The MacArthur Fellows Program announced the 24 individuals awarded “genius grants” this year—including nine women. Two prominent U.S. artists, Nicole Eisenman and LaToya Ruby Frazier, received $625,000 in funding over five years.
NPR spoke with Frazier about her work exploring the collapse of the steel industry in her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. Retelling the town’s history through photos of her own family, Frazier reveals the roles of African-Americans in Braddock’s industry, which had been “overlooked and ignored and erased from the history pages.” As a call for social justice, her work serves as a “human document” of the injustices faced by the working class.
Front-Page Femmes
Moa Karlberg photographs women’s faces in Sweden and Tanzania during the final stages of giving birth.
ARTINFO interviews Tania Bruguera about her new project, The Francis Effect, which confronts issues of immigration by appealing to the pope.
Jerry Saltz asks, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Bad-Boy Artists?” In this Vulture article, Saltz explains that “the art world has never really known what to do with them, mostly responding from fear.”
Flutist Clare Chase “is a model for a new generation of American classical musicians,” writes The New Yorker.
Sound artist Christine Sun Kim rethinks definitions of sound and silence.
A new project invites contemporary women artists to imagine the narratives and voices of characters in Western art’s recurring images of women reading.
International art curator Koyo Kouoh discusses contemporary African Art and the “invisible boundary” of the Sahara.
Hillary Clinton made a “girl power” Spotify playlist. Slate lists more empowering songs by women artists.
Nancy Meyers’s The Intern gets dismissed by male critics as a “chick flick.” The Guardian says, “It’s not unusual for [female filmmakers’] work to receive unduly harsh criticism.”
Screenwriter Julia Hart discusses her work in the feminist Western film, The Keeping Room. Hart enjoys taking “classic tropes that have been dominated by men and turning them around and making them female.”
The Women’s List is an oral history of 50 years of women’s equality told through 15 trailblazing women.
Author Julie Schumacher becomes the first woman to win the Thurber prize for humor writing.
Singer and model Grace Jones releases her memoir, I’ll Never Write My Memoirs.
Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last is a strange version of reality.
New York Magazine shares words of wisdom by 25 famous women writers.
Shows We Want to See
Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta investigates the mostly-forgotten films of the multi-talented feminist artist. artnet says the exhibition “remedies this fractured past, so that the artist can be more than her tragedy.”
Including over 90 works, The Indestructible Lee Miller reveals how Miller’s experience as a model for Vogue and Man Ray influenced her photography.
Mexican Photography: Women Pioneers includes photos from “some of Mexico’s most celebrated photographers, though most are not famous outside the art world.”