WASHINGTON—This summer the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is pleased to present online opportunities to learn about and connect with women artists. Join us to celebrate the life of Frida Kahlo, participate in intimate art chats and pay virtual visits to the studios of women artists around the world.
The information below is current as of June 2020. For more information, visit the museum’s online calendar.
Special Event
Virtual Happy Hour: Frida Kahlo’s Birthday Celebration
Monday, July 6, 5:30–6:30 p.m.
Join NMWA members for a virtual happy hour to celebrate Frida Kahlo’s birthday! We will make a specialty cocktail in her honor, share Frida facts and explore the museum’s collection and archives for all things Frida. Free; registration required. Reserve online.
Art Chats
Art Chats @ 5
Fridays, July 3–August 28, 5–5:30 p.m.; September 4–25, 5–5:45 p.m.
Jump start your weekend with art! Every Friday join NMWA educators for informal 30-minute art chats about selected artworks in the collection. Discuss a new sampling of artworks each week. You can even enjoy your favorite happy hour drink or snack during the sessions. Free; registration required and limited to 20 participants each week. Register online for July dates and check back in mid-July for August and September registration.
Women, Arts, and Social Change Initiative
The Tea
Friday, September 4, 12–1 p.m.
In this new online series, women musicians perform original work via live-stream on the museum’s social media channels on the first Friday of the month. Each session includes a short interview, conducted over a cup of tea, which explores the artist’s creative process. The series kicks off with Tamika Love Jones. Free. Streaming information available in July.
3rd Annual MakeHER Summit
Sunday, September 13, 10 a.m.–8 p.m.; Monday, September 14, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Join us for the 3rd annual two-day celebration of women makers, artisans and creative entrepreneurs in the DMV area. This year’s programming focuses especially on women in the culinary industry.
The 2020 MakeHER Summit is presented by the museum’s Women, Arts, and Social Change public programs initiative.
Fresh Talk: Righting the Balance—Culinary Justice
Sunday, September 13, 4:30–8 p.m.
Join us for a conversation about the gender inequity that pervades the culinary industry. Angel Gregorio, founder of the Spice Suite spice bar, joins Celeste Beatty, the first Black woman brewery owner in America and Jenny Dorsey, interdisciplinary visual artist and professional chef, to explore how creativity, ingenuity and networking can create opportunities to level the field. Free. Reserve online.
This Fresh Talk is presented by the museum’s Women, Arts, and Social Change public program initiative.
MakeHER Summit Workshops
Monday, September 14, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Join us online for a day of workshops that offer practical tips and resource-sharing for creative entrepreneurs at all levels, especially considering the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants interested in the culinary arts can participate in a law clinic and attend workshops on branding and business development. Free. Reservations required. Reserve online.
This Fresh Talk is presented by the museum’s Women, Arts, and Social Change public programs initiative.
The Women, Arts, and Social Change public programs initiative is made possible through leadership gifts from Denise Littlefield Sobel, the Davis/Dauray Family Fund, and the Susan and Jim Swartz Public Programs Fund. Additional funding is provided by the Bernstein Family Foundation, the Revada Foundation of the Logan Family, and Stephanie Sale. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
For Educators
Virtual Educator Summer Camp Series
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, July 6–31, 10–11 a.m.
NMWA’s virtual Educator Summer Camp is designed for anyone who has chosen, or been thrust into, the role of a teacher. All educators are welcome—schoolteachers, adults supporting students who are temporarily learning remotely, home school instructors, scout leaders and more. Independent, one-hour sessions on a variety of topics are offered. Guest instructors include artists Carol Barton, Colette Fu, Carol Todaro and others. Topics include:
- Step-by-step bookmaking
- Easy art-making at home
- Conversations about art
- Introductions to women artists
- Discussing art with learners
Free. Registration required for each session; register online. Registrants receive a recommended supply list, digital resources, and a meeting link in advance of each session.
On Demand
Studio Tour with Rachel Farbiarz
Washington D.C.–based artist Rachel Farbiarz, featured in the upcoming exhibition Paper Routes—Women to Watch 2020, works in drawing, collage and installation. Her mixed-media works use contemporary and archival source materials—newspaper headlines, photographs and video—to grapple with death, despair and displacement. The process of digging through source material inspires her to reimagine and re-draw powerful images of historical moments. Of particular interest is the complex interrelation between intimacy and violence, a dynamic that recurs in Farbiarz’s drawings with clarity and intensity. Carefully rendered images of World War II-era Europeans, Ebola crisis aid workers and refugees present a searing, deeply personal meditation on the nature of the human condition. Prior to making art, Farbiarz practiced law, focusing on the civil rights of prisoners and working to improve conditions at San Quentin State Prison in California. Free, no registration required. View on demand beginning Friday, July 31, here.
Studio Tour with Sa’dia Rehman
Sa’dia Rehman, featured in the upcoming exhibition Paper Routes—Women to Watch 2020, is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores how contemporary and historical images communicate and contest ideas about race, power and gender. Rehman incorporates elements such as family photographs, ritual objects and English and Urdu texts into her performances, videos, installations and large-scale wall drawings. Her core materials include hand-cut stencils, Xeroxes, velvet, charcoal, graphite, erasers, spray paint and ink. Using an array of mark-making techniques, Rehman reflects on her experience of growing up in a Muslim household in America, where being perceived as “other” foiled the familiarity of home. Free, no registration required. View on demand beginning Friday, July 31, here.
Studio Tour with Dolores Furtado
Dolores Furtado, featured in the upcoming exhibition Paper Routes—Women to Watch 2020, is an Argentinian New York-based sculptor who studied art at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires. She creates work that focuses on materiality and uses technical research and experimentation to create forms that she views as documentations of process and action. Furtado makes her paper-pulp sculptures using traditional paper-making processes and uses casts to create biomorphic forms. Describing her works as “bodies,” Furtado builds layer on layer, creating rudimentary formations of solidified matter. These layers can be examined, like sedimentary rock, revealing the past and providing clues to their origins. Free, no registration required. View on demand beginning Friday, July 31, here.
DMV Color Online Exhibition
Washington, D.C., and its surroundings have long been home to a rich community of artists of color, including those born and raised here and others who built connections to the region while attending art schools and universities. The online exhibition DMV Color features an eclectic assortment of contemporary works by women of African American, Asian American and Latina heritage with ties to the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia—known locally as the DMV. The artists’ books, graphic novels, photobooks and zines depict intimacies of family life, legacies of enslavement, dislocation tied to immigration, changes resulting from rampant development and other topics that illustrate facets of life in the DMV. This online exhibition includes new audio contributions from several of the artists, allowing viewers the opportunity to hear them discuss their art in their own words. Available beginning September 21 here.
INFORMATION: nmwa.org, NMWA @ Home
SOCIAL MEDIA: Broad Strokes blog, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.