Tag Archives: mickalene thomas

Gallery Reboot: Body Language

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The museum’s newly reinstalled collection emphasizes connections between historical and contemporary art. Organized by the themes of the body, nature, domesticity, fabrication, and herstory, each gallery delves into a topic explored by women artists through time and around the world.

Male artists controlled the representation of the female body through most of Western art history. During the feminist art movement in the 1960s and ’70s, women artists claimed ownership over visualization of the body, and artists today explore the expressive potential of the female form. Artists Daniela Rossell, Mickalene Thomas, and Magdalena Abakanowicz use the human body to communicate powerful messages.

Daniela Rossell, Michelle Jacuzzi- Untitled (#7) (Ricas y Famosas), 1999; Chromogenic color print, 50 x 60 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, Washington, DC; © Daniela Rossell, Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Daniela Rossell, Michelle Jacuzzi–Untitled (#7) (Ricas y Famosas), 1999; Chromogenic color print, 50 x 60 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, Washington, DC; © Daniela Rossell, Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

In Michelle Jacuzzi–Untitled (#7) (1999) from the series “Ricas y Famosas,” Daniela Rossell (b. 1973) delves into the lives of Mexico’s elite families by emphasizing the way popular culture creates and disseminates female stereotypes. From a wealthy family herself, Rossell had access to some of the most affluent women in Mexico. Each subject constructs her own image by choosing her clothing, pose, and setting. Compared to other subjects in this series, Michelle is dressed in more casual clothing while perched atop a rooftop hot tub. Rossell’s model suggests a duality, shown with an over-sized rosary and subtly visible underwear and tattoo. The model’s confident posture and luxurious setting underscore her wealth and high social standing. Rossell’s works explore notions of purity, sexuality, and power in relation to the female body.

Mickalene Thomas, A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Y, 2009; Plastic rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel on panel, 24 x 20 in.; Gift of Deborah Carstens; © 2009 Mickalene Thomas, Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin

Mickalene Thomas, A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Y, 2009; Plastic rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel on panel, 24 x 20 in.; Gift of Deborah Carstens; © 2009 Mickalene Thomas, Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin

Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971) creates images of African American women as a way to scrutinize and disrupt popular notions of female beauty. Thomas pulls inspiration from art history as well as popular culture. Her works are as likely to reference 19th-century painting as 1970s Blaxploitation films. A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Y (2009) re-creates a portrait of her model, Fran, from a photo booth picture. In Thomas’s work, Fran’s face materializes from carefully placed rhinestones against a flamingo-pink enamel background. Thomas compares her use of rhinestones to the lustrous lip gloss women wear as “another level of masking, of dressing up.” Her work challenges the perception of femininity.

Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930–2017), a leader in the fiber arts movement, created a mold made from a real person, using burlap mixed with resin and glue for her work 4 Seated Figures (2002). Born in Poland, Abakanowicz witnessed her mother get shot after soldiers stormed into their home during World War II—an instant that that is reflected in these figures. The forms are presented as genderless, and they appear to have been stripped of revealing muscles, arteries, or cords suggestive of the nervous system. Although her figures were inspired from a personal event, the work encourages multiple interpretations and speaks broadly to the human experience. Abakanowicz said, “They are naked, exposed, and vulnerable, just as we all are.”

Magdalena Abakanowicz, 4 Seated Figures, 2002; Burlap, resin, and iron rods, 53 1/2 x 24 1/4 x 99 1/4 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts; © Magdalena Abakanowicz

Magdalena Abakanowicz, 4 Seated Figures, 2002; Burlap, resin, and iron rods, 53 1/2 x 24 1/4 x 99 1/4 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts; © Magdalena Abakanowicz

Visit the museum to see these works in the third floor galleries. Can’t visit in person? Browse #GalleryReboot on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for more collection highlights.

—Madeline Barnes was the spring 2017 digital engagement intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Art Fix Friday: January 20, 2017

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Women artists made headlines this week through a series of projects responding to the Presidential Inauguration. The Nasty Women Art Exhibition, which was held at the Knockdown Center in Queens, New York, raised more than $42,000 in proceeds for Planned Parenthood. The Guardian and the Huffington Post explore how the exhibition came together. Mutual Art shares stories of the famous “nasty women” of art history and their pivotal works. Artemisia Gentileschi, Faith Ringgold, and Yoko Ono make the list.

Françoise Mouly, art director of The New Yorker, and her daughter, Nadja Spiegelman, received more than 1,000 submissions for RESIST!. The 40-page tabloid newspaper of comics and cartoons will be available around the country.

The We Make America group prepares for the Women’s Marches on Washington and New York by making signs, props, and banners to carry. War on Women, a self-described “feminist hardcore punk band,” inspires a series of protest posters. Artist Coralina Meyer asks for contributions of used women’s underwear to make a quilt to fly at the Women’s March on Washington. Hyperallergic calls the project a “welcoming beacon for those hoping to air the nation’s dirty laundry.”

Front-Page Femmes

NO MAN’S LAND artist Jennifer Rubell created a five-foot-tall orange cookie jar resembling one of Hillary Clinton’s iconic pantsuits. The sculpture, Vessel, will be filled with cookies made using Clinton’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Mickalene Thomas discusses her portraits of Michelle Obama and Solange Knowles.

In a tribute to President Obama, artist Emily Spivack opens the retail store “Medium White Tee”—a one-month installation at the Honolulu Museum of Art.

artnet shares a list of women artists whose works top the auction charts.

Hyperallergic says works by Elizabeth Murray “are so alive they leap off the wall.”

The Creators Project explores Pat Steir’s “Waterfall” series.

The documentary film Girl Power explores the lives of more than 25 women graffiti writers.

The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film shows that only 7% of all directors working on the 250 highest-grossing domestic releases last year were women—2% less than the year before.

The New Yorker delves into Zadie Smith’s fifth novel, Swing Time.

Shows We Want to See

A focused exhibition featuring the work of American artist Barbara Kruger closes this Sunday at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern, opening March 3, 2017 at the Brooklyn Museum, will examine O’Keeffe’s “enduring influence.”

In advance of her retrospective, Lubaina Himid discusses how black British art evolved over the past three decades. Himid says, “I was trying to place black people into historical events, to make the invisible more visible.”

Terrains of the Body, on view at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, consists of photographs and a video work on loan from the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The Telegraphs calls the exhibition a “quiet, intelligent protest.”

—Emily Haight is the digital editorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

NO MAN’S LAND: Re-Think the Nude

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Contemporary large-scale paintings and sculptural hybrids are on view in NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection. The exhibition imagines a visual conversation between 37 women artists from 15 countries exploring images of the female body and the physical process of making. Mira Dancy, Isa Genzken, and Mickalene Thomas use images of the female nude in unexpected ways.

Mira Dancy, Street Ofelia (neon blue), 2014; Neon, 60 x 48 in.

Mira Dancy, Street Ofelia (neon blue), 2014; Neon, 60 x 48 in.; Rubell Family Collection, Miami

What’s On View?

Mira Dancy’s Street Ofelia (neon blue), 2014

Mira Dancy (b. 1979, England) says that while her work “revolves around making paintings” her process often “extends into other forms,” including neon, vinyl, Plexiglas, video, and poetry.

In her work, Dancy is interested in creating images of women that “summon the implicit trauma that comes with subjecthood, the gaps that are forged between an inner and outer being.” Dancy’s nudes serve as explorations of broader ideas through the use of the female body. “The bodies I paint are not realistic,” she says. “I often think of them as wearing ‘nude suits.’ Their flesh is silver, blue, green, red, hot pink. The body is not the subject, but the medium.”

Isa Genzken’s Schauspieler, 2013

Isa Genzken, Schauspieler, 2013; Mixed media, 72 1/4 x 18 1/2 x 10 1/2 in.

Isa Genzken, Schauspieler, 2013; Mixed media, 72 1/4 x 18 1/2 x 10 1/2 in.; Rubell Family Collection, Miami

Isa Genzken (b. 1948, Bad Oldesloe, Germany) once said, “I want to animate the viewers, hold a mirror up to them.” This attitude is evident in Schauspieler, from a series of life-size mannequins that “appear indistinguishable from those in department store windows,” but are “disrupted by lines of spray paint on their bodies, tape wrapped around their mouths, and other interferences.”

Schauspieler, meaning “actor,” critiques capitalism and commodification of the female body. The figure’s wig, glasses, and drawn markings—evocative of plastic surgery—point to the futility women face in their efforts to conform to an unobtainable physical ideal.

Through the “role reversal” of channeling art-viewers, Genzken challenges the public to think differently about representations of the female body.

Mickalene Thomas’s Whatever You Want, 2004

Mickalene Thomas, Whatever You Want, 2004; Acrylic, rhinestone, and enamel on panel, 48 x 36 in.

Mickalene Thomas, Whatever You Want, 2004; Acrylic, rhinestone, and enamel on panel, 48 x 36 in.; Rubell Family Collection, Miami

Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971, Camden, New Jersey) reproduces her own photographs as paintings with acrylic, enamel, collage, and rhinestones. Drawing inspiration from sources ranging from 19th-century French painting to 1970s Blaxploitation films, Thomas’s work attempts to “inject black women into the art historical canon.”

Whatever You Want features a black female protagonist in a pose referencing the portrayal of white female nudes in the Western painting tradition. Thomas’s figures typically meet the viewer’s gaze “while lounging in outlandishly patterned interiors and exuding an aggressive sexuality.” Their confrontational gazes contain “awareness: they exist, are present, and they are not going to let you go away easily.” By portraying “real women with their own unique history, beauty, and background,” Thomas broadens the representations of black women in art.

Reserve your spot to meet artist Mira Dancy at NMWA on December 13, 2016 for a special in-gallery conversation. Visit the museum and explore NO MAN’S LAND, on view through January 8, 2017.

—Kait Gilioli was the summer 2016 publications and communications/marketing intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Opening This Friday: NO MAN’S LAND

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Large-scale paintings and sculptural hybrids reveal the expressive range of women artists in NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, on view from September 30, 2016, to January 8, 2017.

Isa Genzken, Schauspieler, 2013; Mixed media, 72 1/4 x 18 1/2 x 10 1/2 in.

Isa Genzken, Schauspieler, 2013; Mixed media, 72 1/4 x 18 1/2 x 10 1/2 in.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is collaborating with the Rubell Family Collection (RFC), Miami, to realize a new vision for the exhibition that opened at the RFC’s space in December 2015. The exhibition features 37 women artists whose aesthetically diverse work addresses wide-ranging intellectual and political themes. Although women historically had limited access to training and opportunity in the traditional fields of sculpture and painting, the title of the exhibition suggests “a space free from the rule of any sovereign power” where women artists are able to adapt and modify these mediums.

The highly focused selection of paintings and sculptures emphasizes the female body and the physical process of art-making. Ever since the feminist art movement of the 1960s and ’70s, these two themes have become prevalent avenues for experimentation, play, and subversion.

Mickalene Thomas, Whatever You Want, 2004; Acrylic, rhinestone, and enamel on panel, 48 x 36 in.

Mickalene Thomas, Whatever You Want, 2004; Acrylic, rhinestone, and enamel on panel, 48 x 36 in.

During the feminist art movement, women artists claimed ownership over visualization of the body. Artists in NO MAN’S LAND explore this history and experiment with the expressive potential of the female form. Some artists, including Cecily Brown and Mickalene Thomas, adapt the art-historical theme of the odalisque by transforming its typically passive character. Others such as Hayv Kahraman use portraiture as a space for self-expression. Many of the works on view signify broader ideas about culture, gender, and ethnicity.

For artists in NO MAN’S LAND, the physical process of making is key to developing meaning, exploring intellectual conundrums, and conjuring psychological experiences. Painters and sculptors eliminate hierarchies among mediums by disrupting conventional ideas about women and handcraft. Historically defined as “women’s work,” handcraft remains a gendered topic in art. Artists including Analia Saban, Rosemarie Trockel, and Shinique Smith focus on unconventional materials or labor-intensive techniques. They upend tradition to suit their aesthetic and intellectual purposes.

Visit the exhibition before the public during the opening reception on September 29, 2016. See the full calendar of events for NO MAN’S LAND.

—Francisca Rudolph is the fall 2016 publications and communications/marketing intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Art Fix Friday: August 12, 2016

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While the U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastics team makes headlines, so does Megan Abbott’s new novel, You Will Know Me, which plunges readers into the world of young female gymnasts and their parents.

Meg Abbott's novel

Detail of the cover of Megan Abbott’s You Will Know Me

NPR interviews Abbott, who describes insular gymnastics communities, the “mind game” involved, and how gymnasts defy the laws of physics. Maureen Corrigan says the book “is itself worthy of the gold.” The New York Times describes Abbott as a “[maestro] of the heebie-jeebies” and the New Yorker says she “excels at writing fear into absence as well as into action.”

Front-Page Femmes

Deborah Kass says that, in the art world, “I don’t think there’s more space for women in general. In fact, I think there’s less than when I came [to New York City] in the ’70s.”

Through her large-scale portraits, Jordan Casteel shows her interest “in pushing the dialogue of blackness.”

Designer Sandy Chilewich’s woven vinyl place mat led her to create a $35 million design empire.

Female artists explore the origins of hysteria and seek to reclaim the word through artistic expression.

Mickalene Thomas “[wrestles] stereotypes, history, and the demands of the culture industry into loud but harmonious images.”

German artist Menja Stevenson designed clothes with fabric from bus and train interiors.

Macedonian artist Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva makes ambitious installations from “artistically manipulated animal viscera.”

Lisa Yuskavage’s work was censored on the cover of an Australian art magazine.

Artsy delves into two of Shirin Neshat’s newest film installations, Sara and Roja.

The Guardian studies Ella Kruglyanskaya’s Fruit Picnic (2011).

Hyperallergic publishes its long review of Women of Abstract Expressionism and ARTnews shares reviews from their archives that showcase female Abstract Expressionists.

Dirty Knees showcases work by five women artists who explore mixed-race identities.

In 1952, art critic Emily Genauer received a pair of rubber underpants with a crude note in the mail from Clyfford Still.

Pitchfork shares 33 feminist punk songs that have “crushed stereotypes.”

NPR and the New Yorker discuss Florence Foster Jenkins, starring Meryl Streep.

Hyperallergic reviews a performance by the Silver Spiders, an ensemble of women artists—all 60 years old or older.

#VisibleWomen helps amplify the voices and portfolios of women comic artists.

NPR shares stories about an overlooked Suicide Squad writer, Kimberly Yale.

Shows We Want to See

The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University (Broad MSU) will launch Fire Within: A New Generation of Chinese Women Artists, featuring work by 28 emerging artists.

The Female Gaze, Part Two: Women Look at Men displays works by women artists who paint, photograph, and sculpt the male body. ARTnews interviews the exhibition’s organizer. The Daily Beast calls the exhibition “the best kind of payback.”

Sixteen paintings by spiritualist artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) are on view in The Keeper at the New Museum. After weekly séances, af Klint created a series of paintings “to convey knowledge about the unity of all existence.”

—Emily Haight is the digital editorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Artist Spotlight: Mickalene Thomas

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Mickalene Thomas continues to dominate art news headlines. In recent years, she exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions around the globe, became the subject of her first monograph, Muse: Mickalene Thomas Photographs, and created Michelle O (an individual portrait of Michelle Obama that has been shown at the National Portrait Gallery). FOX’s hit television drama Empire even features some of her iconic works.

Born in Camden, New Jersey, Thomas now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Thomas’s works often reference art history, as evidenced in her Andy Warhol-inspired compositions and coloration to her subjects’ classical poses. Thomas acknowledges Henri Matisse, Romare Bearden, and Édouard Manet as sources of inspiration.

Mickalene Thomas, A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Y, 2009; Plastic rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel on panel, 24 x 20 in.; Gift of Deborah Carstens; © 2009 Mickalene Thomas, Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin

Mickalene Thomas, A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Y, 2009; Plastic rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel on panel, 24 x 20 in.; Gift of Deborah Carstens; © 2009 Mickalene Thomas, Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin

Thomas’s works featuring black women explore themes of race, sexuality, femininity, gender, and popular culture. The artist embellishes her acrylic-and-enamel-painted panels with rhinestones, referring to ideas of female beauty. According to Thomas, her signature rhinestones are “like that really glossy lipstick that women wear. It’s another level of masking, of dressing up.” Thomas questions societal ideals and pressures, particularly those concerning black American women. She says, “We respond to beauty, its seduction and attraction, yet what that has done culturally to people that are subject to universal codes of beauty has been devastating.”

Thomas’s painting in NMWA’s collection, A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Y (2009), is an example of the artist’s exploration of art history, blackness, and womanhood. At a glance, the portrait appears to be silkscreened like Warhol’s famous prints, but a closer look reveals individually placed black rhinestones that constitute the subject’s hair and facial features. Upon inspection, brushstrokes are visible against the work’s vibrant pink background, and viewers can detect subtle differences in hue. Incorporating popular culture, Thomas often titles her works after songs. The title A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Y references a 1983 dance-club hit single by Ebn-Ozn.

Mickalene Thomas, Whatever You Want, 2004; Acrylic,

Mickalene Thomas, Whatever You Want, 2004; Acrylic, rhinestone, and enamel on panel; 48 x 36 in.; Courtesy of the Rubell Family Collection

Unlike many female subjects in the history of painting, Thomas’s model, Fran, unapologetically meets the gaze of the viewer. Thomas challenges longstanding stereotypes and depictions of women and renders her subjects as beautiful, powerful, nuanced, and important. She explains, “By portraying real women with their own unique history, beauty, and background, I’m working to diversify the representations of black women in art.”

Visit NMWA to see Thomas’s A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Y in the third-floor collection galleries. Another painting by Thomas, Whatever You Want, will be featured in the fall exhibition NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, on view beginning September 30, 2016.

—Casey Betts is the summer 2016 digital engagement intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

#Instameets @WomenInTheArts

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In honor of International Women’s Day, NMWA will host an #EmptyNMWA instameet on Tuesday, March 8. An “instameet” is an opportunity for photographers to gather, meet, and snap pictures for Instagram. The museum will give 30 photographers a chance to explore and photograph the museum’s collection before public hours.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts hosted its first instameet on December 9, 2015, in collaboration with @IGDC, a community of photographers based in the D.C. metropolitan area. NWMA welcomed local instagrammers to visit the museum before it opened to the public to capture the special exhibition Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft, and Design, Midcentury and Today.

NMWA Associate Curator Virginia Treanor guided 18 photographers through the exhibition and highlighted show-stopping works by midcentury and contemporary women designers while illuminating the artists’ processes—photographers enjoyed hearing about Polly Apfelbaum, who used a punch card as a stencil for her Handweaver’s Pattern Book installation (2014).

2016-02-29-10_27_32-Ken-Stancil-Jr-on-Instagram_-“#Connected-_-#KenShootsPathmakers---We-are-connect

Left to right: @ksdirectional’s detail image, @saifahmed99’s photo

The event’s photographs captured the diversity of the dynamic women designers whose work was on view. Photographer @ksdirectional captured an amazing detail photo of Front Design’s Axor WaterDream/Axor Shower System (2014) and @saifahmed99’s installation shot of Vuokko Eskolin-Nurmesniemi’s Circle Dresses (ca. 1964) was chosen as the photo of the day by the #ACreativeDC feed. The instameet gave photographers the chance to see—and share—the exhibition from a new perspective.

2016-02-29 10_28_16-Steph on Instagram_ “After wandering with friends during the #pathmakersinstamee

@tappety’s post about Mickalene Thomas

After spending an hour exploring the exhibition with behind-the-scenes access, museum staff invited attendees to explore the museum’s collection. Many of the participants had never visited the museum before, but were inspired by NMWA’s diverse collection and the architecture of the Great Hall. One participant, @tappety, discovered Mickalene Thomas’s rhinestone-encrusted A-E-I-O-U (and Sometimes Y) during her tour of the third-floor galleries.

Browse the 100 stunning photos captured from the #PathmakersInstameet on Instagram. Apply here by noon on March 4 to have a chance to explore the museum’s empty collection galleries on International Women’s Day and enjoy a special collection highlights tour.

—Stacy Meteer is the communications and marketing associate at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Art Fix Friday: January 22, 2016

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After Saatchi Gallery’s Champagne Life exhibition announcement, the Guardian expresses mixed-feelings and Broadly writes that “all-female group shows may have to be a necessity until equilibrium has been achieved.” In an interview with Artinfo, Saatchi Gallery Director and Chief Executive Nigel Hurst said, “the majority of women artists do have to keep more plates spinning.”

Front-Page Femmes

Marina Abramović trains a group of Greek performance artists for a large-scale performance project at the Benaki Museum in Athens.

In tragic news, 33-year-old French-Moroccan photographer and video artist Leila Alaoui died from injuries sustained during a terrorist attack in Burkina Faso. Best known for her portraits of Moroccans and migrants, Alaoui sought “to give life to the forgotten.”

The Atlantic delves into scientific illustrations by 17th-century naturalist artist Maria Sibylla Merian and writes, “One hundred and fifty years before Charles Darwin wrote his Origin of Species, Merian knew nature well enough to depict it as a constant struggle for survival.”

The Red Sand Project asks participants to fill cracks in local sidewalks with red sand as a metaphor for the millions of trafficked people who “fall through the cracks.”

A new Google Doodle celebrates Swiss Dada artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp and her “joyous abstractions.”

The Guerrilla Girls challenge the art-world status quo in Minnesota with a series of “takeover” events.

Works by Mickalene Thomas, on view at Aperture Gallery, explore Thomas’s various approaches to art making and background in photography.

The San Francisco Chronicle explores Black Salt, a women’s artist collective that sheds light on artists of color, queer artists, and other artists who are “on the periphery of museum culture.”

Abeer Bajandouh, a 27-year-old Saudi freelance photographer and educator, explores themes of identity and immigration.

Bonhams addresses gender imbalance in the art world by dedicating a section of its upcoming sale to a selection of women artists.

Vogue creative director Grace Coddington scales back her role after more than 25 years at the magazine.

The New York Times reviews Golden Globe-winning comedian Rachel Bloom’s series.

In a discussion about women choreographers, the Guardian describes “a gender imbalance so egregious, and of such long standing, that it shames the British dance establishment.”

Chicken & Egg, an organization dedicated to supporting female documentarians, announces Kristi Jacobson, Julia Reichert, Yoruba Richen, Elaine McMillion, and Michèle Stephenson as its five grant award recipients.

Colossal shares behind-the-scenes work of three women animators.

Shows We Want to See

Hyperallergic explores stand-out artwork in No Man’s Land and also discusses the challenges in presenting work by 100 women artists.

An exhibition in Berlin presents new paintings and works on paper by 81-year-old British artist Rose Wylie.

WOMEN: New Portraits features newly commissioned photography by Annie Leibovitz as a continuation of a project that began over 15 years ago.

—Emily Haight is the digital editorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Art Fix Friday: December 18, 2015

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artnet shares a list of the top ten most expensive works by living women artists at auction.

Using aggregated sales from 2015 auctions, artnet created a value ranking of the artists’ works. Yayoi Kusama tops the charts with a total of over $58 million. Scan the list for some familiar NMWA artists:

  1. Yayoi Kusama: $58,348,118
  2. Cady Noland: $9,803,603
  3. Cindy Sherman: $9,602,247
  4. Julie Mehretu: $8,649,965
  5. Tauba Auerbach: $5,930,613
  6. Paula Rego: $3,407,592
  7. Chen Peiqiu: $2,981,394
  8. Tracey Emin: $2,751,275
  9. Beatriz Milhazes: $2,740,511
  10. Elizabeth Peyton: $2,714,626

Front-Page Femmes

In tragic news, Indian artist Hema Upadhyay was murdered at the age of 42 in Mumbai. Hyperallergic explores the importance of her paintings and mixed media works that exhibited a “deep emotional sensitivity to the realities of poverty and displacement.”

The Guardian reviews the 50-year career of artist provocateur Carolee Schneemann.

Colossal reviews their top 15 articles in 2015, including a story about Chicago journalist Victoria Lautman’s photo documentation of 120 subterranean stepwells in India.

Pia Camil wants people to donate objects of power, aesthetic interest, and of poignancy for her new installation, A Pot For A Latch, at the New Museum.

Tracey Moffatt was chosen to represent Australia at the 2017 Venice Biennale.

Nancy Spector, the former chief curator at the Guggenheim Museum, has been named the new chief curator at the Brooklyn Museum.

The New York Review of Books reflects on the career of Japanese actress Setsuko Hara—frequently called “the Garbo of Japan.”

Rozalia Jovanovic has been appointed editor in chief of artnet.

Lady Gaga accepted the 2015 Woman of the Year award at Billboard’s annual Women in Music event last Friday.

Feministing lists their favorite 10 feminist music videos of 2015.

Jamaican-born performer Staceyann Chin performs her stage memoir MotherStruck about her fears of pregnancy, her later desire for motherhood, and her difficulty in achieving it.

NPR describes Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy’s role producing Star Wars, her career trajectory, and the state of women in the movie business.

The band Pussy Riot plans to open a “women’s-only” museum in Montenegro.

Elle interviews artist and journalist Molly Crabapple about her first memoir, titled Drawing Blood.

Shows We Want to See

Yoko Ono asks visitors to collaborate in mending shattered ceramics and contemplate river rocks in Yoko Ono: The Riverbed—open at Galerie Lelong and Andrea Rosen Gallery. Hyperallergic explores Ono’s instruction pieces.

Marks Made: Prints by American Women Artists from the 1960s to the Present showcases works by pioneering artists including Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and Anni Albers.

Mickalene Thomas at Giverny re-imagines iconic works of art from 19th-century Europe through a combination of rhinestones and paint.

Art Fix Friday will be taking a break next week but will return with a new post about women and art making headlines on January 1, 2016. Happy Holidays!

—Emily Haight is the digital editorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.