Pearlman Collection gifts to Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and MoMA - Upcoming Exhibitions

Pearlman Collection gifts to the Brooklyn Museum, the LACMA, and the MoMA 

Upcoming Exhibitions at the three museums

Amedeo Modigliani 

Jean Cocteau, 1916

Promised gift from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation 

to the Brooklyn Museum

Photo by Bruce White

Vincent van Gogh

Tarascon Stagecoach, 1888 

Promised gift from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation 

to the LACMA

Photo by Bruce White

Paul Cézanne 

Mont Sainte-Victoire, c. 1904–06 

Promised gift from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation 

to the MoMA

Photo by Bruce White

The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation entire collection will be gifted to three major institutions: the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Comprising an exceptional group of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modern artworks, the Pearlman Collection will be gifted across the three institutions in a novel sharing arrangement that will enhance access to larger and more diverse audiences through continually changing contexts.

In recognition of Henry and Rose’s generous spirit, the collection will travel as an exhibition before being placed under the care of the respective institutions. From February to July 2026, the exhibition Village Square: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection to the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and MoMA will be on view at LACMA, and in the fall of 2026 the collection will travel to the Brooklyn Museum. In the near future, MoMA will also present an exhibition of the Pearlman gifts.

Henry Pearlman (1895–1974) began purchasing avant-garde art in 1945 with a landscape by Chaïm Soutine, which led to a selfguided education in 19th- and 20th-century European art and a passion for collecting that endured for the rest of his life. From the very start of this collection, he and his wife, Rose, maintained a fundamental interest in sharing their experience of art as widely as possible, instilling populist values in their children and grandchildren that are the Foundation’s inspiration for making this extraordinary gift. 

As part of this gift, 29 works will join the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, with exceptional paintings and sculpture by Chaïm Soutine, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, and Amedeo Modigliani, including the latter’s 1916 portrait Jean Cocteau and an extremely rare limestone sculpture, Head (c. 1910–11); LACMA will receive six works, including Edouard Manet’s Young Woman in a Round Hat (c. 1877–79), and Vincent van Gogh’s Tarascon Stagecoach from 1888, the first paintings by either artist to enter the collection; and MoMA will receive 28 works, with a primary focus on Paul Cézanne, including the paintings Mont Sainte-Victoire (1904–06), and Cistern in the Park of Château Noir (c. 1900), as well as 15 of Cézanne’s most luminous watercolors.

“For years we have explored every model we could imagine for the future ownership and guardianship of this collection,” explained Daniel Edelman, President of the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation. “We ultimately chose the Brooklyn Museum for the works that tell Henry’s story of discovery and for its commitment to engaging a diverse community; LACMA for works that specifically enhance their ability to innovate around bringing art to where people are; and MoMA, where Cézanne’s works on paper will be shared and cared for by one of the finest departments of drawings and prints that we know, as well as a half dozen of his paintings that together support the artist’s foundational role in the story of modern art. With very different collections, communities, and presentations of art, these three great institutions share an understanding that museums, their audiences, and how those audiences engage with art, are constantly changing. All three are committed to leading that challenge and inspiring others to meet it as well.

“Rather than put conditions on the gift that would become limiting in a future that none of us can know, we created a set of guidelines to encourage these three institutions to collaborate on a flexible movement of the art among them. Our aim is to bring these major works to new audiences, allowing them to be seen in different contexts, reuniting our collection’s works with one another on a regular basis, and perhaps even inspiring collectors and museums to consider new models for ownership of art.”

“We’re thrilled to welcome this extraordinary gift from the Pearlman Collection—the most significant addition to our European art holdings in nearly a century,” said Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum. “Henry Pearlman collected with the public in mind, believing that modern art should inspire audiences of all backgrounds. Between 1960 and 1986, the Brooklyn Museum presented six exhibitions dedicated to the collection, and now, nearly 40 years after the last of those presentations, we’re honored to give a group of these masterworks a permanent home in the borough where the Pearlman family grew up. As important, we are excited by the Foundation’s strategy of collection sharing with our wonderful peers, MoMA and LACMA.”

“LACMA is deeply grateful to welcome these masterpieces to the museum’s collection, and especially for van Gogh and Manet, two towering figures of 19th-century art, whose paintings will be represented in our collection for the first time,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “It is also an honor to help fulfill Henry and Rose’s wish to share their collection with our vast public, together with the Brooklyn Museum and MoMA. We look forward to presenting the collection to LACMA’s visitors in an upcoming exhibition next year, as well as in future exhibitions at LACMA and our colleague institutions both locally and around the world.”

“This generous gift significantly expands MoMA’s collection of works by Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas, and underscores the enduring legacy of Henry and Rose’s vision,” said Glenn D. Lowry, The David Rockefeller Director of The Museum of Modern Art. “We are honored to work with our colleagues in Los Angeles and Brooklyn to ensure that the Pearlmans’ commitment to research, scholarship and access, and their belief in the artists they acquired will continue to inspire the public now and in the future.”

About the Pearlman Foundation

Since 1976, the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection has remained on long-term loan at the Princeton University Art Museum. While in the Art Museum’s care, and in collaboration with the Foundation, there have been three traveling shows of the collection, some 500 individual loans of artworks to exhibitions across the globe, and two tour publications, including a recent one offered online and free to the public.

Meanwhile the Foundation created a website that allows high resolution viewing of works, including those that can’t always be on exhibition. It supported the digitalization of the history of the collection by the American Archives of American Art and its availability online. And it encouraged proactive lending, offering individual and small groupings of works to museums to exhibit within their permanent collection galleries.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036

www.lacma.org

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet @ Brooklyn Museum - "I Will Not Bend an Inch" Retrospective Exhibition

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet 

I Will Not Bend an Inch

Brooklyn Museum

March 14 - July 13, 2025 

NANCY ELIZABETH PROPHET

Youth (Head in Wood), ca. 1930 

Wood 

Brooklyn Museum, 

Brooklyn Museum Fund for African American Art 

in honor of Saundra Williams-Cornwell, 2014.3. 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

The retrospective exhibition Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch honors the work and legacy of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (American, 1890–1960), an underrecognized sculptor best known for her work in Paris during the interwar years. Organized by and first shown at the RISD Museum, this concise survey features twenty works, including sculptures in wood and marble, polychrome wood reliefs, watercolors, and documentation of archival materials and lost or destroyed work. The exhibition is presented across two galleries of the Sackler Center for Feminist Art. The first gallery offers a close look at this artist’s small existing but remarkable output, while the second gallery provides insight into the artist’s life and studio practice. In addition, the exhibition features a collaborative film project titled Conspiracy (2022), made by artist Simone Leigh and artist and filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich. The presentation of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch is organized by Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, with Carla Forbes, Curatorial Assistant, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

Born in Rhode Island in 1890 to a Narragansett father and a Black mother, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1918. She was the first known woman of color to graduate from the prestigious art and design school. Despite her parents’ disapproval, she worked as a housekeeper after completing her public school education to pay for her tuition at RISD. Following a brief period in New York, she moved to Paris in 1922. The twelve years Nancy Elizabeth Prophet spent working in Paris mark the pinnacle of her career. Upon her arrival, she enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts and showed regularly at the Salon d’Automne, Salon d’Août, and the Salon des Artistes Français. Throughout her career, despite poverty and isolation, she remained entirely dedicated to her practice. 

In Paris, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet sculpted a series of portrait heads primarily carved from hardwood. These works form the core of the exhibition. Prophet’s nine extant sculptures in the round powerfully demonstrate the artist’s skill at treating distinctive features with an idealizing and remarkably nuanced hand. The Brooklyn Museum holds in its collection one of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet’s wooden portrait busts, currently on view in the newly reinstalled American Art galleries, Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art. The 1930 sculpture, titled Youth (Head in Wood), is one of only about a dozen known works by Nancy Elizabeth Prophet still in existence.

“The Center for Feminist Art is particularly proud to present this groundbreaking show directly after our exhibition Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies,” says Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. “In so doing, we hope to contribute to building an expanded understanding of the transformative contributions of Black women artists to modern art and the emergence of feminism across the twentieth century.”

“We are so pleased that Nancy Elizabeth Prophet’s work and story will be shared with visitors of the Brooklyn Museum,” says Tsugumi Maki, Director of the RISD Museum. “I Will Not Bend an Inch celebrates her lasting impact on the art world, particularly inspiring a new generation of artists.”

While only a handful of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet’s works in wood are known, her marble carvings, reliefs, and works on paper are rarer—seventeen of which are included in the exhibition, along with the artist’s remarkable Paris diary and her carving tools, which she significantly modified for her own use and treated with great care. The exhibition also includes revealing historical documents, such as studio photographs of works that have been lost, and Prophet’s correspondence with W. E. B. Du Bois, a lifetime supporter of the artist’s work. These materials provide insight into how she navigated the art world and sought to position her work as an Afro-Indigenous woman artist, resisting racist and sexist expectations. The exhibition’s title, I Will Not Bend an Inch, references a diary entry from Nancy Elizabeth Prophet in 1929, embodying her fiery and tenacious spirit and commitment to her craft in the face of immense adversity.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet returned to the United States in 1934. With the support of Du Bois, she settled in Atlanta, where she cofounded the art program at Spelman College, building on her legacy as an influential and transformative teacher. Ten years later, Prophet returned to Rhode Island, where she died in 1960. Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch offers the first museum examination of this singular artist, providing a timely discussion about women artists of color of the early modern era, which preceded the emergence of the feminist, Native American, and civil rights movements of the twentieth century.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch is organized by the RISD Museum. The exhibition is curated by Dominic Molon, Interim Chief Curator & Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art; Sarah Ganz Blythe, former Deputy Director of Exhibitions, Education, and Programs; and Kajette Solomon, Social Equity and Inclusion Specialist, RISD Museum. The Brooklyn Museum presentation is organized by Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, with Carla Forbes, Curatorial Assistant, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238

www.brooklynmuseum.org

Solid Gold Exhibition @ Brooklyn Museum - Commemorating the Museum’s 200th Anniversary

Solid Gold 

Brooklyn Museum 

November 16, 2024 – July 6, 2025 

Wreath (detail), Greek, 3rd–2nd century B.C.E., Gold

Brooklyn Museum

Gift of George D. Pratt, 26.763 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Wreath, Greek, 3rd–2nd century B.C.E., Gold

Brooklyn Museum

Gift of George D. Pratt, 26.763 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum Announces Solid Gold, an Expansive Exhibition Exploring Gold through Six Thousand Years of History. Commemorating the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th Anniversary, the exhibition features over 400 gold objects ranging from fashion, jewelry, and luxury objects to painting, sculpture, and film.

As a material and a color, gold has symbolized beauty, honor, joy, ritual, spirituality, success, and wealth for all of human history. The alluring metal has been transformed into myriad forms—from millennia-old depictions of an idealized world to thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian altarpieces, from Japanese screens to haute couture fashions, one-of-a-kind jewelry, and contemporary sculptures.  

Lorenzo Monaco 

Madonna of Humility (detail), ca. 1415–20.

Tempera and tooled gold on panel with engaged frame 

Brooklyn Museum 

Gift of Mary Babbott Ladd, Lydia Babbott Stokes, 

and Frank L. Babbott, Jr. 

in memory of their father Frank L. Babbott, 34.842 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Mummy Cartonnage of a Woman

1st century C.E.

Linen, gesso, gold leaf, glass, faience 

Brooklyn Museum 

Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 69.35.

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Organized in eight sections, Solid Gold presents historical objects in visual juxtaposition and “collisions” with contemporary works and fashions, sparking dynamic conversations across time and space. The opening galleries present manifestations of ancient gold, pairing antiquities from the Museum’s collection with iconic twentieth- and twenty-first-century objects. Highlights include a large sarcophagus from Dynasty 22 (945–740 B.C.E.), which will be on display to the public for the first time in over a century. The coffin is decorated with images and inscriptions painted with yellow pigments to imitate gold inlays. An extraordinary “horde” of over 170 gold pieces from the Hellenistic period, along with a selection of ancient jewelry and chain mail that span three millennia of creation across Egypt, the Mediterranean coast, and the pre-Hispanic Americas, illustrate the ancient world’s fascination with the metal.  

Coclé artist 

Plaque with Crocodile Deity, ca. 700–900 

Gold (tumbaga) 

Brooklyn Museum 

Museum Expedition 1931, Museum Collection Fund, 33.448.12 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum 

Ebrié artist 

Snake Pendant, 19th century

Gold 

Brooklyn Museum 

Frank L. Babbott Fund, 54.16 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Contemporary pieces evoke the allure of ancient Egypt, including the prototype of a fly necklace made for legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor for the film Cleopatra (1963); couture gowns by edgy New York–based fashion house The Blonds, drawn from their Egypt Meets Disco collection (2016); and theatrical gowns from Christian Dior (2004; John Galliano, creative director) that blend elements of Egyptian history and Dior’s then-controversial “H-Line” from 1954. A 1989 dress by Azzedine Alaïa for Tina Turner exemplifies modern applications of draped chain mail. Also on view are modern interpretations of gold chains, such as the “dookie rope” and “Cuban links,” whose popularity in hip-hop culture from the 1980s onward is celebrated in the show.

The exhibition also includes a look at golden smiles. Gold disks and facial jewelry made in ancient Panama around the first millennium are presented alongside modern-day grillz (also known as fronts or golds). For practical and aesthetic reasons, such gold smiles have persisted across time and cultures.

“The Real Gold” explores the origins of gold—unearthed from diverse corners of the globe, from Nubia and South Africa to Colombia, Brazil, and beyond—tells a global story of ecological transformation, environmental impact, and the human repercussions that result from the search for this precious metal. A number of artworks, including William Kentridge’s film Mine (1991), expound on the process and impact of gold mining. Another display features an array of gold coins from the American Numismatic Society and takes a closer look at both the minting process and the role of coins in disseminating propaganda images of important figures long before newspapers and social media. Rounding out this gallery is Zadik Zadikian’s Path to Nine (2024), which juxtaposes the material histories of plastic and gold. Unlike plastic, which retains artifacts of its past when reused, gold can be melted down and re-formed without a trace. Zadikian’s monumental sculpture illuminates the invisible histories of gold with the unerasable pasts of plastic.

In the “Working with Gold” section, the exhibition examines the wide array of techniques used by artists, craftspeople, and fashion designers when working with gold as a material and as decoration. With the invention of gold coinage in ancient Lydia (present-day Turkey) in the sixth century B.C.E., gold became an increasingly democratized material. Access to and use of gold was no longer restricted to royalty or for ritual purposes. Following centuries of alchemical experiments to replicate gold and the discovery of finds like pyrite (or “fool’s gold”), the twentieth century saw technological innovations that introduced new forms of golden sparkle. New materials like laminated Lurex thread and plasticized sequins made it possible to add a twinkle to fabrics at an affordable price.

Genuine gold, however, remains coveted in fine art and haute couture fashion for both its aesthetic impact and monetary value. At Dior, Marc Bohan’s celebrated Aladin ensemble from 1962 was made from a fabric woven with 56% gold on a black ground, amplifying its opulence. Conceptual artist Yves Klein and glass artist Howard Ben Tré utilized traditional gold leaf to explore gold’s luminance in their works. Esteemed jewelers and designers such as Suzanne Belperron, Alexander Calder, Charles Loloma, Art Smith, and Elsa Schiaparelli drew on gold for its malleability, color, and shimmering glimmer that amplifies the gemstones it’s set with. The exhibition also showcases the cultural significance and exquisite craftsmanship displayed in South and Southeast Asian bridal fashion. Works on view include elegant accessories such as a Nepalese dowry necklace, crafted by hammering sheets of gold over a lightweight core, and an Indian bridal veil made of gold-wrapped silk.

Jean Dupas 

Panel from the Grand Salon of the Ocean Liner Normandie, ca. 1934

Glass, paint, silver and gold leaf, canvas backing 

Brooklyn Museum 

Gift of Marilynn and Ivan C. Karp, 85.270 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Other exhibition highlights are gold fashions and artworks from the 1920s and 1930s, such as the 1934 gold- and silver-leaf panel by designer Jean Dupas from the short-lived ocean liner Normandie. Such pieces are set alongside important Art Deco timepieces by French jeweler Cartier. Another highlight is the Museum’s Lunar Moth baby grand piano, restored and on public view for the first time since its creation in 1928. Designed by famed photographer Edward Steichen, this piano is one of only two known to exist. The remarkable instrument is constructed of mahogany inlaid with gilded bands and mirrored tesserae.

Walter van Beirendonck 

Men’s Collection, Look 6, Spring/Summer 2023 

Photo: Walter van Beirendonck

The 1970s would bring about resplendent moments of gold in fashion and culture. Driven by the opulent designs of Halston, Norman Norell, and Yves Saint Laurent, the disco era celebrated abundant sequins, pavé beading, and rhinestones. Dazzling film clips from A Chorus Line (1985), which saw performers donning gold glitter tuxedos, and The Wiz (1974), featuring the parachute designs of Norma Kamali, epitomize the era. This section culminates with the premiere episode of the 1980 television series Solid Gold, featuring Irene Cara and the Solid Gold dancers bedecked in gilded ensembles delivering a rendition of her signature song “Fame.” Fashions continue into the 1980s and 1990s with couture works by Pierre Cardin and Hubert de Givenchy, “luxury sportswear” from Gianfranco Ferré, and more recent “edgy” designs by Garth Pugh, Walter van Bierendonck, and Demna, artistic director of Balenciaga.

Wreath, Greek, 3rd–2nd century B.C.E., Gold

Brooklyn Museum

Gift of George D. Pratt, 26.763 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Rashaad Newsome 

KNOT, 2014 

Single-channel video installation, 

custom artist vinyl wallpaper 

Video (color, sound): 3 min., 45 sec. (continuous loop) 

Brooklyn Museum 

Gift of the artist and De Buck Gallery 

teamLab 

Gold Waves, 2017 

Digital work, 4 channels, 6 channels,

8 channels, and 12 channels, continuous loop 

© teamLab, courtesy Pace Gallery

The final section celebrates gold as the universal symbol of achievement: a gold crown, a gold medal, a gold record, an Oscar, or a gold star on a report card. An ancient Greek gold laurel wreath dating to the third to second century B.C.E. (one of only four wholly extant wreaths in the world, and a gem from the Museum’s collection) is displayed alongside modern-day crowns, such as a spectacular gold, platinum, and diamond tiara designed by Fulco di Verdura. Some gold awards are more symbolic, such as the gold-star flags given to the mothers of military personnel who did not return from service, as documented by photographer Charles “Teenie” Harris. Many of the most coveted gold awards today are connected to performance, such as the Grammy Awards and other accolades awarded to Brooklyn-born songwriter Paul Jabara for his anthemic “Last Dance” (1978). Near the end of the exhibition, Rashaad Newsome’s KNOT (2014) is a performance-based video shown within a golden-jeweled environment; all the performers vogue in Christian Louboutin heels and would definitely receive “10s.” To close out the exhibition, visitors will walk upon the gleaming animated gold waves by international art collective teamLab, an immersive digital experience that emphasizes the fact that like the inexhaustible waves of our oceans, gold is truly eternal.

The exhibition is curated by Matthew Yokobosky, Senior Curator of Fashion and Material Culture, with Catherine Futter, Director of Curatorial Affairs and Senior Curator of Decorative Arts, and Lisa Small, Senior Curator, European Art.

“Solid Gold will transport visitors through the many worlds of gold, its joyful, though at times heartbreaking, histories, and its innumerable luminous expressions across cultures past and present.” says Matthew Yokobosky. “As a museum dedicated to bridging art and people in shared experiences, audiences will find inspiration, opening them to unexplored realms of beauty in their world.”

BROOKLYN MUSEUM

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238

www.brooklynmuseum.org

Retrospective exhibition Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies @ Brooklyn Museum, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, Art Institute of Chicago

Elizabeth Catlett  

A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies 

Brooklyn Museum 

September 13, 2024 – January 19, 2025

National Gallery of Art, Washington  

March 9 – July 6, 2025 

Art Institute of Chicago 

August 30, 2025 – January 4, 2026

The retrospective exhibition Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies showcases the enduring legacy of ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915–2012) as a visionary artist and an unwavering activist. As the most comprehensive presentation devoted to Catlett in the United States, it features more than 150 works, including well-known sculpture and prints, rare paintings and drawings, and important ephemera. The exhibition is co-organized by the Brooklyn Museum and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and presented in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago.

Elizabeth Catlett was an avowed feminist, lifelong activist, and deft formalist. Coming of age as an artist during the 1930s and 1940s, an era marked by the Great Depression and global economic turmoil, she witnessed class inequality, racial violence, and U.S. expansionism, which continue to shape the world today. Elizabeth Catlett passionately addressed these injustices through her politically engaged art. Her prints and sculptures draw on organic abstraction, American and Mexican modernism, and African art, centering the trials and triumphs of Black American and Mexican women.

For nearly a century—from Jim Crow segregation to the McCarthy era and the Cold War to President Obama’s first term—Elizabeth Catlett dedicated her life to the pursuit of formal rigor and social justice, which she understood to be mutually reinforcing. A transnational artist, Elizabeth Catlett worked in Washington, DC, Chicago, and New York before settling in Mexico, where she lived and taught for more than sixty years. She embraced a political radicalism that merged the goals of the Black Left in the United States with the lessons of the Mexican Revolution. Through her dual practices in sculpture and printmaking, Elizabeth Catlett remained committed to depicting the strength and struggles of both Black American and Mexican communities.

Organized chronologically and thematically, the exhibition traces Elizabeth Catlett’s career of creative artistry and bold political activism. From protests she staged while in high school against lynchings in Washington, DC, to her academic pursuits at Howard University and the University of Iowa, Catlett’s path was marked by a dedication to developing rigorous formal excellence and progressive social politics that deftly brought together issues of race, gender, and class. After becoming the first-ever recipient of a master of fine arts degree at the University of Iowa, Elizabeth Catlett continued her education studying ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago, and honing her practice in lithography at the South Side Community Art Center.

Elizabeth Catlett then spent four years in New York, where she studied the tenets of modernist European sculpture and became a part of a community of artists and intellectuals who coalesced around Popular Front politics. Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies includes a number of Catlett’s early paintings and sketches from this period, defying notions that she was exclusively a printmaker and sculptor and underscoring her versatility as an artist.

Elizabeth Catlett's early interest in art and politics was cemented in 1946 when she went to Mexico City to pursue printmaking at the highly regarded Mexican artist collective Taller de Gráfica Popular. Catlett ultimately became a Mexican citizen and an active participant in leftist cultural circles in Mexico City and Cuernavaca. While raising a family and teaching in Mexico, Elizabeth Catlett never lost sight of the Black liberation struggle in the United States. As she told Ebony magazine in 1970, “I am inspired by Black people and Mexican people, my two peoples.”

Through bold line work in prints and voluptuous forms in sculpture, Elizabeth Catlett draws parallels between the female experience in the United States and Mexico. In Homage to My Young Black Sisters (1968) and her public monument, Floating Family (1996), Elizabeth Catlett examines intersectional feminism and familial bonds through the medium of sculpture, referencing Brancusi, Henry Moore, historical African and Mesoamerican sculpture. The exhibition includes a selection of Elizabeth Catlett’s most iconic prints, from the Sharecropper and Black Woman series of the 1940s and 1950s to works such as Watts/ Detroit / Washington / Harlem / Newark, inspired by radical political activism of the 1960s and 1970s.

“Elizabeth Catlett’s artistry and activism resonate powerfully in today’s world, reminding us of ongoing national and international struggles against inequality and injustice. The exhibition not only celebrates Catlett’s contributions to the art world but also brings a historical voice into the present—showing how generations of Black feminists continue to inspire us to fight for a more equitable and just society,” says Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.

“In honoring Elizabeth Catlett’s legacy, we hope that her work will resonate as a poignant reminder of art’s power to ignite change and unite communities in the ongoing struggle for equality and liberation. A Black revolutionary artist, Catlett made real, material sacrifices—including nine years of political exile—to speak truth to power and to make art for all. Her political conviction was matched by her aesthetic principles. She was capacious in her artistic influences, and while she loved abstraction, she loved her people more,” says Dalila Scruggs, Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The exhibition title takes inspiration from a talk Elizabeth Catlett gave in 1970, following a decade of exile from the United States in response to her political activism in Mexico. Elizabeth Catlett said: “I have been, and am currently, and always hope to be a Black Revolutionary Artist and all that it implies.” Her impassioned speech highlights the exhibition’s core themes: a commitment to formal rigor, Black empowerment through progressive activism, and a belief that everyday people deserve access to fine art. The works throughout the presentation are evidence of Elizabeth Catlett’s enduring legacy of driving social change, both through her contributions to the art world and the movements she championed.

After the Brooklyn Museum, the exhibition will be on view at the National Gallery of Art and at the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Elizabeth Catlett  

A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies 

Edited by Dalila Scruggs

304 pages | 240 color plates | 9 x 11 | © 2024

Accompanying publication: The traveling retrospective is accompanied by a book of the same title, edited by Dalila Scruggs and distributed by the University of Chicago Press. The 304-page publication offers a revelatory look at Catlett and her nearly century-long life, highlighting overlooked works alongside iconic masterpieces. Essays address topics including Catlett’s early development as an artist-activist, the impact of political exile on her work, and the diverse influences that shaped her practice. 

Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies is organized by Dalila Scruggs, Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum; Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum; and Mary Lee Corlett, Associate Curator of Modern Prints and Drawings (retired), National Gallery of Art; with Rashieda Witter, Curatorial Assistant, National Gallery of Art, and Carla Forbes, Curatorial Assistant, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition is organized by the Brooklyn Museum and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York 11238 

www.brooklynmuseum.org

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

6th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20565

www.nga.gov

ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60603

www.artic.edu

First Nations artist Nico Williams @ Brooklyn Museum - "Aaniin, I See Your Light" Exhibition

Nico Williams 

Aaniin, I See Your Light 

Brooklyn Museum 

Through October 2024

NICO WILLIAMS  

Breeze I (detail, top); Breeze II (detail, middle); 

Breeze III (detail, bottom), 2024  

Courtesy of the artist 

© Nico Williams 

First Nations artist Nico Williams (Anishinaabe, born 1989) is featured on Brooklyn Museum plaza and American Art galleries with Nico Williams: Aaniin, I See Your Light. The site-specific installation features the artist’s prismatic beadwork and large-scale iridescent jingles, which transform the Museum into a place to play, explore, and celebrate Anishinaabe ways of being." Aaniin" means both “hello” and “I see your light” in Anishinaabemowin, making the title of this interactive installation a greeting and an invitation to join in. Through this project, the Museum builds on its commitment to amplify Indigenous voices.

For generations, Anishinaabe artists have created beadwork that shares cultural knowledge and recognizes beauty as a form of medicine. Nico Williams reflects on this tradition in his Breeze series, photographs of which are installed on the Iris Cantor Plaza. Inspired by objects from the Museum’s collection of Indigenous art, the beaded patterns in this series overlay Anishinaabe geometric designs with visual motifs found in 19th-century beadwork and ribbon-work designs. Original pieces from the Breeze series is on view in the American Art galleries through August 18, 2024.

The Iris Cantor Plaza is decorated with giant jingles inspired by the colorful metal adornments that Anishinaabe women use to decorate regalia. Originally made from tobacco tins and employed for healing practices, jingles are now worn by dancers from many Indigenous nations when competing at powwows. Nico Williams’s kaleidoscopic versions are embossed with a pattern from an Anishinaabe sugar mold in the Museum’s collection (also on view in the galleries). Visitors are encouraged to gently play with the jingles and help celebrate this long-standing tradition. The outdoor installation is on view through October 2024.

“I’m excited for people to experience my work at the Brooklyn Museum this summer, both on a larger scale outside the Museum and through the smaller pieces on display in the galleries,” says Nico Williams. “It’s wonderful to receive support from the Museum. Our art is our culture, so it’s meaningful to present it to the Brooklyn community. I’m overjoyed to be able to share Anishinaabe practices and all the exciting visual components that come along with them.”

“As the first Indigenous artist ever featured on the plaza, Nico Williams both reflects upon and expands the artistic legacy of his community,” says Dare Turner, Curator of Indigenous Art at the Brooklyn Museum. “His work commandingly transforms the front of the Museum and celebrates the enduring vibrancy of Anishinaabe culture. In doing so, he affirms Indigenous artists’ rightful place within the world of museums, within Brooklyn, and within the fabric of society at large.”

Nico Williams: Aaniin, I See Your Light is organized by Dare Turner, Curator of Indigenous Art, with Grace Billingslea, Curatorial Assistant, Arts of the Americas and Europe, Brooklyn Museum.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238 

www.brooklynmuseum.org

Nona Faustine @ Brooklyn Museum - "White Shoes" Exhibition

Nona Faustine: White Shoes 

Brooklyn Museum 

March 8 – July 7, 2024 

NONA FAUSTINE (born Brooklyn, NY, 1977)

They Tagged the Land with Trophies and Institutions from 

Their Rapes and Conquests, Tweed Courthouse, NYC, 2013 

Pigment print, 50 × 60 in.(127 × 152.4 cm) 

Courtesy of the artist and Higher Pictures 

© Nona Faustine

Nona Faustine: White Shoes centers the arresting and monumental series by artist NONA FAUSTINE (born Brooklyn, New York, 1977), which confronts the lasting—and often underrecognized—legacies of enslavement in New York City. The presentation marks the artist’s first solo museum exhibition as well as the first complete installation of Nona Faustine’s photographic project. A collection of more than forty self-portraits taken in locations across New York City’s five boroughs and Long Island, White Shoes came out of the artist’s desire to confront the city’s once prominent but now largely obscured and unacknowledged involvement in the slave trade. She reveals that these innocuous urban landscapes, from Harlem to Wall Street to Prospect Park and beyond, were once significant sites of trauma and spaces of great resilience.

“White Shoes captures the historical amnesia of New York City, a city much like the rest of the country that has not fully reckoned with its past,” says artist Nona Faustine. “I am a conduit traveling through space and time, in solidarity with people whose names and memories have been lost but are embedded in the land.”

The artist traverses the city in a pair of sensible white pumps or “Church Lady” shoes, a reference to colonialism, assimilation, and Black propriety. A number of locations including the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan, the former site of Seneca Village in Central Park, slave-owning estates in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and various Manhattan intersections serve as backdrops against which the artist places her own body in conversation with the landscape. Often posing fully nude or holding props, the artist is at once vulnerable and powerful, standing in solidarity with ancestors whose memories form an archive in the land on which she stands. At a moment when histories of trauma in the United States are regularly being removed from public teaching curricula, Nona Faustine’s powerful series provides an opportunity to engage with complex historical narratives and acknowledge their impact today.

“As a born and bred Brooklynite, Nona Faustine’s project White Shoes makes the history of this city present and personal,” says Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. “Faustine invites each of us to consider the stories we can’t see in the neighborhoods where we spend our days—to question what we know and what we don’t know about the places we call home. For an artist like Faustine, purchasing a pair of white “Church Lady” shoes at a Brooklyn Payless ShoeSource cracked open histories dating back 300 years and brought them into conversation with this moment. Those shoes invite us to look at the ground beneath our feet and to travel through time in order to acknowledge histories of Black torment, resistance, and generational resilience.”

Nona Faustine: White Shoes is organized by Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, with Carla Forbes, Curatorial Assistant, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238

www.brooklynmuseum.org

John Edmonds @ Brooklyn Museum - A Sidelong Glance

John Edmonds: A Sidelong Glance

Brooklyn Museum

Through August 8, 2021

JOHN EDMONDS (American, born 1989)

Two Spirits, 2019

Archival pigment photograph, 50 x 38 1/2 in. (127 x 97.8 cm)

Courtesy of the artist and Company, New York

© John Edmonds

John Edmonds: A Sidelong Glance is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition to date, featuring new and recent photographic portraits and still lifes of Central and West African sculptures that explore representation and Black identity in the African diaspora. For this exhibition, John Edmonds engaged directly with the Museum’s Arts of Africa collection, photographing select objects donated to the Museum in 2015 from the estate of the late African American novelist Ralph Ellison. As the recipient of the UOVO Prize for an artist living or working in Brooklyn, John Edmonds’s exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum is presented in conjunction with his large-scale public art installation on the UOVO: BROOKLYN facility’s façade.

John Edmonds: A Sidelong Glance is curated by Drew Sawyer, Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Curator, Photography, Brooklyn Museum, and Ashley James, former Assistant Curator, Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum (currently Associate Curator, Contemporary Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum).

JOHN EDMONDS is best known for his use of photography and video to create sensitive portraits and still lifes that reimagine art historical precedents and center Black queer experiences. The exhibition starts with American Gods, a group portrait by John Edmonds featuring three Black males wearing du-rags. The work introduces common themes seen throughout John Edmonds’s practice, including heightened staging of his subjects, stylistic references to art history, and the use of Black cultural materials as props. These strategies are found in John Edmonds’s ongoing series of photographs that often juxtapose friends and acquaintances from his creative community in New York with African masks and figures from various private collections, including the artist’s own. Many of these photographs explore the ways that European and American modernisms have been implicated in colonialism and the historical reception of African art in the United States and Europe. The exhibition goes on to include other notable works from John Edmonds’s practice, including Tête de femme, Whose Hands?, and Two Spirits.

In conjunction with the exhibition, John Edmonds created more than ten new photographic works featuring sculptures and masks donated to the Brooklyn Museum by the estate of the late writer Ralph Ellison, who is most well-known for his 1952 novel Invisible Man. Some of these new works by John Edmonds document individual collection objects on shimmering golden backdrops, transforming the practices of museum photography by questioning its supposed neutrality; others depict models interacting with the sculptures, stylistically similar to the artist’s recent body of work. Also on display is a commemorative figure made by an unknown Hemba artist from modern day Democratic Republic of the Congo, an object from the Ellison collection that John Edmonds photographed.

A Sidelong Glance draws its title from a phrase forwarded by scholar Krista Thompson, who used it to articulate the conflicted status of African art history within contemporary Black diaspora studies. Included in the exhibition, which is located in the Museum’s Ingrassia Gallery of Contemporary Art, is a broadsheet that visitors are encouraged to take with them. This publication, made by the artist, features the image Whose Hands?, along with footnotes drawn from scholarly publications on Baule art. 

“The Brooklyn Museum has been following John Edmonds’s career since he moved to Brooklyn in 2016, first acquiring two works from his Durag series in 2018, and we’re pleased to now present his first solo museum exhibition,” says curator Drew Sawyer. “As the Brooklyn Museum continues to look for ways to critically engage with its encyclopedic collection, we’re particularly excited to have John Edmonds integrating sculptures and masks from our Arts of Africa collection into his new photographic portraits and still lifes.”

In both his portraits and still lifes, John Edmonds uses a large-format camera to heighten the staging of his subjects and explore their sculptural potential. This evokes references to both religious painting and modernist photography. John Edmonds’s decision to highlight markers of Black self-fashioning and community—including hoodies, du-rags, and the aforementioned African sculptures—emphasizes individual style and shared visual language across time.

John Edmonds is the inaugural recipient of the UOVO Prize for an emerging Brooklyn artist. As the awardee, he receives a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, a commission for a 50x50-foot art installation on the façade of the new UOVO: BROOKLYN art storage and services facility, and a $25,000 unrestricted cash grant. Edmonds was selected independently by a team of curators from the Brooklyn Museum, and the prize is sponsored by UOVO. John Edmonds’s public mural, which is comprised of his 2019 photograph Whose Hands?, was unveiled in November 2019. It shows unidentified hands gripping an African sculpture modeled after a Baule maternity sculpture, and is accompanied by footnotes drawn from Susan Vogel’s book Baule: African Art, Western Eyes. The mural calls forth questions of ownership, collection, and transmission of African art objects over time.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238-6052 

www.brooklynmuseum.org

Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall @ Brooklyn Museum

Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall
Brooklyn Museum
May 3 – December 8, 2019

TUESDAY SMILLIE (American, born 1981) 

S.T.A.R., 2012 

Watercolor, collage on board, 9½ x 11 in. (24.1 x 27.9 cm). 

Courtesy of the artist. © Tuesday Smillie

The Brooklyn Museum presents the exhibition Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall, which commemorates the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York City by exploring the rebellion’s profound legacy and lasting impact on the queer artistic community of today. The exhibition features twenty-two LGBTQ+ artists currently or recently active in New York, whose work spans painting, sculpture, film, photography, and performance. It takes its title from the rallying words of transgender artist and activist Marsha P. Johnson, aiming to expand the collective understanding of the Stonewall Uprising’s legacy for today’s LGBTQ+ communities. The summer 1969 revolt at The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s West Village, was a landmark moment in the queer liberation and gay rights movement in the United States. However, in the ensuing decades the crucial role of transgender women of color and homeless LGBTQ+ youth in the Uprising, as well as the radical politics the rebellion embodied, have been largely marginalized by the mainstream gay rights movement. The exhibition sheds light on alternative narratives, including those of individual participants, while also exploring the realities of our current political moment through the work of artists from the vanguard of contemporary art.

Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall is organized by an interdepartmental group of five curators, each of whom brings a unique perspective to the curatorial process. The exhibition will touch all corners of the Brooklyn Museum, with work on view in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, a related Resource Room for further learning, expanded public and educational programming, and new institutional initiatives. This multidimensional approach to curation emphasizes the Brooklyn Museum’s dedication to inspiring conversations through art and providing community members with a place to have those conversations.

“The Brooklyn Museum has long been committed to providing a platform for those courageous enough to confront and question history,” says Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director, Brooklyn Museum. “With Nobody Promised You Tomorrow, we’re telling a more inclusive story of the Stonewall Uprising that connects it directly to the remarkably diverse community of LGBTQ+ artists carrying on the legacy of Stonewall now and into the future.”

The exhibition features artists Mark Aguhar, Felipe Baeza, Morgan Bassichis, David Antonio Cruz, Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski, John Edmonds, Mohammed Fayaz, Camilo Godoy, Jeffrey Gibson, Hugo Gyrl, Juliana Huxtable, Rindon Johnson, Elektra KB, Linda LaBeija, Park McArthur, Elle Pérez, LJ Roberts, Tuesday Smillie, Tourmaline, Kiyan Williams, Sasha Wortzel, and Constantina Zavitsanos. Their work are displayed across four sections that explore themes of Revolt, Heritage, Desire, and Care Networks. These themes expand upon the prevailing understanding of the Stonewall Uprising and its legacy.

“In the Revolt section, drawings and films trace the lives and honor the actions of those who organized for change before and after Stonewall, while contemporary protest signs transform into artworks that uplift and riff on activist legacies. Figures like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Stormé DeLarverie, and Marlon Riggs are commemorated in the Heritage section, which also focuses on how gentrification and violence continue to affect queer communities today,” the group of five exhibition curators explains. “The artworks in Desire explore attraction and intimacy, while moving into a space of imagining and organizing toward more equitable futures and new ways of living. In Care Networks, artists visualize their networks of affinity, support, friendship, and nightlife that provide emotional sustenance as well as spaces for experimentation and liberation.”

Artists included in the exhibition have worked individually and in collaboration to grapple with the unique conditions and questions of the current political moment. The Brooklyn Museum has commissioned new works specifically for the exhibition. They include Tourmaline’s new film Salacia, which depicts Mary Jones, a Black transgender woman who lived in New York City during the early nineteenth century, as she carves out a life for herself—and a legacy for generations ther after—in the face of systemic racism and transphobia. LJ Roberts’s Stormé at Stonewall is a large-scale sculpture that pays tribute to the diverse participants in the Stonewall Uprising—particularly lesbian activist Stormé DeLarverie—whose stories are often erased by popular media. Morgan Bassichis has created an interactive installation inspired by the radical communal living practices of Lavender Hill, a commune founded outside of Ithaca, New York, in the late 1960s. Numerous performances have also been commissioned as part of the robust schedule of public programs in conjunction with the exhibition.

Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall is curated by Margo Cohen Ristorucci, Public Programs Coordinator; Lindsay C. Harris, Teen Programs Manager; Carmen Hermo, Associate Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art; Allie Rickard, Curatorial Assistant, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art; and Lauren Argentina Zelaya, Acting Director, Public Programs, Brooklyn Museum. Its Resource Room is organized by Levi Narine, Teen Programs Assistant, InterseXtions and Special Projects, in collaboration with the curators.

Generous support for this exhibition is provided by The Kaleta A. Doolin Foundation. Additional support is provided by Paul R. Beirne, the Helene Zucker Seeman Memorial Exhibition Fund, and MaryRoss Taylor.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238-6052
www.brooklynmuseum.org

Liz Johnson Artur @ Brooklyn Museum

Liz Johnson Artur: Dusha
Brooklyn Museum
May 3 - August 18, 2019

LIZ JOHNSON ARTUR (born Bulgaria 1964)

Josephine, Peckham, 1995

Chromogenic photograph, 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 60.9 cm) 

Courtesy of the artist. © Liz Johnson Artur

The Brooklyn Museum presents Liz Johnson Artur: Dusha, the first solo museum exhibition devoted to the work of the Russian Ghanaian artist, whose three-decade career has focused on photographing individuals and communities across the African diaspora. The exhibition presents an installation of photographic works, sketchbooks, films, and audio drawn from Liz Johnson Artur’s vast Black Balloon Archive, which she began after her first visit to Brooklyn in 1986. The exhibition is curated by Drew Sawyer, the Museum’s Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Curator of Photography.

"This exhibition continues the Brooklyn Museum’s commitment to presenting the work of artists who reflect the communities of our borough," says Drew Sawyer. "With Dusha, we’re also excited to bring Johnson Artur back to Brooklyn, where her artistic project started."

Liz Johnson Artur was born in 1964 and spent her childhood in Bulgaria, Russia, and Germany. In 1986, she traveled to New York, where she stayed with a Russian family in a predominantly Black community in Brooklyn. It was there that she first experimented with photography and was inspired to use her camera as a way to connect with people. She moved to London in 1991 to pursue photography at the Royal College of Art, where she began working for magazines like The Face and i-D, but continued to grow her artistic practice.

Dusha (which means "soul" in Russian) features more than 75 photographic works spanning the artist’s career. The focus of the Brooklyn Museum’s presentation is her Black Balloon Archive, whose name comes from a song featured on the American soul singer Syl Johnson’s 1969 album Is It Because I’m Black, which expresses his joy at seeing a large black balloon dancing against a "snow-white" sky. Liz Johnson Artur’s Archive captures the multiplicity of everyday life in Africa, Europe, North America, and the Caribbean. The exhibition includes her early photographs in Brooklyn, some of her most iconic pictures from the past thirty years, as well as new photographs, such as portraits of people associated with the monthly East London club night PDA, which stands for Public Display of Affection. Also on view are the artist’s sketchbooks, filled with photographs, which she has used to organize and conceptualize her archive since the early 1990s.

Liz Johnson Artur’s work thoughtfully explores representation and self-representation. Central to her practice is her intimate engagement with people, meeting them and seeing each subject as having their own individual story. Two videos and a sound installation highlight how the artist foregrounds the unique voices and stories of her subjects. Real ... Times (2018) weaves together various narratives from London’s communities—from Windrush protest rallies to the Born N Bread collective. Afro Russians (2010-2019) documents the stories of other Russians of African and Caribbean descent. Finally, a selection of Liz Johnson Artur’s portraits of the legendary Ghanaian photographer James Barnor are accompanied by a sound collage of interviews with Barnor.

Liz Johnson Artur: Dusha is curated by Drew Sawyer, Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Curator of Photography, Brooklyn Museum.

This emerging artist is presented at the Brooklyn Museum with the support of Deutsche Bank. Generous support is provided by the Bertha and Isaac Liberman Foundation.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238-6052
www.brooklynmuseum.org

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 @ Brooklyn Museum

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985
Brooklyn Museum
April 13 - July 22, 2018

Sandra Eleta (born Panama, 1942) 

Detail of Edita (la del plumero), Panamá

(Edita [the one with the feather duster], Panama), 1977, from the series

La servidumbre (Servitude), 1978–79. Black-and-white photograph, 19 × 19 in.

(48.3 × 48.3 cm). Courtesy of Galería Arteconsult S.A., Panama. © Sandra Eleta

The Brooklyn Museum presents Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985, the first comprehensive exhibition to explore the pioneering artistic practices of Latin American and Latina women artists during a tumultuous and transformational period in the history of the Americas and the development of contemporary art.

Radical Women includes more than 260 works—including photography, video, and other experimental mediums, as well as paintings, sculpture, and prints—by more than 120 artists working in 15 countries. The Brooklyn Museum is the only East Coast venue of this critically acclaimed exhibition organized by the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

The artists included range from emblematic figures to less familiar names. Since the 1990s Latin American and Latina women artists such as Beatriz González, Anna Maria Maiolino, Ana Mendieta, Lygia Pape, and Cecilia Vicuña have been widely recognized for their originality and the experimental nature of their work, and they are considered to be among the most influential artists of the twentieth century. However, many other Latin American women and Latina artists are deserving of greater recognition, given their significant contributions. Puerto Rico–based Cuban artist Zilia Sánchez, for example, imbued the formal language of geometric abstraction with a sense of eroticism in the 1960s, and Los Angeles–based Chicana activist artist Judith F. Baca created vital mural paintings. Equally important are pioneering video artists such as Letícia Parente (Brazil), Narcisa Hirsch (Argentina), and Pola Weiss (Mexico), whose works employ the female body to symbolize both the restrictions imposed on women and the freedom of expression coveted by citizens across Latin America in the mid-1970s. Expanding upon the exhibition to address the Latinx communities of the New York audience, the Brooklyn Museum presentation also includes Nuyorican portraits by New York–born, Puerto Rican photographer Sophie Rivera, as well as work from Chicana graphic arts pioneer Ester Hernandez, Cuban filmmaker Sara Gomez, and Afro-Latina activist and artist Marta Moreno Vega.

Addressing an art-historical vacuum, one that has largely excluded Latin American and U.S.-based Latina women artists from the record, Radical Women highlights work created during a period of profound political and social turmoil in many Latin American countries in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, a period that saw the emergence of multiple dictatorships as well as significant and often subversive interventions by the government of the United States. The artworks in Radical Women can be viewed as heroic acts giving voice to generations of women across Latin America and the United States. Proposing both aesthetic and political radicality, the work in the exhibition foregrounds feminist concerns such as bodily autonomy, oppressive social norms, gendered violence, and the environment.

Radical Women centers on the notion of the political body. The artists represented embarked on radical and experimental artistic investigations beginning in the early 1960s, forging new paths in photography, performance, video, and conceptual art. They generated a line of inquiry focused on the politicization of the female body and sought to break free from an atmosphere of political and social repression that subjugated women. In their work, the representation of the female body became a starting point for questioning the established art-historical canon, as well as a means of denouncing social, cultural, and political acts of violence and oppression. Some artists employed the body as both an actual medium and metaphorically, using a new iconography to explore both the personal and the political. The exhibition argues that many underrecognized artists have helped to shape a more complex, expanded, and diverse field of conceptual, video, performance, and installation art in Latin America and the United States.

“Poetic and political, topics explored in the exhibition include self-portraiture, body landscape, and feminisms,” explained Andrea Giunta, co-curator of the exhibition at the Hammer Museum. “These themes draw together the artworks across national and geographic boundaries, making the case for parallel practices by artists often working in very different cultural conditions.”

Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, and cocurator of the Brooklyn presentation, added, “The exhibition is a remarkable scholarly achievement, expanding the canon and complicating known narratives of conceptual art and radical art-making, while building on the legacy of important and ambitious exhibitions at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, including We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, and Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968.”

Radical Women also examines the artists’ various approaches to feminism in relation to their geographic context and their specific political and social backgrounds. In Latin America, the history of feminist militancy was not widely reflected in the arts, with the exception of Mexico and some isolated cases in the 1970s and 1980s, and in many countries feminism was not a defined movement. In the United States, Latina and Chicana artists challenged patriarchal politics that were as oppressive as those faced by their counterparts in Latin America, and many participated in the civil rights, antiwar, gay rights, disability, and feminist movements, though often from a different perspective and, at times, in opposition to mainstream feminism.

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 is organized by the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, an initiative of the Getty with arts institutions across Southern California, and guest curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta with Marcela Guerrero, former curatorial fellow. The Brooklyn presentation is organized by Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, and Carmen Hermo, Assistant Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.

ARTIST LIST

Artists are primarily listed by the country of their birth. In some cases, artists are listed by the country where they produced most of their work.

ARGENTINA
María Luisa Bemberg (1922–1995)
Delia Cancela (b. 1940)
Graciela Carnevale (b. 1942)
Alicia d’Amico and Sara Facio (1933–2001 and b. 1932)
Diana Dowek (b. 1942)
Graciela Gutiérrez Marx (b. 1945)
Narcisa Hirsch (b. Germany, 1928)
Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini (b. 1935 and 1954)
Lea Lublin (b. Poland, 1929–1999)
Liliana Maresca (1951–1994)
Marta Minujín (b. 1943)
Marie Orensanz (b. 1936)
Margarita Paksa (b. 1933)
Liliana Porter (b. 1941)
Dalila Puzzovio (b. 1943)
Marcia Schvartz (b. 1955)

BRAZIL
Mara Alvares (b. 1948)
Claudia Andujar (b. Switzerland, 1931)
Martha Araújo (b. 1943)
Vera Chaves Barcellos (b. 1938)
Lygia Clark (1920–1988)
Analívia Cordeiro (b. 1954)
Liliane Dardot (b. 1946)
Lenora de Barros (b. 1953)
Iole de Freitas (b. 1945)
Anna Bella Geiger (b. 1933)
Carmela Gross (b. 1946)
Anna Maria Maiolino (b. Italy, 1942)
Márcia X. (1959–2005)
Ana Vitória Mussi (b. 1943)
Lygia Pape (1927–2004)
Letícia Parente (1930–1991)
Wanda Pimentel (b. 1943)
Neide Sá (b. 1940)
Regina Silveira (b. 1939)
Teresinha Soares (b. 1927)
Amelia Toledo (1926–2017)
Celeida Tostes (1929–1995)
Regina Vater (b. 1943)

CHILE
Gracia Barrios (b. 1927)
Sybil Brintrup and Magali Meneses (b. 1954 and 1950)
Roser Bru (b. Spain, 1923)
Gloria Camiruaga (1941–2006)
Luz Donoso (1921–2008)
Diamela Eltit (b. 1949)
Paz Errázuriz (b. 1944)
Virginia Errázuriz (b. 1941)
Catalina Parra (b. 1940)
Lotty Rosenfeld (b. 1943)
Janet Toro (b. 1963)
Eugenia Vargas Pereira (b. 1949)
Cecilia Vicuña (b. 1948)

COLOMBIA
Alicia Barney (b. 1952)
Delfina Bernal (b. 1941)
Feliza Bursztyn (1933–1982)
María Teresa Cano (b. 1960)
Beatriz González (b. 1938)
Sonia Gutiérrez (b. 1947)
Karen Lamassonne (b. United States, 1954)
Sandra Llano-Mejía (b. 1951)
Clemencia Lucena (1945–1983)
María Evelia Marmolejo (b. 1958)
Sara Modiano (1951–2010)
Rosa Navarro (b. 1955)
Patricia Restrepo (b. 1954)
Nirma Zárate (1936–1999)

COSTA RICA
Victoria Cabezas (b. United States, 1950)

CUBA
Antonia Eiriz (1929–1995)
Sara Gomez (1942–1974)
Ana Mendieta (1948–1985)
Marta María Pérez (b. 1959)
Zilia Sánchez (b. 1928)

GUATEMALA
Margarita Azurdia (1931–1998)

MEXICO
Yolanda Andrade (b. 1950)
Maris Bustamante (b. 1949)
Ximena Cuevas (b. 1963)
Lourdes Grobet (b. 1940)
Silvia Gruner (b. 1959)
Kati Horna (b. Hungary, 1912–2000)
Graciela Iturbide (b. 1942)
Ana Victoria Jiménez (b. 1941)
Magali Lara (b. 1956)
Mónica Mayer (b. 1954)
Sarah Minter (1953–2016)
Marta Palau (b. Spain, 1934)
Polvo de Gallina Negra (active 1983–93)
Carla Rippey (b. United States, 1950)
Jesusa Rodríguez (b. 1955)
Pola Weiss (1947–1990)

PANAMA
Sandra Eleta (b. 1942)

PARAGUAY
Olga Blinder (1921–2008)
Margarita Morselli (b. 1952)

PERU
Teresa Burga (b. 1935)
Gloria Gómez-Sánchez (1921–2007)
Johanna Hamann (1954–2017)
Victoria Santa Cruz (1922–2014)

PUERTO RICO
Poli Marichal (b. 1955)
Frieda Medín (b. 1949)

UNITED STATES
Celia Álvarez Muñoz (b. 1937)
Judith F. Baca (b. 1946)
Barbara Carrasco (b. 1955)
Josely Carvalho (b. Brazil, 1942)
Isabel Castro (b. Mexico, 1954)
Ester Hernandez (b. 1944)
Yolanda López (b. 1942)
María Martínez-Cañas (b. Cuba, 1960)
Marta Moreno Vega (b. 1942)
Sylvia Palacios Whitman (b. Chile, 1941)
Sophie Rivera (b. 1938)
Sylvia Salazar Simpson (b. 1939)
Patssi Valdez (b. 1951)

URUGUAY
Nelbia Romero (1938–2015)
Teresa Trujillo (b. 1937)

VENEZUELA
Mercedes Elena González (b. 1952)
Marisol (b. France, 1930–2016)
Margot Römer (1938–2005)
Antonieta Sosa (b. United States, 1940)
Tecla Tofano (b. Italy, 1927–1995)
Ani Villanueva (b. 1954)
Yeni y Nan (active 1977–86)

BROOKLYN MUSEUM
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238-6052
www.brooklynmuseum.org