| An artwork featured in the exhibition Don’t let this be easy. Ree Morton, Terminal Clusters, 1974. Collection Walker Art Center, T.B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2011.
On July 30, 2020 the Walker Art Center will open a new exhibition titled Don’t let this be easy. Featuring over 30 artists from the collection, the exhibition will showcase work by women and highlight moments in history where women struggled for due recognition in the artworld. Alongside the exhibition, the Walker will dedicate funds to increasing the photo-documentation and writing about women artists from the collection online. “It seemed insufficient to have an exhibition about an issue like representation, without tangibly impacting the visibility of women artists in the Walker’s collection. Ensuring that an image or writing about a particular work exists online seems like a small thing, but it might be the difference between someone deciding to research that artwork or not. The cumulative impact of this can be very powerful.” said Nisa Mackie, director and curator of the Walker’s Education and Public Programs and curator of the show.
The initiative is presented in conjunction with the Feminist Art Coalition (FAC), a nationwide effort involving more than 50 museums committed to social justice and structural change.
Don’t let this be easy highlights the diverse and experimental practices of women artists spanning some 50 years through a selection of paintings, sculptures, moving image works, artists’ books, and materials from the archives. To this day, these artworks challenge traditional museum categories and collecting practices, calling attention to the limitations inherent in institutional divisions and policies. The title Don’t let this be easy encompasses the issues raised by these artworks: the strictures of commercial and institutional validation, the desire for artistic and intellectual freedom, and unique ways that female artists have critically responded to these issues.
Don’t let this be easy includes work by Ree Morton (1936–1977), whose kitsch aesthetics, literary references, and renaissance of the decorative arts defied the monumentalism of a predominantly male art world; Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019), a pioneer of feminist avant-garde performance known for her staged works that personified women’s sexual liberation; Alexis Smith (b. 1949), whose mixed-media assemblages embody the conflicts between the real and the idealized in US culture; and Howardena Pindell (b. 1943), who pivoted from abstraction in 1980 to more directly address sociopolitical issues around the intersection of race, class, and gender. These artists developed experimental presentations and self-published projects in response to (and in spite of) their exclusion from the art market and gallery representation. In doing so, they expanded definitions of art and the bounds of accepted aesthetics.
Many of the artists featured in the exhibition have been the subject of renewed attention from curators and scholars seeking to resurrect some of art history’s more marginalized events. Their works are shown alongside pieces by younger generations to highlight relationships of kinship, visual rapport, and response. Some of these artists include: Andrea Carlson (b. 1979), who uses painting to depict the entanglement between cultural narratives and institutional authority; Christina Quarles (b. 1985), whose abstract paintings confront themes of racial and sexual identities, gender, and queerness; and Kaari Upson (b. 1972), who has dedicated the majority of her career to a quasi-fictional character she developed from discarded personal belongings found at an abandoned property. By presenting these works and examining behind-the-scenes what is required to address structural inequity, Don’t let this be easy explores the complex nature of the feminist enterprise.Don’t let this be easy is on view from July 30–July 4, 2021.
Curators: Nisa Mackie, director and curator, Education and Public Programs; with Alexandra Nicome, interpretation fellow, Education and Public Programs. |
