Women Around Town, May 2020
John Baldessari
The Annual Venice Art Walk will have their auction online this year. From May 3 – May 19, visit https://venicefamilyclinic.org/annual-events/venice-art-walk/
The benefit auction will feature over 150 works by nationally recognized contemporary artists. Each winning bid provides vital health services to our community. Artists include John Baldessari, Enrique Martinez Celaya, Corinne Chaix, Zoe Crosher, Danny First, FriendsWithYou, Channing Hansen, Lynn Hanson, Kenny Harris, Claudy Jongstra, Toba Khedoori, Jens Lucking, T. Kelly Mason, Ed Ruscha, Analia Saban, Kim Schoenstadt, and The Haas Brothers.
Click here to view all of our participating artists. Auction proceeds will provide vital health care to nearly 28,000 low-income, uninsured and homeless patients in Los Angeles.
Here are a few online exhibitions I found interesting.
The first exhibit I want to bring to your attention has a catchy and thought provoking title: How Can We Think of Art at a Time Like This? co-curated by Barbara Pollock and Anne Verhallen. It was curated as a platform for the exchange of ideas at this time of crisis. They invited artists who are considered thought leaders, artists who struggle with futuristic pessimism, political outrage and psychic melt-downs. The invited artists have responded with unbridled enthusiasm and we will be posting new artists every day for the foreseeable future. This site is also a platform for free expression, inviting visitors to post responses on our Commons page. We hope to open a dialogue at a time of social distancing. Art offers solace or has instigated resistance and rebellion. A great example is Patina du Prey’s Memorial Dress, 1993-2007. A sculpture and originally part of a performance piece that directly confronted the loss and emotional turmoil felt by those affected by HIV and AIDS. For the project, Hunter Reynolds appeared in the guise of his alter-ego, Patina du Prey, wearing the Memorial Dress—a black silk ball gown printed with 25,000 names of people lost to AIDS, for which viewers were invited to submit names. The dress—a site for both mourning and memorial—was continuously filled and emptied by the artist’s body, acting as a transgendered figure of witness and hope.
Patina du Prey
Jackson Fine Art presents 30 years of Women Artists as part of their anniversary celebration. The exhibit features works by a wide range of artists including: Bernice Abbot, Diane Arbus, Lalla Essaydi, Dorothea Lange, Sally Mann, Shirin Neshat, Eudora Welty and more.
Diane Arbus
Sundaram Tagore Chelsea is pleased to present a retrospective of work by ground-breaking artist Susan Weil coinciding with her 90th birthday. Art of Hysteri of Susan Weil: 70 Years of Innovation and Wit represents the oeuvre of one the key female figures who pushed the boundaries of Abstract Expressionism.
Susan Weil
If you missed Kathe Kollwitz at the Getty Research Institute, you can view it online:
Kathe Kollwitz
MOCA is offering a virtual book club that provides readings and essays with discussion prompts to create a dialogue and open space for exploration and conversation. Log in here to read an essay and join discussion.
There are some perks to having only online access. For example, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is offering 1600 full-length, free books online. Click here for access.
If that is not quite enough then virtually visit The Museum of Modern Art in New York which now has free access to every one of their exhibits since 1929. Click here for access.
I enjoyed going down this rabbit hole as among the 100s of exhibitions was the 1982 Louise Bourgeois Retrospective, the first woman artist to have such a show at MOMA. There were other women artists who had shows including Annie Albers, Mary Corse, Lynn Hershman et al, but Bourgeois (1911-2010) was the first to have a major retrospective.
Louise Bourgeois
