BU Art Galleries Exhibition Marks Centennial of 19th Amendment
Photographs by artists Claire A. Warden (from left), Jordanna Kalman, and Elizabeth M. Claffey hang side by side in the Stone Gallery. Kalman’s piece is a commentary on being labeled a “woman photographer” instead of just a “photographer.” Claffey’s Invisible Crime uses imagery from crime scene photographs to visualize the 2016 American presidential election. Photos by Jackie Ricciardi This article was first published in BU Today on August 6, 2021. By Sam Drysdale (COM’21)
BU Art Galleries Exhibition Marks Centennial of 19th Amendment
EXCERPT
Last August marked the centennial of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibited the country from denying citizens the right to vote based on their sex, thus paving the way for women to vote. A fascinating exhibition, A Yellow Rose Project,currently on view at the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery at Boston University, explores how that historic moment continues to play out more than a century later.
The show, a large-scale, photographic collaboration by women artists from across the United States, uses the centennial to reflect on American womens’ past, present, and future.
Upon entering the gallery, one of the first works that draws the eye is an image by Toni Pepe, a College of Fine Arts assistant professor of photography who is responsible for bringing the exhibition to BU. Titled Mrs. Nixon, the work—a photo of a news clipping—recalls a meeting between President Nixon’s wife and members of the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women.
Pepe was one of more than 100 artists who were asked to contribute work for the original A Yellow Rose Project, which toured galleries across the country in 2020. The show’s name pays tribute to the women who stood shoulder to shoulder in Tennessee on August 18, 1920, wearing yellow roses, as they awaited the roll call by the men who would determine the fate of the 19th Amendment. After a final showing in New Mexico, the project was set to wrap up when Pepe brought it to the attention of Lissa Cramer, managing director of BU Art Galleries. As it turned out, Cramer had an available opening in the Stone Gallery’s calendar and decided to bring the show to Boston.
Since the show had already ended, all of the pieces had been returned to the artists. Recreating the exhibition in the Stone Gallery space took a lot of hard work, Cramer says. Along with the two cofounders of the show, Meg Griffiths and Frances Jakubek, Cramer got back in touch with all of the photographers. Realizing that it would be prohibitive financially to transport work from 100 artists around the country, she came up with a solution—choosing just 39 photographs from the original show and including images of the others on a screen in the gallery.
“Everyone still gets to participate, this is just our version of the show. And I have to say, I’m just so happy with how it turned out,” says Cramer. “I just wanted to make sure that all the women got their day in the sun, even if they couldn’t physically have a work on site.”
The resulting exhibition is as diverse as it is colorful. The collection includes traditional photographs, as well as images that have been manipulated with double exposure, ink, paint, or digital tools. The one thread that connects them is that they all address the presence of womanhood.
When Griffiths and Jakubek first approached Pepe about contributing to the originalproject, the artist had been experimenting with work based on discarded press photographs she found on eBay and at flea markets.
“These photographs are beautiful objects,” says Pepe. “They are littered with crop marks, and date stamps, and all sorts of caption and text information. What I was most interested in was the push and pull between the image and the text.”
For Mrs. Nixon, Pepe selected a press photograph from May 8, 1969, depicting women carrying banners, shouting, chanting, and marching in front of the White House. The photo’s caption reads: “Representatives of the National Organization for Women carry scarves and chant for equal rights for women as they protest outside the White House Wednesday. Inside the mansion, Mrs. Nixon was meeting with the Commission on the Status of Women. She said she doesn’t think there’s discrimination and neither does the President.”
The date is stamped across the image, and a pencil mark is scribbled on the page. By pinning up the newspaper clipping and backlighting it, both the front and back of the page are simultaneously visible in Pepe’s photo of the image. This technique prioritizes the text, which is darker and sharper than the background picture.
Pepe says that by photographing newspapers and not just the original press photographs, she’s able to show how issues like the National Organization of Women protest were presented to readers at the time.
“I was really honored to be included in this project, mainly because it wasn’t just this pure celebration, but was also kind of a critical evaluation of our history of this moment in history, so that we can view it in a more nuanced way,” says Pepe. “There were people who were celebrating this and who were in the fold as a part of this movement. And then there were people who were excluded.”
BOSTON UNIVERSITY ART GALLERIES
Dedicated to serving the Boston University community, as well as the Greater Boston and New England public, the Boston University Art Galleries are committed to a culturally inclusive and interdisciplinary interpretation of art and culture. Located within walking distance on the Boston University campus, the Faye G., James, and Jo Stone Gallery and 808 Gallery maintain an ongoing schedule of temporary exhibitions that focus on contemporary international, national, and regional art development. For more information, visit bu.edu/art.