A few months ago I had the opportunity to finally visit the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC and it was an absolute pleasure. The museum itself was gorgeous and easy to navigate. I spent a little over two hours there and the roster of artists exhibited included almost every rock star of women artists that you would want to see, as well as new-to-me artists that I want to know more about. Rock stars include: The Guerilla Girls, Lavinia Fontana, Mary Cassatt, Amy Sherald, Cindy Sherman, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Marina Abramovic’, Clara Peeters, Judith Leyster, and Sonya Clark! New-to-me artists included photographer Ruth Orkin, painter Marie Danforth Page, sculptor Patricia Piccinini, painter Hollis Sigler, painter Remedios Varo, photographer Sharon Lockhart, and photographer Mary Ellen Mark.
I was extremely impressed with the emphasis on photographers, but of course, women have been taking photography to the next level since its earliest beginnings by Sarah Anne Bright, Anne Atkins, Julia Margaret Cameron, and beyond. Mary Ellen Mark was included in a special photography exhibit about Girlhood that included various photos of girls in action throughout her travels. My favorite piece was “Batman and Little Barbies at the Toys ‘R’ Us Holiday Parade, New York, 2002”. The exhibit will be up until August 8, 2021, when the museum will be closed due to renovations. If you are a fan of photography, this museum’s collection of significant photography is a joy to behold.
The main temporary exhibit was Sonya Clark’s “Tatter Bristle Mend” and it sadly closed on June 27. Sonya Clark is a textile artist with a social practice that weaves Black history and culture back into world history. It was informative and eye-opening to understand the connections between money, sugar, cotton, hair, racism, the slave trade, and modern day society. Ms. Clark treats hairdressing as a foundation for fiber art and as an expression of the politics around race and gender. She holds a mirror to American democracy and points to the oppression of people formerly treated as commodities and Other Than. Yet, the African Diaspora persists and flourishes. Her work appears so simply presented, but the narratives that unfold from further study and information contain multitudes. My favorite pieces were the ones that encrusted $5 bills in sugar (“Sugar preserves, but it also rots. Lincoln abolished slavery in the USA. What remains of the institution is sugar coated.”—Ms. Clark) and put the perspective of what the artist herself would have cost at the height of the slave trade in modern day currency. The latter piece was a stack of blank bills made from sugarcane pulp with the price $36,683 printed on the paper band around them. That would have been the cost of an actual person if it were in 2016 money.
I felt those pieces because they make greed concrete. People sold people, hurt them, profited off of their labor into the billions of dollars in today’s currency, and fought to keep their rights to do so because of money. The mastery with which Ms. Clark drew parallels between the slave trade and the rot of modern-day systemic racism was incredibly compelling, and I look forward to seeing more of her work in major museums across the globe. She deserves the recognition, and the world needs her to further educate and bring into perspective how much the slave trade of the 16th-19th centuries continues to affect the globe to this day. I love the three words that make up the title of the exhibition, “Tatter Bristle Mend.” It describes how history and society as a whole must unravel and be built up stronger and anew. It’s pragmatic and hopeful.
I look forward to visiting the National Museum of Women in the Arts in DC again! I can’t wait to see what else they have in store. I won’t be able to make it before the renovations start on August 9, but if you’re in the area, please go. Just be aware that their store and library are currently closed to the public. You can plan your trip by visiting their website here. Until next time, dear readers, have a wonderful week.