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Home>Research>Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts>Meetings>Wyeth Foundation for American Art Programs>Feminism in American Art History

# Feminism in American Art History

# A Virtual Symposium  | December 4–11, 2020

Part IPresentations

Part IIDiscussion

This annual program supported by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art is *Feminism in American Art History*, a two-part symposium consisting of eight prerecorded lectures and a live panel discussion moderated by Steven Nelson, dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. The speakers—Kirsten Pai Buick, Aruna D’Souza, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Lisa Farrington, Jessica Horton, Jenny Lin, Helen Molesworth, and Jennifer Van Horn—reveal the latest thinking in the history and historiography of feminism and gender in American art. The symposium is held in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Linda Nochlin’s landmark essay of 1971, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” and in honor of the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

This symposium is organized by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. The Trustees of the National Gallery of Art are grateful to the Wyeth Foundation for American Art for making this symposium possible.

# Take Part in the Discussion

Unidentified artist, *Flora*, c. 1796–1820, cut paper on millboard with pen and brown ink, 14 x 13 in. Stratford Historical Society, Stratford, CT

Online EventLive Panel DiscussionDecember 11, 3:30 p.m.

Join us for a discussion with all eight symposium presenters (Kirsten Pai Buick, Aruna D’Souza, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Lisa Farrington, Jessica Horton, Jenny Lin, Helen Molesworth, and Jennifer Van Horn), moderated by Steven Nelson, dean, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts.

This event has already taken place.

# Presentations

Photograph by Aziza Murray

Kirsten Pai Buick*The Flesh Made Word: Soft Power, The Female Nude, and the Autobiography of Louisine Havemeyer*

Kirsten Pai Buick is professor of art history at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of *Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject* and the forthcoming *In Authenticity: "Kara Walker" and the Eidetics of Racism*.

Photograph by Dana Hoey

Aruna D’Souza*Lorraine O’Grady, Simone Leigh, and the Problem and Power of Invisibility*

Aruna D’Souza is a writer and critic who focuses on modern and contemporary art and intersectional feminisms and politics. She is author of *Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts*and editor of the forthcoming *Making it Modern: A Linda Nochlin Reader*.

Cecilia Fajardo-Hill *The Radicality of Latina/x and Chicana/x Feminisms*

Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, research scholar at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, Los Angeles, is an art historian and curator in modern and contemporary art, specializing in Latin American art. She cocurated the exhibitions *The Political Body: Radical Women in Latin American Art 1960‒1985* (Hammer Museum, Los Angeles) and *Xican-a.o.x.Body* (American Federation of Arts, 2022). 

Lisa Farrington*Black Feminist Art: Genesis*

Lisa Farrington is associate dean of fine arts and director of the Gallery of Art, Howard University, and distinguished professor emeritus, CUNY. She is author of the forthcoming publication *Documents in Twentieth-Century Art: The African Diaspora*.

Jessica Horton *Diné-Mapuche Weaving and the Relational Roots of Ecofeminism*

Jessica Horton, associate professor at the University of Delaware, is a scholar of modern and contemporary art, Native American politics, globalization, and environmental justice. She is author of *Art for an Undivided Earth: The American Indian Movement Generation.*

Jenny Lin *Another Beautiful Country: Cross-Cultural Hauntings in Chinese American Art*

Jenny Lin is associate professor of critical studies at the Roski School of Art and Design, University of Southern California. She is author of *Above Sea: Contemporary Art, Urban Culture, and the Fashioning of Global Shanghai*.

Photograph by Brigitte Lacombe

Helen Molesworth *How Many Feminists Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb? More Thoughts on Lee Lozano*

Helen Molesworth is a writer and curator. She recently hosted Recording Artists, a podcast series from the Getty, and is currently working on a book about art, love, and freedom. A few of her exhibitions include *Noah Davis* (David Zwirner Gallery), *Kerry James Marshall: Mastry* (The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago), and *Leap before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933‒1957* (Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston). 

Jennifer Van Horn *Shades of Her Ancestors: Early American Silhouettes and Enslaved Women*

Jennifer Van Horn is associate professor of art history and associate professor of history at the University of Delaware. She is the author of *The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America* and a forthcoming book, *Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art during Slavery*.

Steven Nelson**Moderator

Steven Nelson is dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts since July 2020. He was previously professor of African and African American art history and director of the African Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

# Related Wyeth Foundation for American Art Programs

Explore other lectures and panels generously supported by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art and organized by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts.

Art Is an Excuse: Conceptual Strategies, 1968–1983
In this Wyeth Lecture in American Art, presented on November 6, 2019, Kellie Jones, of Columbia University, looks at international conceptual art networks and the making of global community in the late twentieth century. The lecture considers moments in the global reach of performance art in the 1970s in locales from Mexico City to London to Los Angeles, considering projects by artists including Felipe Ehrenberg, Lourdes Grobet, Adrian Piper, Senga Nengudi, and David Lamelas.

 

Artists Panel: The African American Art World in Twentieth-Century Washington, DC 
As part of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Symposium presented on March 17, 2017, eight distinguished artists discuss their careers and relationships as members of the Washington, DC, art world. Panelists are Lilian Thomas Burwell, Floyd Coleman, David C. Driskell, Sam Gilliam, Keith A. Morrison, Martin Puryear, Sylvia Snowden, and Lou Stovall. Ruth Fine, former curator of special projects in modern art, National Gallery of Art, moderated the panel, which was part of a two-day symposium at the National Gallery of Art. The program was organized in collaboration with the Howard University Gallery of Art.

The Panorama and the Globe: Expanding the American Landscape in World War II
In this Wyeth Lecture in American Art, presented on October 25, 2017, speaker Cécile Whiting of the University of California, Irvine, analyzes the ways in which artists depicted landscapes joining the national and the international. Whiting's research focuses on how American artists recast the terms of landscape painting as it had been practiced in the 1930s, broadening its scope from the local to the international and from the pastoral to the antipastoral.

 

Top Image Credit: Lee Lozano, *Breach *(detail), 1966, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase through the Director's Discretionary Fund), 2015.19.125

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