{"id":4075,"date":"2019-12-03T11:51:43","date_gmt":"2019-12-03T16:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/?p=4075"},"modified":"2019-12-10T10:14:11","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T15:14:11","slug":"women-take-the-floor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/2019\/12\/03\/women-take-the-floor\/","title":{"rendered":"Women Take the Floor"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Figure 1. Alice Neel (American, 1900\u20131984), Linda Nochlin and Daisy, 1973, Oil on canvas. Seth K. Sweetser Fund \u00a9 The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York\/London. Photograph \u00a9 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston<\/span> <\/b>
\n<\/b>September 13, 2019 – May 3, 2021<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Extreme times call for extreme heroines.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

-Betye Saar<\/span><\/p>\n

At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, visitors are drawn into the third level of the Art of the Americas Wing by a number of converging speech bubbles featuring provocative statements by radical women thinkers <\/span>and makers, including 93-year old Betye Saar, whose work is finally getting attention from major museums.[1]<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>This provides a fitting entry point for the exhibition Women Take the Floor<\/i>, which contends with \u201cthe dominant history of 20th-century American art by focusing on the overlooked and underrepresented work and stories of women artists.\u201d<\/span>[2]<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Figure 2. Installation view: \u201cWomen Depicting Women: Her Vision, Her Voice,\u201d Women Take the Floor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As one makes one\u2019s <\/span>way into the main gallery space, comprised of portraits of women by women, one <\/span>sees<\/span> Alice Neel\u2019s painting, Linda Nochlin and Daisy<\/em> (1973) (Fig. 1). This encounter sets the tone of what\u2019s to come.[3]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0An accompanying video features Nochlin discussing the portrait, allowing her voice as a feminist art historian to flow through the exhibition. She was\u00a0well<\/span> known for her 1971 essay \u201cWhy Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,\u201d where she discusses possible answers for said gender disparity, including issues of class and institutional discrimination. In spite of these forces, Nochlin argues that\u00a0women can capitalize on their outsider position to unveil the fragility of the establishment.[4]<\/span><\/a> As Lorna Simpson\u2019s challenge to stereotypical notions of gender makes clear, the hegemonic narrative is in an ongoing process of destabilization of which this exhibition aims to be a part (Fig. 2).<\/p>\n

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Figure 3. Installation view: \u201cWomen Depicting Women: Her Vision, Her Voice,\u201d Women Take the Floor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Organized on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted white American women the right to vote, and the 150th anniversary of the MFA\u2019s founding, Women Take the Floor<\/em> signals the museum\u2019s recognition of its own inconsistent history of supporting women artists. Mining the collection, Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Nonie Gadsen and her curatorial team position the show as a necessary corrective to previous exhibitions and collecting practices that have neglected women artists. In keeping with the museum\u2019s larger mission to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion, museum staff selected more than two hundred works by nearly one hundred women from the last century, many of them historically overlooked and underrepresented.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Moving further into the core gallery, just behind Simpson\u2019s \u201cfemale\u201d portraits, viewers are struck by a fractured installation of walls of uneven size\u2014<\/span>far from the traditional white cube\u2014<\/span>framed in vivid red paint (Fig. 3). They recall the provocative graphic aesthetic of Barbara Kruger, who is known for layering white Futura Bold typeface against red text bars over found imagery.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet Kruger\u2019s Untitled (You Construct Intricate Rituals) <\/em>(1981), which entered the MFA\u2019s collection in 1993, is strangely absent from this reinstallation\u2014or \u201ctakeover\u201d\u2014which seems like a missed opportunity given the MFA\u2019s appropriation of her iconic aesthetic. Highlights of this room include Frida Kahlo\u2019s dignified double-portrait of Mexican-working class women and Andrea Bowers\u2019 large-scale photograph of black trans-feminist activist CeCe McDonald. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Figure 4. Kiki Smith (American, born 1954), Banshee Pearls, 1991, Lithograph, with photolithograph and Xerox transfer, on handmade paper. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Promised gift of Richard E. Caves.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The dynamism of \u201cWomen Depicting Women\u201d is downplayed in the six other exhibition galleries, which, at times, explore overfamiliar themes. There are several paintings by well-known artist Georgia O\u2019Keeffe; large-scale canvases by women Abstract Expressionist painters; and gendered landscapes. Perhaps more engrossing are the fiber sculptures by Lenore Tawney and Olga de Amaral; prints that artists including Kiki Smith and Lee Bontecou made at Tatyana Grosman\u2019s lithography workshop, Universal Limited Art Editions; and the juxtaposition of Carmen Herrera\u2019s geometric abstract painting, Blanco y Verde<\/i> (1959), with the gown that it inspired (Fig. 4). One of the show\u2019s greatest strengths is its presentation of works in various media, from paintings, prints, and photographs to ceramics, textiles, furniture, and jewelry, reflecting the diversity of approaches women have taken in the decades following the campaign for women\u2019s suffrage.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As one exits the exhibition, they may notice Alexander Calder\u2019s Mobile blanc <\/i>(Fig. 5). Made in 1971 <\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/i> the same year Nochlin published her famous essay \u2013 it looms high above the space, quietly propelled by air\u00a0currents. One could chalk this up, of course, to the challenges of de-installing a Calder mobile, but some might find its intrusion quite curious, and a little unwelcome.[5]<\/a>\u00a0Its monumentality, however, is defused by Alice Neel, Lorna Simpson, and Louise Bourgeois, whose artistic achievements \u201ctake the floor\u201d and<\/em> the walls in what was (and still is) a male-defined domain. As Nonie Gadsden explained at the MFA\u2019s press preview, the phrase \u201cNevertheless, she persisted\u201d applies to every woman artist who persists in spite of numerous obstacles. Women Take the Floor <\/em>succeeds in showcasing not merely their creative vision but also their unapologetic presence.[6]<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Figure 5. Installation view: \u201cWomen Depicting Women: Her Vision, Her Voice,\u201d Women Take the Floor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Constanza Robles and Althea Ruoppo
\n<\/span><\/h3>\n

Download Article<\/a><\/p>\n

____________________<\/span><\/p>\n

[1]<\/span><\/a>In a recent interview with Holland Cotter, Betye Saar, whose work is the subject of two concurrent solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, declared, \u201c…it\u2019s about time! \u201cI\u2019ve had to wait till I\u2019m practically 100.\u201d Holland Cotter, \u201c\u2018It\u2019s About Time!\u2019 Betye Saar\u2019s Long Climb to the Summit,\u201d New York Times, <\/i>September 4, 2019. https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/09\/04\/arts\/design\/betye-saar.html<\/span><\/a>. Accessed October 21, 2019.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/span><\/a>Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Women Take the Floor<\/i>,\u00a0 https:\/\/www.mfa.org\/exhibition\/women-take-the-floor<\/a>. Accessed October 21, 2019.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

[3]<\/span><\/a>Broad in scope and ambitious in aim, Women Take the Floor<\/i> is divided into seven thematic sections over just as many galleries: \u201cWomen Depicting Women: Her Vision, Her Voice;\u201d \u201cWomen of Action;\u201d \u201cWomen Publish Women: The Print Boom;\u201d \u201cWomen on the Move: Art and Design in the 1920s and \u201930s;\u201d \u201cWomen and Abstraction at Midcentury;\u201d \u201cNo Man\u2019s Land;\u201d and \u201cBeyond the Loom: Fiber as Sculpture \/ Subversive Threads.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[4]<\/span><\/a>Linda Nochlin. \u201cWhy have there been no great women artists?\u201d In Hess, Thomas, and Baker, Elizabeth. Art and Sexual Politics; Women\u2019s Liberation, Women Artists, and Art History<\/i>. Art News Series (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 37.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[5]<\/span><\/a>In 1943, the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted Alexander Calder: Sculptures and Constructions<\/i>, making Calder, then just 45 years old, the youngest artist at that point to have been given a retrospective there.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[6]<\/span><\/a>The authors would like to thank the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for providing the opportunity to attend the season preview on September 12, 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston September 13, 2019 – May 3, 2021 Extreme times call for extreme heroines.\u00a0 -Betye Saar At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, visitors are drawn into the third level of the Art of the Americas Wing by a number of converging speech bubbles featuring provocative statements by radical women thinkers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12162,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4075"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12162"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4075"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4171,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4075\/revisions\/4171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}