(re)FOCUS 2024

Announcing the website www.refocus2024.org for (re)focus, a citywide collaboration of institutions and organizations taking place from January – May 2024 to celebrate the 50^th 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 50^th 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.