Revival presents contemporary women sculptors and photo-based artists whose arresting aesthetics and intense subject matter spur the viewer into a transcendent encounter with the art object. Spectacle and visual enchantment undergird much contemporary art. Yet the artists gathered here harness the illimitability of scale, technique, and effect in sculpture and photography explicitly to reanimate deep-rooted emotions related to the human experience. Their imagery elicits a ripple of exhilaration, a shiver of fear, or a wave of anxiety rather than merely tantalizing the eye.
Through highly allusive depictions of human and other animal bodies, each artist in Revival connects to the unconscious. Video projections, large-scale photographs, and hanging sculptures create immersive, mesmeric environments. Smaller, meticulously wrought works made from hair, yarn, velvet, wax, marble, brambles, or taxidermied birds draw the viewer close, beckoning toward sensations that spark memory and emotion.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts’ contemporary collection is rich in the mediums of sculpture and photography, which women continue to expand, recharge, and renew. A survey of the museum’s collection in its 30th year inspired this exhibition, which is enriched by important loans from public and private collections as well as artists’ studios. Revival illuminates women who regenerate sculpture and photo-based art to profound expressive effect.
Featured artists:
Louise Bourgeois, Sonya Clark, Petah Coyne, Cathy de Monchaux, Lalla Essaydi, Anna Gaskell, Sonia Gomes, Charlotte Gyllenhammar, Maria Marshall, Polly Morgan, Deborah Paauwe, Patricia Piccinini, Alison Saar, Beverly Semmes, Joana Vasconcelos, Bettina von Zwehl

Polly Morgan, Receiver, 2009; Taxidermy quail chicks and Bakelite telephone handset, 9 x 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Ilene Gutman; © Polly Morgan; Photo by Lee Stalsworth
Exhibition Sponsors
Revival is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The exhibition is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional funding provided by Share Fund; the Sue J. Henry and Carter G. Phillips Exhibition Fund; the Judith A. Finkelstein Exhibition Fund; American Airlines, the official airline of the museum’s 30th Anniversary; and NMWA’s Ohio Advisory Group.
- American airlines
- Artworks
Exhibition Gallery
The Artist,
Alison Saar
Alison Saar creates artworks that frequently transform found objects to reflect themes of cultural and social identity, history, and religion.
The Artist,
Joana Vasconcelos
Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos creates sculptures and installations that explore consumer culture, collective identity, and our assumptions about what constitutes art.
The Artist,
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois is considered one of the most inventive and influential sculptors of the 20th century for her use of unconventional materials and allusive psychological content.
The Artist,
Petah Coyne
Petah Coyne evokes intensely personal associations in sculptures made of incredibly varied materials.
The Artist,
Lalla Essaydi
Using the lens of her personal experience, Lalla Essaydi reveals the complexity of Arab female identity by challenging stereotypes she has encountered in both the East and the West.The Artist,
Cathy de Monchaux
Cathy de Monchaux creates provocative sculptures of seemingly incongruous materials, like leather, fur, velvet, chalk dust, and brass.The Artist,
Charlotte Gyllenhammar
Swedish-born Charlotte Gyllenhammar discovered that working with “physical material with weight” enabled her to more fully investigate and express the human condition.
The Artist,
Polly Morgan
Art by talented taxidermist Polly Morgan highlights the beauty in animal forms.
The Artist,
Patricia Piccinini
Patricia Piccinini’s sculptures of hybrid creatures question the implications of biotechnologies and humanity’s encroachment into “natural” processes.
The Artist,
Sonya Clark
Textile artist Sonya Clark interweaves craft, history, and race to create mixed-media works that celebrate Blackness and address racial tensions and stereotypes.
Broad Strokes Blog
Crocheted Creatures: Joana Vasconcelos

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