator and author), “Intimate Distance: Exploring Traces of Feminism in Indonesian Contemporary Art,” 1–10 August 2007. Galeri Nasional Indonesia / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 9

Juan Vincente Aliaga (curator and author), “A Batalla dos Xéneros (Gender Battles),” 13 September–9 December 2007. Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 10

Camille Morineau (curator and author), “Elles@centrepompidou,” 27 May 2009–27 February 2011. Centre Georges‐Pompidou / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 11

Mirjam Westen (curator and author), “Rebelle: Art and Feminism 1969–2009,” 30 May–23 August 2009. Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem, The Netherlands / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 12

Bojana Pejić (curator and author), “Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe,” 13 November 2009–14 February 2010. Museum Moderner Kunst Siftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, Austria. Reproduced with permission of Bojana Pejić.

Chapter 13

Cornelia Butler (curator and author), “Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art,” 18 December 2009–2 May 2011. Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 14

Gabriele Schor (curator and author), “Donna: Avanguardia Femminista Negli Anni ’70 dalla Sammlung Verbund di Vienna,” 19 February–16 March 2010. Galleria Nazionale D’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy. Reproduced with permission of Gabriele Schor.

Chapter 15

Hrafnhildur Schram (curator and author), “Med Viljann ad Vopni – Endurlit 1970–1980 (The Will as a Weapon – Review 1970–1980),” 8 May–7 November 2010. Listasafn Reykjavikur, Reykjavik, Iceland / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 16

Nataliya Kamenetskaya and Oksana Sarkisyan (curators and authors), “Žen d’Art: The Gender History of Art in the Post‐Soviet Space: 1989–2009,” 11 September–31 October 2010. Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 17

Levent Çalikoğlu (also author), Fatmagül Berktay, Zeynep Ínankur, and Burcu Pelvanoğlu (curators), “Dream and Reality: Modern and Contemporary Women Artists from Turkey,” 16 September 2011–22 January 2012. Istanbul Modern, Turkey / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 18

Dvora Liss (also author) and David Sperber (curators), “Matronita: Jewish Feminist Art,” 27 January–1 April 2012. Mishkan Le’Omanut, Museum of Art, Ein Harod, Israel / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 19

Helen Molesworth (curator and author), “This Will Have Been: Art, Love and Politics in the 1980s,” 11 February–3 June 2012. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 20

Julie Ewington (curator and author), “Contemporary Australia: Women,” 21 April–22 July 2012. Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 21

Yi‐ting Lei (curator and author), “Women Adventurers: Five Eras of Taiwanese Art, 1930–1983,” 22 June–29 September 2013. Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 22

Karin Hindsbo (curator and author), “The Beginning Is Always Today: Contemporary Feminist Art in Scandinavia,” 21 September 2013–19 January 2014. SKMU Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, Norway / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 23

Christine Eyene (curator and author), “Where We're At!: Other Voices on Gender,” 18 June–31 August 2014. BOZAR, Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium. Reproduced with permission of Silvana Editoriale S.p.A.

Chapter 24

Kim Hong‐hee (curator and author), “East Asia Feminism: FANTasia,” 15 September–8 November 2015. SeMA: Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea. Reproduced with permission of Kim Hong‐hee.

Chapter 25

Joanna Sokolowska (curator and author), “All Men Become Sisters,” 23 October 2015–17 January 2016. Muzeum Stuki, Łodź, Poland 2018. Reproduced with permission of Sternberg Press.

Chapter 26

Benedetta Carpi De Resmini and Laima Kreivytė (curators and authors), “M/A\G/M\A: Body and Words in Italian and Lithuanian Women’s Art from 1965 to the Present,” 14 April–4 June 2017. Lithuanian Art Museum/National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, Lithuania. Reproduced with permission of Quodlibet srl.

Chapter 27

Catherine Morris and Rujeko Hockley (curators and authors), “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965–85,” 21 April–17 September 2017. Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 28

Refilwe Nkomo, Thato Mogotsi, Paula Nascimento (also author) and Violet Nantume (curators), “Being Her(e): Meditations on African Femininities,” 10 May–9 June 2017. Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, South Africa. Reproduced with permission of Paula Nascimento.

Chapter 29

Paola Ugolini (curator and author), “Corpo a Corpo (Body to Body),” 22 June–24 September 2017. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Roma, Rome, Italy. Reproduced with permission of Silvana Editoriale S.p.A.

Chapter 30

Cecilia Fajardo‐Hill and Andrea Giunta (curators and authors), “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985,” 15 September–31 December 2017. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA. Reproduced with permission of Penguin Random House.

Chapter 31

Johanna Burton (curator and author), “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon,” 27 September 2017–21 January 2018. New Museum, New York, USA / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 32

Camille Morineau and Lucia Pesapane (curators and authors), “Women House,” 20 October 2017–28 January 2018. 11 Conti, Paris, France. Reproduced with permission of La Monnaie de Paris.

Chapter 33

Catherine Hammond, Caroline McBride (curators), and Clare McIntosh (author), “Collective Women: Feminist Art Archives from the 1970s to the 1990s,” 25 November 2017–30 June 2019. Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tāmaki, Auckland, New Zealand / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 34

Paola Balla, Max Delany (also authors), Julie Ewington, Annika Kristensen, Vikki McInnes, and Elvis Richardson (curators), “Unfinished Business: Perspectives on Art and Feminism,” 15 December 2017–25 March 2018. Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 35

David Elliott (also author), Almagul Menlibayeva, and Rachel Rits‐Volloch (curators), “Bread and Roses: Four Generations of Kazakh Women Artists,” 25 September–20 October 2018. Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin, Germany, in co‐operation with the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Momentum Berlin. Reproduced with permission of David Elliott.

Chapter 36

Magda Lipska (also author), Annett Busch, and Marie‐Hélène Gutberlet (curators), “Niepodległe: Women, Independence and National Discourse,” 26 October 2018–3 February 2019. Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 37

Susanne Altmann (curator and author), “The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain,” 8 December 2018–31 March 2019. Lipsiusbau – Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Germany. Reproduced with permission of Buchhandlung Walther König.

Chapter 38

Natalia Sielewicz (curator and author), “Paint, Also Known as Blood: Women, Affect and Desire in Contemporary Painting,” 7 June–11 August 2019. Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 39

Vincent Honoré (curator), in conversation with Ajamu, Travis Alabanza, and Victoria Sin, “Kiss My Genders,” 12 June–8 September 2019. Hayward Gallery, London, UK / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 40

Okamura Keiko (also author) and Marika Kużmicz (curators), “Her Own Way: Female Artists and the Moving Image in Art in Poland, From 1970s to the Present,” 14 August–14 October 2019. Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 41

Isabella Rjeille (curator and author), “Histórias feministas: Artistas depois 2000 (Feminist Histories: Artists After 2000),” 23 August–17 November 2019. MASP, Museo de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 42

Altyn Kapalova, Zhanna Araeva (curators), and Bishkek Feminist Initiatives Team (author), “Feminnale: The First Feminnale,” 27 November–15 December 2019. Gapar Aitiev Kyrgyz National Museum of Fine Arts, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Reproduced with permission of bishkekfeminists.org.

Chapter 43

Alona Pardo (curator and author), “Masculinities: Liberation through Photography,” 13 July–23 August 2020. Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK. Reproduced with permission of Penguin Random House.

Chapter 44

Vanessa Badagliacca and Giulia Lamoni (curators and authors), “Earthkeeping/Earthshaking: Arte, Feminismos e Ecologia,” 25 July–4 October 2020. Gallerias Municipais: Galleria Quadrum, Lisbon, Portugal / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 45

Jacqueline Millner (curator), Nick Mitzevich (author), and Natasha Bullock (author), “Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now,” Part One: 14 November 2020–9 May 2021; Part Two: 12 June 2021–26 June 2022. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 46

Clive Kellner (curator and author) and Bronwyn Law‐Viljoen (author), “Female Identities in the Global South,” Part 1: Contemporary Female Identities in the Global South (16 September 2020–30 January 2021); Part 2: Liminal Identities in the Global South (29 June 2021–29 January 2022); Part 3: Modernist Identities in the Global South: Frida Kahlo, Amrita Sher‐Gil, Irma Stern (15 October 2022–22 February 2023). Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation, Johannesburg, South Africa / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 47

Andra Silapētre (curator and author), “I Remember Therefore I Am,” 14 November 2020–24 January 2021. Latvian Centre of Contemporary Art, Riga, Latvia / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 48

Magda Lipska, Sebastian Cichocki, and Łukasz Ronduda (curators and authors), “Who Will Write the History of Tears Artists on Women’s Rights,” 26 November 2021–27 March 2022. Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 49

Ane Tonga (curator and author), “Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda,” 26 March–31 July 2022, Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tāmaki, Auckland, New Zealand / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 50

Andreas Beitin, Katharina Koch, and Uta Ruhkamp (authors), “Empowerment: Art and Feminism,” 10 September 2022–8 January 2023. Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany / reproduced with permission.

Chapter 51

Linsey Young (curator and author), “Women in Revolt! Art, Activism, and the Women’s Movement in the UK 1970–1990,” 8 November 2023–7 April 2024. Tate Britain, London, UK. Reproduced with permission of Tate Publishing.

On Feminisms, Museums and Surveys: An Introduction

Hilary Robinson and Lara Perry

While artists, curators and other art professionals have been working with feminist ideas and practices for over fifty years, a notable shift has happened in this field since the early twenty‐first century: feminist art and feminist exhibitions specifically themed through feminism have occupied a significant space in the core activities of several major museums and galleries. Art informed by feminism has been transformed from a minor or silent voice in such art institutions to a featured curatorial focus at diverse institutions all around the world, with headline exhibition projects in many established collections and galleries. Both separately and together, each of these exhibitions have aspired to communicate a spirit of the relationship between art and feminism. What is also striking, although perhaps less surprising, is the diversity of the approaches, themes and strategies that have been developed in order to visualise through curatorial projects the cultural work that emerges at the intersection between feminist thinking and art. As in feminist political movements themselves, art made by feminists and then encountered, collected, interpreted, exhibited, preserved – and curated – has innumerable dimensions.

This book is an attempt to present to readers, both new to and familiar with this development, a synoptic overview of some of its major landmarks. The aspiration to assemble such a diverse set of practices into a single volume requires, at the outset, a comment on the terminology that we are using as editors. While some of the essays and exhibitions refer to ‘feminist art’, we avoid that term for three reasons. The first is to avoid the assumption that ‘feminist art’ constitutes a tidy category in the discipline of Art History, when in fact the use of such a term does not conform with normative categorisation methods of Art History, such as geography, date, style, and materials. Second, there can be assumptions about what is recognised as ‘feminism’ (both feminist activism and analysis), while feminist positions are contingent on sociopolitical factors that are historically and culturally specific.1 Because of these specificities, what might constitute ‘feminist art’, therefore, would also be contingent: the term would not mean the same thing at different times and places – and, indeed, it might mean different things at different points in the oeuvre of individual artists. Third, and emerging from the former points, the deployment of the term ‘feminist art’ as a compound noun to describe certain practices might well, in its assumptions and reductiveness, exclude or be antagonistic to much of the art that is being discussed in this book.2 Therefore, we prefer to use formulations such as ‘art informed by feminism’ or ‘art made by feminists’ or even ‘art responding to feminism’. It is a little more awkward, perhaps; but in its lack of ease also lies its resistance to assimilation into an unquestioning or simplistic category. We reserve ‘feminist art’ for moments when we are trying to critique it as a dominant term.

Perhaps because ‘feminist art’ is in itself such a richly unstable category, it has increasingly been deployed by curators and institutions who have worked to create room for artists and practices that are identified with feminism. Following from this, practitioners and scholars of curating have begun the work of evaluating and synthesising the different approaches that individual curators and institutions have taken in developing feminist practices of curating, and its corollary, practices relating to the curating of art informed by feminism. We are distinguishing here between feminist practices of curating, which may or may not focus on art by feminists; and the curation of art by feminists, which may or may not be done by feminist curators. The critical and historical writing on this topic often references the high‐profile exhibitions that have taken place in prominent institutions, but, in other cases, addresses those projects that have been less visible in the national and international (often anglophone) art press. The exemplars have often been identified in relation to exhibition titles that declare ‘feminism’ or ‘women’ or ‘gender’ as a framing context for the exhibited work. The conversations that are taking place in relation to feminist curating have been concerned with investigating and arguing for specific forms of curatorial activity that are more or less aligned with the political goals of feminism as a broader movement. Complex discussions about what forms of curatorial practice, as well as what objects of curatorial attention, constitute the most appropriate deployment of feminism have become more frequent and intense. In the year 2000 the available writing on feminist practices in art curating were extremely sparse, but over the last two decades there has evolved a substantial literature that provides a framework for investigating both the work of curating art related to feminism and feminist practices of curating.3 It can be seen that the curatorial essays we have brought together in this volume respond to, and feed into, those critical debates as well as representing the curatorial practices with which they engage.

One of the pressing questions that is debated within this field is the impact of major institutions collecting art relating to feminism. Whereas art made by feminists has always challenged the conventions of art practice as they have been formulated through the collections and displays of major national museums (through form, content, and sometimes modes of practice and exhibition) some major museums are now seeking to integrate this body of work into their collections. This activity represents a significant shift in how art made by feminists sits in relation to the hegemonic narratives of Modern Art. While the forces that lay behind this development are a matter for speculation, it is urgent to consider the impact of such activities. Museums are a key gateway through which art and artists enter the wider frame of art criticism, art history, art collecting and all the domains in which knowledge of art is developed and exercised. Sometimes, a major survey exhibition has been the prompt for systematic research into the material existence of works which have had limited presence in the commercial art market, and a number of these projects have prompted the collection of works by the exhibited artists for the first time. The impact of this activity is felt by a wide range of stakeholders: artists and their careers; those who have encountered, exhibited, bought and sold their work, often in small or ‘alternative’ galleries; the museums themselves and their audiences; art critics; and the legacy resources that exhibition research – often captured in catalogues – provide for specialist investigation of art and its histories.

This book was prompted by the desire to collate and make accessible the wealth of knowledge, understanding and interpretation that has resulted from the work undertaken in relation to these curatorial projects. While we cannot reprint the catalogues in their entirety, in this volume we have gathered the introductory essays that present the curatorial imagination that underpinned each project. In particular, we have sought to broaden and deepen, but also focus, the range of examples that are frequently cited within the field of feminist curatorial studies. In 2007–10 three high‐profile survey exhibitions of art by feminists and women were put on in major Western cities: WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution in Los Angeles (2007) and Vancouver (2008); Global Feminisms in New York (2007) and elles@centrepompidou in Paris (2009–11). These exhibitions are often referenced as evidence of a new, or renewed, twenty‐first‐century curatorial interest in art by feminists – but such evidence could also be found in exhibitions organised concurrently or a little earlier such as Life Actually: The Works of Contemporary Japanese Women (Tokyo, 2005); Konstfeminism (Helsingborg, 2005); Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Bilbao, 2007); and Intimate Distance (Indonesia, 2007), amongst others. Exhibitions themed around art and feminism, usually on a smaller scale and more focused in their scope, have been a regular feature mainly of smaller, non‐collecting, museums since the 1970s. Exhibitions of women artists’ work have been a feature of the exhibition landscape for much longer – at least since the 1850s. What changed around the year 2005 was, first, the scale of the ambition which emerged in museums to mount survey or synoptic exhibitions of ‘feminist art’ as such; and, second, that this aspiration began to take form in major collecting institutions including those that operate as national or equivalent organisations. What has been less often recognised in the critical literature that has emerged around these practices is that there has been a pattern of similar exhibition‐making in many parts of the world, from Australia to Iceland, Brazil to Japan – where surveys of art informed by feminism were also being staged in major museums.

While there have been many more exhibitions, and catalogues, of art and feminism than we have included in this book, we had four guiding principles that we used in our selection of exhibitions. First, we looked at exhibitions that were held in major national or regional museums, normally public (state‐funded rather than privately funded) institutions because of public institutions’ importance to dissemination, research, and their canon‐forming role through their embodiment of hegemonic cultural value and authority.4 Second, we looked for exhibitions that were explicitly and determinedly informed by feminist thinking and/or art practices, usually but not always declared in the exhibition title. Third, we selected exhibitions that were surveys rather than focused on single or a small number of artists. Fourth, we selected exhibitions whose primary focus was on art that falls in the period normally deemed as contemporary (from the 1960s on) in order to sustain a reasonable degree of focus on the range of art being considered and the historical issues that might be considered in its curation.

We have treated the above criteria as guidelines rather than over‐determining rules in recognition that each of those criteria also sustains colonial privilege and dominance of Western institutions and artists within the art world broadly understood. This was particularly so of the first two criteria. With the first, a focus on what might be termed the canon‐forming art museums: by ‘canon‐forming’ we mean art museums whose scope of activities and status in the national and international exhibiting and collections landscape means that their work serves to establish norms, if not ideals, by which artworks and artists are identified and recognised as being central to the artistic production of an era, nationality or movement. Museums and art galleries play a significant part in this process by contributing their own version of the selection that stands as the representative of art more broadly, one which is reinforced by the presence of museum collections in art historical accounts in textbooks, classroom teaching (including the perpetuation of the discipline in universities) and tourist guides. The value of, structures of and need for canons in art history have been debated in scholarship over the last several decades, with Griselda Pollock making a notable contribution. Her book Differencing the Canon (1998) identifies the exclusion of women artists as a central operation of art historical canon formation, and offers varied models through which feminist art historians can engage with the role of actual women and constructions and representations of the feminine through art’s history. The generative potential of feminist thinking for reformulating art historical selections, narratives, explanations and concerns have been realised not only in academic art history but also in the curatorial projects from which we have selected the essays contained in this book. Being too rigid about the selection of exhibitions on the basis of being hosted in collection‐holding, canon‐forming, state‐supported museums would have constrained us from representing activities in regions where such institutions are thin on the ground; we looked for exceptions where the national or regional infrastructure is not that of the dominant canon formation of contemporary art. For example, continental Africa does not have many such museums. The two surveys that we have identified from Africa, Being Her(e): Meditations on African Femininities (Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, South Africa and Galeria do Banco Económico, Luanda, Angola, 2017–18) and Female Identities in the Global South (Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2020–3) happened in non‐museum settings over two and three smaller exhibitions respectively.

Our approach to the second criterion, selecting exhibitions informed by feminism, did not necessarily mean exhibitions of art by women or even art that is explicitly aligned with feminism. For example, Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography (Barbican Centre, London, 2020) is included. This was an exhibition informed by intersectional sexual politics, including feminist thinking. It displayed art that explored and challenged masculine gender identities and included art by artists who have not identified as feminist. We have selected the sections of the catalogue essay that reflect the relationship between these practices and feminism. There are also some exhibitions selected that use a longer time frame than our fourth criterion (focus on the contemporary as it is normally understood) such as Bread and Roses: Four Generations of Kazakh Women Artists (Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin, Germany, 2018). Where such exhibitions are included, they are characterised by a clear focus on the work of contemporary artists as part of a longer historical conception of feminism. These exhibitions have been selected because of their framework of feminist thinking; and also because we recognise that ‘feminism’, especially in relation to art practice, does not always align with the narratives of feminism that prevail in the anglophone and western European regions. Much of the ‘feminism’ that is in this book is determined by Western definitions and histories, although in some cases the curatorial conception directly addresses the consequences of that emphasis. For example, the curatorial conception for the exhibition Unfinished Business: Perspectives on Art and Feminism (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2017) explicitly addresses the disparities between Indigenous and settler artists within feminism, and we have highlighted this in our text selection.

The texts in this book are all presented in English. It is remarkable that only three were not already translated into or written in English as part of their original publication; another instance of a structural domination within the art world that often goes unremarked. Almost all of the catalogues were bilingual when English was not the dominant language of their venue: they were published in the dominant local language, with translations into English supplied (the versions we present here have been lightly edited to correct spelling and other matters of presentation, but we have otherwise preserved the character of the texts as translated for the original publication). The aim, presumably, was to allow for ease of international dissemination of the work. (Conversely, those produced in the Anglosphere – e.g., UK, USA, Australia, etc. – had texts only in English.) But it was also clear that despite the provision of translations into English, many of the catalogues, with the information, discussions, artists, practices and histories explored in them, were not much known outside the immediate circles of the host institution. Generally, museum catalogues are produced in limited print runs, and are not always distributed internationally. National structures of library collection (for example, legal deposit libraries) focus on national interest, including primary language, and reflect publishers’ markets. Many of the catalogues had not been collected by major art libraries to which we had access, and thus would also be largely inaccessible to artists, curators and other scholars, even if they knew about the exhibitions in the first place.

Collecting these texts together therefore also allows for a wider transnational spread of the curatorial thinking outside of the Anglosphere, and the record of the labour they hold. We hope that our research on the possible works to include has been adequate to the task of providing a foundation for curatorial and critical debate about how art by feminists and art addressing feminist issues is being introduced to museum audiences in the first decades of the twenty‐first century. It is also inevitable that we would have missed some exhibitions; right up to final production deadlines we were finding examples to consider.

The texts appear in the volume in the chronological order of the dates in which the exhibition opened, so the earliest texts appear at the beginning of the book and the most recent at the end. The texts are typically included without significant changes to their content. Any exceptions to this are noted in the brief introduction that appears before each text, which also notes the dates and locations for each exhibition and the number of artists included. The number given for ‘artists’ indicates solo producers of the work on exhibition; the number given for ‘groups’ indicates where the exhibition’s catalogue states that two or more artists (named or not) have been involved in creating the work on exhibition. The aim of these short introductions is to orient the reader in relation to the scope and scale of the exhibition, as well as to point to important curatorial themes addressed in the essay.

We have typically excluded from the reproduced material any detailed lists or descriptions of artists whose work was included in the exhibition in order to retain the focus on the curatorial vision. We have, however, provided two appendices to support the use of this volume in answering questions about how these exhibitions have drawn on the work of individuals. One appendix is a list of the curators who contributed to each exhibition; the second appendix is an index of artists which is a finding aid not only for the individual exhibitions, but also to look across the exhibitions to see which artists’ work appears with more or less frequency. This will allow the reader to use the book not only to understand the ways in which feminist practice is emerging in the hegemonic spaces of the art museum, but also to understand that there may be another contentious canon formation underway, of artists who are most or least associated with what is increasingly recognised as a distinctive and significant contribution to the art of recent decades. This is a further example of the tension between the structures and canons of art history, and feminist critiques of, and resistances within, such disciplinary practices.

Our aim in assembling this volume is to support ongoing developments of feminist curatorial work and its critical and historical interpretation, and to offer a context for the interpretation of the unique projects that have been sponsored by an international range of exhibiting institutions. By anthologising the curators’ essays we seek to demonstrate the diversity of feminisms at work in the art world globally. We also aim to make visible the work that has been done within institutions to do justice to art that, en masse, critiques the founding principles of those very institutions, their definitions of who could be an artist and what artwork constitutes the canon. As this anthology and its appendices demonstrate, the work being produced by artists, curators and their colleagues in museums and galleries around the world is impressive in its scope, ambition and volume. Assembling this collection has revealed a humbling amount of work that has been committed to the presentation of art that is by feminists, embodies or is informed by feminist thinking and, at the same time, it has revealed silences and scarcities that can also be read as an eloquent and ongoing critique of those same principles. While we state at the outset of this introduction that these exhibitions demonstrate that a ‘notable shift has happened’, the extent to which this shift will result in an enduring or structural change is still to be seen.

Notes

1

One of the current editors, Hilary Robinson, has expanded our understanding of the complexity of the landscape of feminist practice and praxis in art through different volumes of the

Feminism–Art–Theory

readers. Published first in 2001 (covering 1968–2000) with a second edition published in 2015 (extending the period covered to 2014), these anthologies collect and help to interpret large numbers of written texts that have been significant for art and feminism in those time frames.

2

The resistance of art informed by feminism to the established categories of art criticism and history is a point highlighted in the introduction and structure of the

Feminism–Art–Theory

volumes.

3

Significant contributions to this literature include

n.paradoxa

, 18, special issue on Curatorial Strategies (July 2006); Griselda Pollock,

Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive

(Abingdon: Routledge, 2007); Malin Hedlin Hayden and Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, eds.,

Feminisms Is Still Our Name: Seven Essays on Historiography and Curatorial Practices

(Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); Katrin Kivimaa, ed.,

Working with Feminism: Curating and Exhibitions in Eastern Europe

(Tallin: TLU Press, 2012); Angela Dimitrakaki and Lara Perry, eds.,

Politics in a Glass Case: Feminism, Exhibition Cultures and Curatorial Transgressions

(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013); Elke Krasny and Frauenmuseum Meran, eds.,

Women’s:Museum Frauen:Museum

(Vienna: Löcker Verlag, 2013); Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, ed.,

Curating Differently: Feminisms, Exhibitions and Curatorial Spaces

(Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016);

OnCurating

, 29, special issue on Curating in Feminist Thought (May 2016); Jenna C. Ashton, ed.,

Feminism and Museums: Intervention, Disruption and Change

(Edinburgh and Cambridge MA,: MuseumsEtc Ltd, 2017); Agata Jakubowska and Katy Deepwell, eds.,

All‐Women Art Spaces in Europe in the Long 1970s

(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018); Maura Reilly,

Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating

(London: Thames & Hudson, 2018);

OnCurating

, 52, special issue on Instituting Feminisms (November 2021); Elke Krasny, Sophie Lingg, Lena Fritsch, Birgit Bosold, Vera Hofmann, eds.,

Radicalizing Care: Feminist and Queer Activism in Curating

(New York: Sternberg Press, 2021); Elke Krasny and Lara Perry, eds.,

Curating as Feminist Organizing

(London and New York: Routledge, 2023); Elke Krasny and Lara Perry, eds.,

Curating with Care

(London and New York: Routledge, 2023).

4

Public or state‐funded museums are intended to operate in the public service and are therefore considered more impartial than private institutions, although Nizan Shaked’s recent work

Museums and Wealth: The Politics of Contemporary Art Collections

(2022) has challenged the premise of this distinction.

Life Actually15 January–21 March 2005Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, JapanCurators: Kasahara Michiko and Yonezaki KiyomiNumber of artists: 9 + 1 group

This exhibition was the 2005 iteration of the annual survey exhibitions held by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. The essay is by Kasahara Michiko, the museum’s curator. She starts by setting the conversation in the context of anglophone popular culture: the UK film version of Bridget Jones’ Diary (2002) and the American TV series Sex and the City (1998 onwards). She contrasts the different attitudes of the film and series’ protagonists to sex and a normative heterosexual partnership, and uses this to frame discussion of the subject matter of the exhibition’s works. She follows a common introductory format of attending to each of the artists in turn, gathered under four subheadings: ‘Representations of sexual pleasure’, ‘An exhilarating solitude’, ‘Family troubles and war’, and ‘Individualised subjectivity’. Notably, Michiko does not address the cultural and historical differences between the UK, the United States and Japan, nor the resulting differences in sexual politics, which indicates the problematic dominance of anglophone culture. However, these are implicit throughout; particularly as Michiko’s conclusion returns to Sex and the City, and indicates women’s changing conditions and consciousness in Japan.

1Life Actually; the Works of Contemporary Japanese Women – Love and Solitude, and Laughter for Survival in Japan

Kasahara Michiko

Introduction

In Bridget Jones’s Diary, the film version of the best‐selling British novel, the heroine exclaims, “I suddenly realized that unless something changed soon I was going to have a life where my major relationship was a bottle of wine and I’d die fat and alone and be found three weeks later half‐eaten by Alsatians. Or I was about to turn into Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.”1 The novel and film both give a lively account, humorous and ironic, of the everyday life of a single woman in her thirties living in London. This hit comedy attracted an empathetic response from many women throughout the world.2 The original book and screenplay were both written by a woman in her thirties, and one might expect that the text reflected her true feelings … Bridget anguishes and rejoices as she deals with the problems of love, work, friendship, diet, and family, getting through each day, even when things are not going as she hopes, with “love and laughter.” Many readers and moviegoers saw themselves in Bridget. After watching the movie several times, I also recognized it as an accurate recreation of the voice of a thirty‐something woman from the point of view of a woman of the same age, but there was one thing about it that bothered me. Bridget is blessed with a job, friends, family, and health, but she believes her life is wretched just because she does not have a boyfriend who might marry her, and no one around her disagrees with her view of things. This seems like a simple throwback to traditional ideas about the role of women. To a ludicrous extent, Bridget has internalized the fantasy that she will live happily ever after if she meets “Mr. Perfect” and enters into a monogamous relationship.

A quite different situation is presented in the American television drama, Sex and the City. A hit when first aired on the cable channel HBO in the United States In June 1998, it has run for six seasons. It has been shown in many other parts of the world, including Europe, Asia, and Oceania, developing a cult following and winning Emmies and other awards. The main characters of this series are women in their thirties, just like Bridget Jones, and the theme is similar. It depicts the lives and frank conversations of four young women of different types living in New York. The groundbreaking thing about Sex and the City (which also makes it a target of criticism) is that it allows women to express their real feelings and opinions about a variety of sexual issues through the semi‐public medium of cable television. The women have sex with many different kinds of men, but their active sex life is not labeled negatively as “loose,” “wanton,” or “selfish.” Instead, it is assumed that the search for sexual pleasure is a woman’s right, in fact, a basic human right.3 It is treated throughout as something positive and praiseworthy. The topics treated quite openly include women’s orgasms, masturbation, oral sex, sadomasochism, adult toys, the clitoris, the penis, impotence, premature ejaculation, lesbianism, homosexuality, bisexuality, monogamy and alternative forms of pairing. Because the show is a comedy, the freewheeling conversations may be exaggerated, but these women laughingly demolish all the myths about women’s sexuality constructed by men.

What especially differentiate themselves from Bridget Jones is that they do not make a direct connection between their relationships with boyfriends and marriage, even if pregnancy is involved. Still, they are not entirely free from the romantic ideology constructed by the modern family system, i.e., “meeting Mr. Right, marrying, and living happily ever after.” Even Samantha, the most sexually liberated of the four, is trying to build a relationship with a compatible partner (not necessarily a man), and the other three do seem to want to find the right man, get married, and live happily ever after. Of course, these women sometimes use sex for the purpose of creating a relationship with a man, but they do not fall into despair if the relationship fails and they and get hurt. They pick themselves up and find somebody new, continuing the search for “true love.” At the same time, they are well aware that “true love” and “a happy marriage” are fantasies and myths. They have a dispassionate appreciation of the reality behind “happy marriages.” They do not get upset when fantasy does not become reality. They see marriage as just one possible option in a relationship. The four best friends doll themselves up in the classical fashion of women who are trying to attract men. They pluck their eyebrows and keep their nails well manicured, wear low‐cut designer brand dresses and fashionable high‐heeled shoes. Their ideas, however, are radical: “Maybe we could be each other’s soul mates. And then we could let men just be these great nice guys to have fun with.”4 In addition, they do not have the “fear of success”5 internalized by women up until recent times, the fear that men will not love them if they succeed at work or gain position and wealth. They achieve success both at work and in their friendships, lifestyle, sex, love, and marriage as the result of their own choice. They are not afraid of failure. They take responsibility for failures that are the result of their own choice. They are portrayed as mature adult women who are psychologically and economically independent. Work, lifestyle, friendship, family, and lovers are just as, or more, important to them than marriage. Unlike Bridget Jones, they are not afraid to be alone and do not consider the single life “wretched.”

Representations of Sexual Pleasure