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A woman with light colored skin, wearing a black top and white pants, talks to a group of people in a gallery room. She stands in front of a large, painted portrait of a woman in a high-collared red dress.
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National Museum of Women in the Arts

Patricia Piccinini

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.
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Director’s Desk: Family Matters
Posted: May 30, 2019
Category: Patricia Piccinini
When selecting subjects, artists and their patrons often turn to those closest to them: spouses, partners, children, parents, siblings, friends, and pets. Artists from all periods have created tender, naturalistic...
Gallery view with contemporary sculpture made of orange motor scooters that resemble two antlered animals fighting in foreground. Four paintings hang on a magenta wall in background, including a baroque painting of the Virgin and Child, and a portrait of a light-skinned man, women and children gathered together in eighteenth-century attire. To the left on a white wall hang two other paintings.

Heavy Lifting: Behind the Scenes of The Contour of Feeling
Posted: May 20, 2019
Category: Patricia Piccinini
A frequent question from visitors to the museum’s Ursula von Rydingsvard exhibition is: how did you get these sculptures into the building? A conversation with NMWA Registrar Catherine Bade revealed...

5 Fast Facts: Mildred Thompson
Posted: May 15, 2019
Category: Patricia Piccinini
Impress your friends with five fast facts about artist Mildred Thompson (1936–2003), whose work is on view in NMWA’s collection galleries.
Abstract painting features a vivid yellow background covered by circles, daubs, and straight and wavy lines in red, orange, cobalt, sky blue, and violet. Arcing red strokes evoke concentric circles. Straight lines in other hues radiate out from the center circle like a starburst.

Humanly Possible: Patricia Piccinini
Posted: August 23, 2017
Category: Patricia Piccinini
In celebration of NMWA’s 30th anniversary, and inspired by the museum’s focus on contemporary women artists as catalysts for change, Revival illuminates how women working in sculpture, photography, and video use spectacle...
A sculpture consists of two metallic-orange motor scooters manipulated to resemble male deer. Leather seats become haunches, dashboard dials resemble faces, and multiple rear-view mirrors morph into antlers. The serpentine, hybrid animal-machines appear to spar for dominance.

She Who Tells a Story: Shirin Neshat
Posted: June 23, 2016
Category: Patricia Piccinini
In Arabic, the word rawiya means “she who tells a story.” Each artist in in NMWA’s summer exhibition She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab...
A gallery view of a black wall with a large photograph of a woman. The woman is wearing a long black dress and a head scarf. She is standing in the ocean, surrounded by waves. On the right wall is a text that says "She who tells a story".

5 Fast Facts: Patricia Piccinini
Posted: August 19, 2015
Category: Patricia Piccinini
Learn more about artist Patricia Piccinini, who is known for The Stags and whose work is featured in the NMWA collection.
A sculpture consists of two metallic-orange motor scooters manipulated to resemble male deer. Leather seats become haunches, dashboard dials resemble faces, and multiple rear-view mirrors morph into antlers. The serpentine, hybrid animal-machines appear to spar for dominance.

Caution: Beware the Boundaries of Beasties
Posted: July 29, 2015
Category: Patricia Piccinini
Patricia Piccinini’s The Stags is currently on view in NMWA’s summer exhibition Super Natural. In sleek and shimmering fiberglass, the two large sculptural pieces of The Stags combine characteristics of...
A sculpture consists of two metallic-orange motor scooters manipulated to resemble male deer. Leather seats become haunches, dashboard dials resemble faces, and multiple rear-view mirrors morph into antlers. The serpentine, hybrid animal-machines appear to spar for dominance.

Uncommon Ground: Summer Exhibitions at NMWA
Posted: May 15, 2015
Category: Patricia Piccinini
What is natural? Porcelain grass lawns and anthropomorphic scooters may not be the first objects to come to mind, although they are likely to make a lasting impression. Visitors can...
Detail photograph of ceramic sculpture made to look like a patch of lawn. Individual squares consisting of multiple upright blades of porcelain grass, glazed green, fit together to form a lush rectangular field of grass.

The Female Form through Female Eyes
Posted: March 12, 2015
Category: Patricia Piccinini
Nearly 300 years apart, Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1656) and French artist Suzanne Valadon (1865–1938) both used their perspectives as women to capture the power and complexity of the female...
Against a dark black and brown background, a light skinned woman in a red dress with wavy reddish-brown hair wears a white cloth and gold crown around her head. Her right hand clutches a palm while her left grazes a spiked breaking wheel. She stares straight at the viewer.

Lynda Benglis & Maya Lin: Spookily Impressive Artists
Posted: October 24, 2014
Category: Patricia Piccinini
Born October 25, 1941, Lynda Benglis first gained renown for her poured-latex sculptures. The bright splashes of color departed from—but also engaged with—the restrained minimalist art popular with critics and...
A wall-mounted sculpture made of metal convincingly resembles an elaborate knot of twisted, rolled, and tied silver and copper fabrics. Pleated ends radiate at different angles from the tangled, coppery center and project out from the wall into the viewer’s space.