Artist Spotlight

View of the museum from outside showing the Neoclassical building from one corner. The building is a tan-colored stone with an arched doorway, long vertical windows, and detailed molding around the roof.
Back to all blog posts

Artist Spotlight: Dara Birnbaum—Video as Subject and Form

Posted: June 24, 2014
Category: Artist Spotlight
On view in Total Art: Contemporary Video, Dara Birnbaum’s Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–79) opens with several minutes of footage showing intense explosions, transformations, and sampled disco tunes. Just as a...
View of a gallery space. In a dark room, the title of the exhibition, "Total Art: Contemporary Video", is projected on a wall.

NMWA’s New York Avenue Sculpture Project: Magdalena Abakanowicz

Posted: June 20, 2014
Category: Artist Spotlight
To honor Magdalena Abakanowicz on her 84th birthday, NMWA anticipates the upcoming public installation of her work on New York Avenue as the third artist in the New York Avenue...
Ten larger-than-life bronze sculptures of human bodies are installed in the middle of a city street. The bodies have no heads or arms, and are striding forward in five rows of two. While they are not naked, their wrinkled body-tight clothing makes no distinction between shirt and pants.

LRC Book Review: Life Stories of Women Artists, 1550–1880

Posted: May 29, 2014
Category: Artist Spotlight
A recent acquisition at the Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center, this compilation includes 46 biographical narratives written by the artists’ contemporaries, more than half of which are newly...
A detailed engraving portrays a large, black and tan lizard with a white belly in precise detail. Facing right and positioned over a green surface and a hatching egg, the reptile bites a long, red and black snake attacking another egg and curling around the lizard's tail.

The Art of Contradiction: Nazi Reception of Käthe Kollwitz

Posted: May 16, 2014
Category: Artist Spotlight
The Downtrodden (1900), an etching by German printmaker and sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, is back on view in NMWA’s exhibition galleries.
Print depicting a woman cradling the head of dead or ailing child in her lap; a man standing to her left turns away, covering his face with a hand.While the overall composition is black, with touches of light defining the features of the couple, a bright light illuminates the child's visage.

One is Silver and the Other’s Gold: Meret Oppenheim’s Friendships at NMWA

Posted: April 28, 2014
Category: Artist Spotlight
Now on view at NMWA, a selection of Meret Oppenheim’s art, correspondence, and archival materials provide insight into this prolific artist. Meret Oppenheim: Tender Friendships documents friendship as a source...
An open book into whose pages the shapes of hands have been cut. Gray gloves painted with red veins are visible through the cutouts. An identical pair of gloves rest next to the book.

Controversial Representations of Sexuality in Feminist Art

Posted: April 18, 2014
Category: Artist Spotlight
Judy Chicago’s installation The Dinner Party premiered in San Francisco on March 1979. Soon after, it received backlash from the public because the recurring “butterfly” motif in Chicago’s dinner plates...
Installation view of a gallery space with purple walls. Several colorful art pieces are hanging on the wall. On one wall, the text says: Judy Chicago, circa '75.

Anita Steckel: Fighting Censorship and Double Standards

Posted: January 28, 2014
Category: Artist Spotlight
According to materials from the archive of artist Anita Steckel, before she revealed her solo exhibition The Sexual Politics of Feminist Art at Rockville Community College in 1973, a female...
A book is lying in a glass case. The book shows text and a black-and-white photographic portrait of a woman's face.

The Common Thread: Quilt Grids

Posted: January 24, 2014
Category: Artist Spotlight
In Quilts as Women’s Art: A Quilt Poetics, quilter and activist Radka Donnell discusses an organizational feature of the quilt—its “grid”—which she defines as the element that is “not locking...
Vintage quilt in dark reds and greens on a cream background. In the center is a large eight-point Star of Bethlehem surrounded by Victorian floral appliques. The border, edged in dark red fabric, features matching floral garland appliques.

Judy Chicago: Boldly Going Where No Woman Has Gone Before

Posted: January 17, 2014
Category: Artist Spotlight
Judy Chicago (née Judy Cohen) was born on July 20, 1939, in Chicago, Illinois, into a household that supported her creative and intellectual interests
Mixed media work on paper shows a large ink drawing of a sculptural plate with page-like leaves unfurling in a round, flower-like pattern. Smaller plate deisgns, collaged photographs of the author, and her written words are surrounded by pink, orange, yellow and green watercolor.

Anita Steckel: Equal Exposure

Posted: January 13, 2014
Category: Artist Spotlight
In the 1960s and 1970s, Anita Steckel fought for the public acceptance of explicitly sexual art made by women, as part of the broader feminist art movement that was pushing...
A book is lying in a glass case. The book shows text and a black-and-white photographic portrait of a woman's face.