Women’s Caucus for Art • 2017 Winter Edition President’s Award for Art and Activism KAT GRIEFEN www.nationalwca.org MISSION By Elizabeth Driscoll Smith The mission of the Women’s Caucus As an art historian and dealer, Kat Griefen’s contributions for Art is to create community to the visual arts intersect social activism and the New through York gallery scene—a nexus that art, education and social activism. remains critical, as women are WE ARE COMMITTED TO underrepresented in the majority of commercial gallery spaces. In • recognizing the contributions their 2005 update of The Guerilla of women in the arts Girls’ “Report Card,” feminist art • providing women with leadership collective Pussy Galore detailed opportunities and professional this systemic inequality. While development advancements in equality have • expanding networking and steadily increased, women still receive exhibition opportunities for women fewer opportunities to show their • supporting local, national work—a trickle-down effect that and global art activism results in less press coverage and limited market viability. Griefen has • advocating for equity in the helped to challenge and reverse this arts for all unbalanced ratio over the past ten years: during her directorship at A.I.R Gallery and current role as co-owner performances—but also chronicled and co-director of Accola Griefen, she the gallery’s commitment to artistic has continued to advocate for women diversity and critical dialogue. A artists and art professionals. concurrent exhibition, co-curated Kat Griefen. Photo credit: Jeanette May with former A.I.R. director Dena Griefen spent five years directing Muller, charted the organization’s A.I.R. (Artists in Residence) Gallery. historical currents through meeting notes, catalogues, Founded in 1972, it was the first of its kind: a not-for-profit, correspondence, images, and administrative ephemera. artist-run contemporary art gallery for women. One of many Between 2006 and 2011, under Griefen’s leadership, A.I.R. contributions, she produced a short documentary titled presented over one hundred solo and group exhibitions, Taking Residence: A History of A.I.R. Gallery (filmed, edited, which have been reviewed by publications including The and directed by Meredith Drum) that includes interviews, New York Times, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, The photographic stills, archival footage, critical retrospections, Brooklyn Rail and ArtNews. and a sequential survey of works produced by previous and current members. A.I.R. continues to operate as both Griefen has also worked as an independent curator and gallery and organization, addressing the changing needs of has lectured at numerous universities and museums. Her underrepresented, emerging, and established women artists. scholarship on Ana Mendieta was published in Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. Griefen holds Griefen’s dedication to documenting, preserving, and an MA in Art History from Hunter College and a BA in Art promoting the history of A.I.R. Gallery resounds in the field History and Women’s Studies from SUNY-Purchase. She is a of art history but also stands as an extension of feminist board member of the Feminist Art Project (TFAP). activism—in preserving the gallery’s development and legacy, she has countered the pervasive male-centric canon. Griefen practices activism on a daily basis. As a co-owner The documentary Taking Residence accompanied a historic of the gallery Accola Griefen, she supports women artists two-part exhibition, A.I.R. Gallery: The History Show, which with programming that champions feminist practices and displayed work by A.I.R. artists dating from 1972 to the secures a space for women in the arts. present. Co-curated with Carey Lovelace, the exhibition provided an overview of members’ artistic achievements— Elizabeth Driscoll Smith is an M.A. graduate of the Hite Art including early earthworks, feminist innovations, and Institute in Louisville, Kentucky. Cover clockwise from top left: Martha Rosler, photo credit: Jean Noël Schramm; Audrey Flack; Charlene Teters, photo credit: Iaia Dean; Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell. Cover design by Danielle Eubank, WCA Director and Eco-art Chair. Edited by Susan King, Margo Hobbs and Sandra Mueller. WCA Lifetime Achievement Honorees The WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards will be held at the New York Institute of Technology on Saturday February 18, 2017 in New York, NY. The event will include a reception with open wine bar and tapas from 6:00- 7:30 pm (ticketed) and the ceremony, 8:00-9:30 pm (free and open to the public). Join us for the celebration and to meet the Honorees! MARY SCHMIDT CAMPBELL By Lisa Quinn Mary Schmidt Campbell, Ph.D., is president of Spelman College. As president of the nation’s top ranked historically black college, she contributes to the shaping of young lives by inspiring and empowering students to become leaders committed to positive social change. Her four decades of service as an innovator in education, the arts, and the public sector models a life she encourages students to aspire to, dedicated to the betterment of individuals as well as the local, national and global communities. Campbell credits her early education at Girls High in Philadelphia for instilling in her the sense that she could go Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell and the Granddaughters Club Celebrate out and rule the world. Her undergraduate experience as the Founding of Spelman College. one of the few minorities at the elite Swarthmore College in the 1960s prompted her goal of higher education being on the Arts, commissioner of New York City’s Cultural accessible and welcoming to everyone. These ideals Affairs Department under two mayors, and in 2009, was informed policy she enacted in her 22-year tenure at NYU’s appointed the vice chair of the President’s Committee on Tisch School of the Arts where as Dean she increased the the Arts and the Humanities by President Barack Obama. number of minority students and faculty and established She co-edited Artistic Citizenship: A Public Voice for the a Talent Identification Process, which scouts, supports Arts in addition to writing scholarly publications including and mentors highly talented/high need students from Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America and Memory and around the country. She also initiated major renovations Metaphor: The Art of Romare Bearden, 1940–1987, co- of Tisch’s film facilities; inaugurated new programs in Art authored with Sharon Patton. and Public Policy, Film Preservation and Archiving, and Recorded Music; and led the School in a $75 million capital The recipient of numerous honors, including a Candace campaign. As Associate Provost for the Arts she fostered Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, transdisciplinary collaborations among the schools at New Campbell holds honorary degrees from The College of York University. New Rochelle, Colgate University, City University of New York, Pace University, Maryland Institute College of Art After receiving a Master’s degree in Art History and a and Swarthmore College. She is a fellow of the American Doctorate in Humanities from Syracuse University, Campbell Academy of Arts and Sciences and has sat on the boards of spent ten years developing a museum dedicated to Black the American Academy in Rome, the New York Shakespeare culture in the heart of the African-American residential, Festival, the United Nations International School, the Public cultural and business center. The Studio Museum of Harlem Theater, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. is now internationally known for its support of emerging artists of African descent through their exhibitions and Campbell’s passion and brilliance has been evident artist-in-residencies programs that also provide arts throughout her distinguished career. She continues to education opportunities for a diverse public. As Executive inspire and transform through her leadership as exemplified Director, Campbell guided the transition of the Studio by her presidential address to the women of Spelman Museum from a rented loft space to a permanent location College on Nov. 9, 2016 in which she encouraged them “to housing a collection of over two thousand works of art and continue to make choices that empower and allow us to accredited by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). make positive changes in the world.” A constant advocate for the arts and proponent of the Lisa Quinn is the Educational Programs Coordinator value of arts education in public schools, Dr. Campbell at Kennedy Museum of Art in Athens, OH, and an MA served as chairwoman of the New York State Council candidate in Art History at Ohio University. voluptuous, sensual being. Flack rejects the softly modeled AUDREY FLACK academic nudes in favor of muscular bodies with anatomical definition and strength. Flack’s Diana provides a role model for contemporary women; strong in both body and spirit, she By Cynda Benson exemplifies the self-sufficient, independent woman. Since the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, Audrey Flack Flack reinvents traditional subjects from mythology, such has been at the forefront of stylistic change in the art as the Gorgon Medusa, through a revisionist reading world, but has always striven, regardless of varying manner of the classical texts. Flack’s early Head of Medusa, and medium, to capture the effect of high drama, of the screaming, dynamic, snakes writhing in her hair, resembles heroic sublime. In her renowned Photorealist still life the traditionally depicted appearance of Medusa. In her paintings of the 1970s, seemingly intimate subjects took on second version of Medusa Flack recreates the innocent a monumental scale and revealed an element of tragedy young woman as a metaphor for the rape of the earth. under the surface. The Vanitas series Flack combines her positive revision portrayed the fleeting nature of life using of Medusa’s image with new symbols, iconic images of beautiful women like like coral and shells, which double Marilyn Monroe.