Claiming Space: A New Century of Visionary Women at the Museum of Wisconsin Art

Installation view of House, Hold at Mowa

It’s an immense honor to have my work in conversation with an incredible array of women artists for the Museum of Wisconsin Art’s Claiming Space: A New Century of Visionary Women. On display for the first time is a sequence from House, Hold.

Museum of Wisconsin Art
July 24 – October 3, 2021
https://wisconsinart.org/exhibitions/claiming-space.aspx

In 1961, Melitta Hedwig Suder-Pick joined a select group of visionary American women who founded art museums, gifting future generations institutions including MoMA and the Whitney in New York, the Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston, and, of course, the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend.

Claiming Space: A New Century of Visionary Women celebrates MOWA’s 60th anniversary and its visionary founder with an exhibition featuring Wisconsin’s current crop of visionary women. Thirty artists contribute deeply personal works that touch on themes of motherhood, the body, life during the pandemic, daily routines, hair, and the otherworldly side of femininity. Accompanying the works of art are brief expositions written by curators, gallerists, historians, and poets. 

The exhibition highlights artists from across the state working with a wide variety of media. Some artists reimagine the possibilities of materials traditionally associated with domestic crafts such as buttons, ribbons, quilts, pillows, and wallpaper. Others engage with modern media including neon, video, and installation. Some works are overtly political. Others delight in non-representational colors and forms. The diversity in works reflects the diversity of life experiences.

The title, Claiming Space, refers to the long-overdue recognition of the underrepresentation of women in museum collections and art history as well as the expansion of this exhibition into MOWA’s permanent collection galleries. The exhibition raises timely questions about the representation of women—both on the canvas and in the art world—to promote appreciation of contemporary women artists and to inspire the next generation.