National Museum of Women in the Arts adds your favorite summer recipes to online exhibition

A dark-skinned woman stands on an outdoor balcony, grilling four whole fish on a gas grill. She holds a Tupperware of marinade. The photo is taken with a GoPro, creating a fish eye angle of the scene.
July 1, 2021
7/1/21
RECLAMATION: Recipes, Remedies, and Rituals explores the connective power and healing properties of food

WASHINGTON—As the season for barbecues, cookouts, clambakes and other outdoor celebrations begins, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is reopening recipe submissions for the online exhibition RECLAMATION: Recipes, Remedies, and Rituals. Conceived as a virtual experience that recontextualizes the traditional role of women in providing sustenance and healing, RECLAMATION features content submitted by the public, alongside the work of nine artists. The RECLAMATION site will be accessible through December 31, 2021.  

The original call for submissions elicited recipes that centered on fall and winter holidays. The museum is now asking the public to provide family recipes that they make in the warmer months. Submissions can be uploaded here beginning July 5, 2021.

RECLAMATION is an evolving exhibition and ingredient archive that examines food as a creative medium for visual art and a connective tool for exploring intergenerational and intercultural experiences. The exhibition centers on the kitchen table, the central domestic object for gatherings of family and friends. Nine interdisciplinary artists share photographs, videos and stories about how they use this domestic object. These intimate glimpses into the artists’ homes simultaneously reveal a work of art and the process by which it is made.

Through a digital ingredient archive, developed in partnership with the Family Arts Museum and Ten-Fifteen Media, submitted recipes are layered with the artists’ work, creating a dynamic portal for exploring the interconnectedness of food and the communal nature of nourishing and curing the body. In this way, artists and viewers honor women’s roles in the practices and traditions surrounding food.

The exhibition also features interviews and content from the Curative Collective, a group of exhibition partners that work at the intersection of food, art and social change. These organizations help ensure that the exhibition reflects and serves their communities while sharing their arts and social change resources with NMWA’s audience. Curative Collective partners include Share Our Strength, Artist Rescue Trust and Care for Creatives.

Women, Arts, and Social Change

Women, Arts, and Social Change (WASC) is NMWA’s public programs initiative, launched in October 2015, that highlights the power of women and the arts as catalysts for change. FRESH TALK, the initiative’s signature program, features cause-driven conversations with artists, designers, activists, social innovators, filmmakers, writers and more. These programs empower women, spark community involvement and engage new audiences. In a typical season, WASC attendees gather at Sunday Supper, a communal meal served family-style, or Catalyst, a cocktail hour with a topic and a twist. This year, all programs are online, and each FRESH TALK includes virtual breakout rooms to encourage similar connections in the digital sphere.

The Women, Arts, and Social Change public programs initiative is made possible through leadership gifts from Denise Littlefield Sobel, the Davis/Dauray Family Fund, the Revada Foundation of the Logan Family, and the Susan and Jim Swartz Public Programs Fund. Additional funding is provided by the Bernstein Family Foundation. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

National Museum of Women in the Arts

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is the only major museum in the world solely dedicated to championing women through the arts. With its collections, exhibitions, programs and online content, the museum inspires dynamic exchanges about art and ideas. NMWA advocates for better representation of women artists and serves as a vital center for thought leadership, community engagement and social change. NMWA addresses the gender imbalance in the presentation of art by bringing to light important women artists of the past while promoting great women artists working today. The collections highlight painting, sculpture, photography and video by artists including Louise Bourgeois, Mary Cassatt, Judy Chicago, Frida Kahlo, Shirin Neshat, Faith Ringgold, Pipilotti Rist, Amy Sherald and Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun.

NMWA is located at 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. It is open Mon.–Sat., 10 a.m.–5 p.m. and Sun., noon–5 p.m. Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for visitors 65 and over and students, and free for NMWA members and youths 18 and under. Admission is free the first and third Sundays of each month. For information, call 202-783-5000, visit nmwa.org, Broad Strokes blog, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

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