CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

(re)FOCUS

50 INSTITUTIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS HONORING 50 YEARS OF THE FEMINIST ART MOVEMENT!

SAVE THE DATE, FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 2024!
OPENING RECEPTION HONORING THE CITY-WIDE 50 PARTICIPATING PHILDELPHIA VISUAL ARTS INSTITUTIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS LOCATION: THE GALLERIES AT MOORE COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN CATALOG WILL INCLUDE ESSAYS BY JUDITH STEIN, CURATOR AND WRITER, RUTH FINE, FORMER CURATOR, NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, ROBERT COZZOLINO, CURATOR, MINNEAPOLIS ART INSTITUTE MARSHA MOSS, PUBLIC ART CONSULTANT, JOINS JUDITH K. BRODSKY, DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR EMERITA, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, AND DIANE BURKO, ARTIST AS THIRD CO-DIRECTOR OF THE PROJECT

Announcing the website (www.refocus2024.org for (refocus) a citywide collaboration of institutions and organizations taking place from January – May 2024 to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Philadelphia Focuses on Women in the Visual Arts. Held in Philadelphia the 1974 FOCUS was one of the first major exhibitions featuring American women artists. Participants in the 50th anniversary celebration include the Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), African American Museum of Philadelphia (AAMP), Woodmere Art Museum, University of the Arts Galleries, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, Fleisher Art Memorial, Philadelphia Mural Arts and others.

(re)FOCUS THEN AND NOW will mirror the original FOCUS in featuring more than 100 exhibitions, panels, lectures, films, workshops and demonstrations devoted to women’s art and open to the public. Like the original festival (re)FOCUs will feature numerous commercial galleries and nearly all of the City’s university and college exhibition spaces.

Using the 50th anniversary of the 1974 exhibition as a jumping off point to discuss representation, marginalization, social justice, violence, equality, and empowerment of women artists past and present. (Re)FOCUS Then and Now will honor that germinal moment in feminist art, and showcase today’s Philadelphia community of women artists, designers, and makers who are binary, gender nonconforming, and racially diverse.

A core exhibition will take place in the Galleries at Moore featuring all 81 artists who were in the original core exhibition—a who’s who of American women artists: Miriam Schapiro, Joyce Kozloff, Faith Ringgold, Howardena Pindell, Louise Bourgeois, Mary Beth Edelson, Lee Krasner, Nancy Grossman, Yayoi Kusama, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Adrian Piper, Alma Thomas, just to name a few. Philadelphia artist Diane Burko, who conceived of the original FOCUS and founder of the Brodsky Center at PAFA Judith K. Brodsky who was on the original committee are curating this exhibition.

Gabrielle Lavin Suzenski, director of the Galleries at Moore, and Denise Brown, director of the Leeway Foundation, Philadelphia are curating a second exhibition at Moore College highlighting contemporary women artists particularly non-binary and BIPOC women artists. Moore is commissioning several artists to create new work for the exhibition, among them, Wit López, a multimedia artist who uses their background in Anthropology and Africana Studies as a lens to examine, decolonize, and reconstruct accessibility, queerness, Blackness, and Li Sumpter, a cultural producer who uses mythologizing to engage in community projects investigating environmental injustice and ecology along with race, gender, and identity.

Other exhibitions and programs: The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present several exhibitions including the first large scale Mary Cassatt exhibition in 25 years; The African American Museum of Philadelphia is mounting an exhibition of the work of Anna Russell Jones, (1902-1995), the first African American graduate of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women,(now Moore College of Art and Design). The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts exhibition will feature works by artists who examine nature and its tie to American identity; At the University of the Arts, a group exhibition of contemporary feminist artists Mary Carlson, Karen Kilimnik, June Leaf, Ellen Lesperance, Lilliana Porter, Helen O’Leary, and Ana Tiscornia at the Philadelphia Art Alliance and a solo exhibition of work by Julie Wachtel at the Rosenwald Wolf Gallery; Woodmere Art Museum, exhibitions of the work of Barbara Bullock (Barbara Bullock: Fearless Vision) and Violet Oakley, along with a lecture by Patricia Likos Ricci that will trace the developments in women’s art from a feminist perspective over the past fifty years; Arcadia Exhibitions will present a show honoring the legacy and themes of Lee Krasner and the Regional Women’s Drawing Show both of which were exhibited during the original FOCUS festival in 1974.

The List Gallery at Swarthmore College is planning an exhibition of the work of Tabitha Arnold who uses punch needle embroidery to create vibrant wall hangings inspired by the history of the labor movement. A panel about the role of art in a late-stage capitalist economy and/or changing attitudes toward women’s artistic labor during the past 50 years is also planned. The Artfront Partnership, a public art venture under the aegis of Philadelphia Sculptors, is commissioning artists with a feminist perspective to transform vacant, dark storefronts in Old City into illuminated art spaces based on alternative worlds with the allure of dreams, masquerades and symbols.

At Rowan University Art Gallery, curator Mary Salvante will mount 10 of 80+ 1 including ten artists from the gallery’s permanent collection who were in the original FOCUS exhibition (Pat Adam, Judith Bernstein, Blythe Bohnen, Louise Bourgeois, Diane Burko, Audrey Flack, Nancy Grossman, Lila Katzen, Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh) with the additional of Judith Bernstein whose “Hairy Screw” drawing was censored from the 1974 exhibition. A panel will discuss the issues of censorship This show will complement Rowan’s permanent installation of The Sister Chapel, created in 1978 as one of the earliest feminist collaborative installations. The participating artists were contemporaries of the artists in the original FOCUS exhibition.

The Interactive Museum of Contemporary Art will present a solo exhibition and retrospective of the work of Arlene Love, featuring Love’s pioneering sculpture in resin, feminist works in leather, figurative drawing, and photography and spanning an accomplished career over 60 years. The Fitler Club’s Artist-in-Residence Program will feature female-identifying artists from Collection 3.0. The Club features artworks on loan from Philadelphia area artists, thereby introducing a dialogue between the artists and the Fitler Club’s community of diverse, civically engaged leaders. The program will open with a Q&A with Diane Burko about the original FOCUS, (re)FOCUS and her experience as an artist in Philadelphia over the past 50+ years.

Muse Gallery, Philadelphia’s preeminent women-run gallery, another early manifestation of the Feminist Art Movement of the 1970s, will show the work of Diane Burko during the month of February, and that of Deanna Mills during the month of March. Muse will also mount a series of panel discussions featuring the women of Muse Gallery and guest artist Diane Burko. The Eckert Art Gallery at Millersville State University will present an exhibition of the early work of Betsy Damon, Passages: Rights and Rituals, the first exhibition of Betsy Damon’s radical outdoor performance practice (1976-1986), featuring documentation of eight public performances plus Body Masks, a set of erotic photographs from a 1976 private performance session.

Commonweal Gallery will mount an exhibition of paintings focusing on cultural hybridity, by Natessa Amin, an American with the heritage of India, who grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania; at Pentimenti Gallery: solo exhibitions of Jackie Milad and La Vaughn Belle. Space Art Gallery: two solos shows, photographs by Amie Potsic created while backpacking alone in India and Israel, and Wendy Stevens, Handbags; Locks Gallery: early drawings by Edna Andrade; Art in City Hall: A Juried Exhibition of the diverse creative voices of local women and gender nonconforming artists organized by the Women’s Caucus for Art; Frieda, Community Center: a solo show of Lyn Godly, Conflict Zones and Water Flows, using multimedia including animation; Avery Galleries: Five contemporary women artists and their historical antecedents.

The List of participating institutions thus far: Moore College of Art and Design Galleries, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), African American Museum of Philadelphia, Woodmere Art Museum, University of the Arts Galleries, Tyler School of Art, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, Fleisher Art Memorial, Philadelphia Mural Arts, List Gallery, Swarthmore College, Arcadia University Galleries, Rowan University Art Gallery, Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Sculptors: The Artfront Partnership, The Fitler Club, The Forman Arts Initiative, Commonweal Gallery, Pentimenti Gallery, Millersville State University, Interactive Museum of Contemporary Art, Asian Arts Initiative, Muse Gallery, the Space Art Gallery, The Clay Studio, Larry Becker Contemporary Art, the John and Dina Wind Foundation, Avery Galleries, the Association for Public Art (aPA); the Athenaeum, Bertrand Productions, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Bryn Mawr College, the Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Fleisher Ollman Gallery, Free Library of Philadelphia, Globe Dye Works, Grizzly Grizzly, Gross McLeaf Gallery, InLiquid, James Oliver Gallery, Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Locks Gallery, Museum for Art in Wood, Paradigm Gallery and Studio, Peeps Project, Pentimenti Gallery, the Print Center, Stanek Gallery, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, TILT—institute for the Contemporary Image,