You can name a woman artist! And you can name a woman artist!

Happy first weekend of Women's History Month! I celebrated the start of what is bound to be a great month re-watching Wonder Woman and making homemade bagels for the first time. A superhero and carbs! I don't know what could be more perfect.

I also spent part of my weekend at the museum. I've been volunteering at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) for almost five years now and have been a docent most of that time. Being a docent is one of the things I'm most proud of doing. It's a lot of work, from writing tours, researching artists, and learning about our special exhibitions, but it's the kind of work that's satisfying. I love spending time at the museum and helping visitors navigate our collection and learn about artists they might otherwise never know. It makes my heart happy.

Last year, the education department (they oversee the docents) created a new tour called "Nasty Women" and debuted it over the weekend of the Women's March. The museum was packed and the tour was wildly popular. Since the introduction of the tour, our educators have refined the content, written a solid script, changed the name to Fierce Women, and trained a group of us docents to the deliver the tour. Since I can't say no to new things, I went through the training and have been delivering the tour for the last few months. I did my third tour this weekend and is was the funnest one yet. The tour is based on the concept of museum hacking, where the normal art museum tour script is flipped. It's fast-paced, high energy, and a more irreverent take on art and artists. There's more storytelling elements in a museum hack tour and is really designed to engage visitors in the museum than a traditional tour.

E.V. Day's G-Force Dive

I am obsessed with giving this tour. Don't get me wrong; I love giving regular highlights tours and special exhibition tours too, but there is something so fun and different about this tour. It's one part art museum tour and one part performance art. Where else would I get to make a Lifetime movie joke in relationship to artist Suzanne Valadon while also referencing Gilmore Girls? Or how about calling myself a feminist killjoy while recounting the magic that was 1990s fashion? In the space of an hour, visitors are moved from learning about the first professional woman artist (Lavinia Fontana) to discussing Virginia Woolf's lady parts, and end with a meditation on what would happen if thongs became sentient and flew off the people wearing them.


One part of me knows the reason I love this tour so much is that people are genuinely interested in the content and participating. We consistently have fifty or more people on each tour and they come back despite the fact that it's the same eight artists each time. It's not uncommon for us to have a group of people waiting outside for us to open just to sign up. They bring their friends, they post on social media, and they ask questions. I've had so many great conversations on these tours and afterward; they want more. One of my group today actually said he wanted the tour to last longer because he was having so much and learning about artists he had never heard of before today. Success! People are more interested in women artists, in feminism, and in representation in museums than ever before. These things matter and if this tour is the reason they come in and the reason they keep coming back, then let's do more.

This month I challenge you to go find some women artists at your favorite art museums. Use the #5womenartists to share their works on social media. Champion women through the arts. Come see our newest exhibition, Women House, opening this Friday.

Coming to the Island in March: A very special shoulder pads/women having it all Lazy Movie Weekend, shenanigans abound at a cat cafe, and I attempt to make croissants from scratch on my own. March is going to be outstanding!

2018: Art, Bugs, Croissants, and Getting Stuff Done

Hello to 2018! I've only written the date wrong twice this week, so that's something. The new year has started with a bomb...cyclone (see what I did there?) here on the East Coast. It's been freezing cold for the last week, but I ventured out of my house today to deliver my first "Fierce Women" tour at the museum. I figured we'd have a few intrepid visitors come out today. I was not prepared for almost 50 people on my tour today (more like 100 since we have two tours out at the same time). It was insane and awesome and a great reminder of why I volunteer at NMWA.

The "Fierce Women" tour started last year over the weekend of the Women's March. It was originally called the "Nasty Women" tour and was incredibly popular the weekend of the march. Our museum education team, the women who developed the tour, did something like nine tours that first weekend. They were scheduled to do two. Since the march, the tour has been renamed and a group of docents, myself included, have been trained to deliver the tour. The tour is very different from the regular highlights tours we do; it's irreverent, funny, and very feminist. It's based on the idea of museum hacking, bringing an unconventional approach to a museum tour. We highlight eight artists in our collection from the first professional woman artist, Lavinia Fontana to Mickalene Thomas, a modern painter responsible for the first portrait of Michelle Obama. It's a scripted tour, which is different for us docents as well, and we use a lot of source images to help tell the stories of these artists. We also get to tell jokes, racy stories, and add our own personal stories as appropriate.

I love this tour. It's more like performance art than any other tour I've ever given. It's fun, visitors get into it, and they participate. As an educator, one of the things I always think about when designing training is whether information will stick with learners/visitors. Classroom teachers think about this a lot too. The tour is fast-paced and we don't leave a ton of time for questions. What I observed today with my group was that they were getting it. They might not remember everything I said, but I can guarantee they remember a few nuggets and will keep their eyes out for women artists as they visit other museums. I'm also pretty certain this tour has inspired visitors to come back to visit NMWA again and again. They had fun and they learned something.

One of the artists included in this tour is Maria Sibylla Merian. Merian is one of the artists I had never heard of when I first started volunteering at the museum. She's a 17th and 18th century artist best known for her masterwork, Insects of Suriname. Merian always had an interest in insects, even growing silkworms in her room as a teenager. At the age of 52, she sold all of her possessions to fund an expedition to the Dutch colony of Suriname. Her younger daughter accompanied her on the journey, an unheard of act at that time. Women barely walked down the street alone, let alone travel to another country without a male chaperone. She spent two years documenting the life cycles of over 180 species in their natural habitats, trekking into the rainforest, through gardens, and onto plantations. Of course, she did it all in the fashion of the 17th century. I can't even imagine what she tracked in on those skirts. She came back to Europe, divorced the husband, joined a cult, left the cult, and reestablished her art and naturalist career. Her work was important in establishing the science of entomology, particularly because of the fact that she studied from life rather than from preserved specimens.

Merian's story constantly inspires me, as I shared with my group today. Think about it: she's 52, living in a society that doesn't allow her to join the scientific groups who benefit from her work, and people probably think she's a witch given the association of women and nature during this period. Instead of being a butterfly lady painter, she trekked into the rainforest and painted tarantulas the size of dinner plates and all sorts of other creepy, crawly creatures. Whenever I think to myself, "you can't do that" or "this is going to be terrible," Merian pops into my head and I forge ahead, even if it is terrible. I may not be going into the rainforest or helping to move science along, but I can be brave, intrepid, and daring in my own right.

So what am I planning on doing in 2018? I always establish goals at the start of every year. This year is my year of learning: I'm going to take classes, travel more, revamp my professional writing on LinkedIn, and finish my novel. I know it's a lot, but I feel really good about this list. This is going to be a great year.

My 2018 Goals - Remember kids, if you don't write your goals down and put them out in the universe, you won't actually do them. Nothing says accountability like posting my goals here on my blog. Y'all keep me honest.

• Personal
• Classes
• Baking classes. Yes, I know how to bake delicious things BUT I also like learning new techniques. First up, croissant making at Sur La Table later this month.
• Metalworking/Welding. No, I don't want to learn how to weld to fix cars or build a house or something more useful. I want to learn how to make jewelry and maybe metal sculptures.
• Drums lessons/Sign up for We Rock camp - Some people box to get out their aggression, I think drumming will help meld my love of music with my need to occasionally hit things.
• Craftivism & the Badass Herstory Project - I signed up to participate and stitch my story as well as be a project ambassador. This is going to be awesome.
• Finish Transient Suburbia. No really, it will happen.
• Monthly letter writing
• Do yoga at home after I finish up my last seven courses at the studio.
• Travel
• Memphis in May - Foo Fighters show, Graceland, and BBQ with my brother. It's going to be awesome.
• NYC at some point this year to see The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum.
• NOLA - it's been too long away from home.
• Nashville - this might be a stretch, but I'm hopeful I can fit it in this year too.
• Career
• Publish 3-4 articles on LinkedIn.
• Complete a certification course OR present at a conference.
• Sign up for my local ATD chapter and attend one networking event.

Coming to the Island in 2018: Meal planning, part seven (I think) this time I share my experience with a meal delivery service, a bunch of new Lazy Movie Weekends, I learn some new skills, and a month of Stuff I Love. 

DC Days: The Dinner Party

"Feminist practice means everyone's voice deserves to be heard." 

-Judy Chicago, Fresh Talk at the National Museum of Women in the Arts

September 17, 2017

One of the first artists I got to meet when I first started volunteering at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) was Judy Chicago. Three years ago, we had a small exhibition of her work to celebrate her 75th birthday. She came to the museum to give a talk, which I attended. She and her husband were walking around the main galleries before the talk and I happened to ride in the elevator with them to the performance hall. We said hello and she asked if I worked at the museum. I shared I was in docent training and she told me to enjoy it. The talk she gave, in conversation with Jane Gerhard, was fun, feisty, and feminist. It was a great reminder of why the museum was founded and why women need a place where their work is championed.

Wilhelmina Holladay co-founded NMWA with her husband, Wallace, after they began collecting work by women artists. They were interested in discovering these artists, many of whom had been neglected by art history texts and in some cases, lost to history. Like Judy Chicago's iconic work The Dinner Party, the Holladay's were interested in combating the erasure of women artists from history. The current collection spans work from as early as 1580 and includes many living/working artists from today. I've volunteered at a few other museums in DC and volunteering at NMWA has been the most satisfying volunteer experience I've ever had. Every time I walk through the museum or lead a tour or participate in an event like this weekend's Fresh Talk, I feel like I'm part of something and helping our visitors connect to these works and artists.

I've felt, over the last year and half (or so), that NMWA has been a saving grace of sorts for me. No matter what was going on at work or in my personal life, I could go to the museum for my shift a few times a month and leave everything else behind. It's a little community, from the other docents and volunteers to the staff and guards to our visitors. I get to talk about awesome artists and spend time talking with visitors about their experiences in the museum.

Beyond my experiences with visitors, my favorite part of volunteering is those times when I do get to meet artists. We host a large number of events throughout the year where artists are present to talk about their work and interact with our visitors. I try to attend as many of them as possible not just because meeting artists is one of those things I never thought I'd get to do, but because hearing them talk about their art helps me be a better docent. I can elements from their talks to my tours and really bring art life in a way I wouldn't be able to do without those stories. 

I had the opportunity to see Judy Chicago again this past weekend at NMWA during the first Fresh Talk of this season. Fresh Talk is a part of the Women, Arts, and Social Change program that looks at women and the arts as catalysts for change. The program launched in 2015 and includes curated artists' talks along with either a Sunday Supper or Catalyst happy hour which enables the audience to continue the conversation after the program itself. I've been to two Fresh Talks and have loved the experience both times. One of the cool things about Fresh Talk is that the programs are live-streamed and the videos are available online for later viewing. I attended "Who are the new superwomen of the universe?" in June and had a blast. 

Chicago's talk was entitled "Amplify" and focused on how art can amplify women's voices and visibility. Her career has always focused on this idea, whether it be through her teaching, her dedication to feminist theory in art, or her actual promotion of "lost" women in history through The Dinner Party. In addition to talking about how her work has evolved from the 1960s, she also shared plans for a new visual archive and partnership between NMWA, the Schlesinger Library (at Harvard), and Penn State to create a new way to view her work and preserve her legacy. It's an exciting project and one that will ensure that Judy Chicago's work is not erased. 

What I loved about this particular talk was seeing the breadth of Chicago's work at one time. Alison Gass joined Chicago for conversation. Gass is the director of the University of Chicago's Smart Museum of Art. She shared at the start of the program that she was an intern at the Brooklyn Museum when The Dinner Party was being installed and that Chicago's work had helped to shape her own art practice. Judy took us through her work, talking about learning new techniques like china painting, auto body painting (she went to auto body school in the mid-1960s), and glass work for newer exhibitions. Her dedication to learning is part of her art practice, from the techniques to the history and narrative she creates. She spent time researching the women included in The Dinner Party just as she would later do the same deep research on the Holocaust for her series The Holocaust Project: From Darkness Into Light (1985-1993). She talked a lot about how we move through history where there are times when we push back and erase one group or another. "We're in another moment of pushing back and erasure." It's our role to fight that erasure.

I appreciate her focus on learning as part of her practice. She's constantly learning; that's something that I try to bring to my tours, my own art (mostly writing), and my professional life. There's no magic formula for creativity or producing art except to get up and do it. That's what she does every day. It's these moments that make my time at the museum so important. It helps bring my own passion and creativity back. 

As I sat at Sunday Supper, I had a wonderful conversation with the woman sitting next to me. She had recently moved back to the DC area after a fairly long time away and has been spending the last year "experiencing" DC again. She came to the event for Judy Chicago but was intrigued by the dinner part. We talked about writing (she's a writer), the museum, and Wonder Woman. It was the perfect evening of women, art, and social change. 

If you're looking for a way to engage more and feel like you're not drowning in the spiral of hate and stupid that seems to be the way of the world these days, do yourself a favor and catch a Fresh Talk this season.

DC Days: Dots, Pumpkins, and Obliteration

I had the opportunity to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibition Infinity Mirrors at the Hirshhorn this weekend. If you're able to get tickets at any point during the remainder of the run here in DC, do it. Take off work, shirk adult responsibilities, and go see this exhibit. The exhibition is traveling to five additional cities after the Hirshhorn run.

My favorite room was "Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity" - it was one of the most beautiful experiences I've ever had in a museum and it only lasted 20 seconds. Kusama's obsession with dots is one I can get behind. 

All photos shared below were taken by me or my friend Emily, who joined me for the exhibition. This exhibit is best experienced visually so I'll stop with my commentary and share the photos. 

Phalli's Field (1965/2016)

Love Forever (1966/1994)

 The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013)

Love Transformed into Dots (2007/installed, 2017)

 Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity (2009)

All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins (2016)

The best photo I took all day - it's of the ceiling.

 
The Obliteration Room (2002) - Visitors get to participate in this room by placing dots all over the room.

#5womenartists

Happy Women's History Month! I know, it's cool that we get a whole month to celebrate all this awesomeness. If you do nothing else to commemorate this month, thank the super cool women in your life for being them.

Recently I was having dinner with a new friend and we were discussing ways to get move involved in the social scene here in the DMV. She and I are both introverts so our social/going out habits have some similarities: we don't care for crowds, we like hanging out with a few friends than huge groups, we're not fans of clubs (you know what I mean), and we prefer to be in more casual settings. This is probably why we've moved from being work friends to friend friends; we got to familiarity and similarity pretty quickly.

She asked me about the museum and why I started volunteering there versus other museums or other volunteer opportunities. This is my third museum in DC. While I enjoyed both of my previous experiences very much, I never really felt connected to either institution. It was fun, the other volunteers were nice enough, and I like teaching visitors things about the collections. I hope that my tours enhance their overall experience and make their trip brighter.

Lilla Cabot Perry, Lady in an Evening Gown

Volunteering at NMWA is a completely different experience. Yes, I started volunteering because I wanted to meet new people (which I have and I enjoy them all very much) and because I wanted to get out of the house more but it means more to me. I feel a connection to the mission and artists at NMWA that I didn't feel at either of the other museums where I volunteered. I know my work at both locations has helped me be a better docent at NMWA. I love learning about the artists in the collection, the only museum dedicated to celebrating women artists. I remember hearing the names of artists like Lily Martin Spencer, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Lilla Cabot Perry in high school when we did a production of Wendy Wasserstein's play The Heidi Chronicles. Since then, it's been my habit to look for women artists whenever I go to a museum and now I get to hang out with them several times a month.

In honor of Women's History Month, the museum has launched a new social media campaign called #5womenartists. The intention behind the campaign is to bring women artists to the forefront and address the issue of gender imbalance in the art world. I've been following along on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter since the campaign launched on March 1st and it's been awesome seeing so many people participating and the variety of artists featured. Something like 90 museums are participating in the campaign. I'll let the Guerrilla Girls tell you a little about gender and museums:

Alice Bailly, Self-Portrait

I'm giving a tour on Sunday. I haven't given a tour in awhile so I'm excited to be able to encourage participation in #5womenartists while we tour the collection. I'm including four artists I've never included in a tour before and focusing on the international spirit of the collection. In preparing for the tour, I decided to see how many of my friends and co-workers could answer the question "Can you name five women artists?" The answer: not many. The question is harder than it sounds.  Even the Huffington Post agrees. My friends came up with two consistent answers, Georgia O'Keefe and Frida Kahlo (excellent options of course), but most faltered after two. One friend knew Mary Cassatt and another mentioned Margaret Tafoya. I was most pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of Tafoya; I only recently learned about her work as part of the last special exhibition at NMWA. Her mother was also a potter as are eight of Margaret's ten children.

I want to encourage everyone to get out there this month and find some women artists. NMWA is a great place to start and this Sunday just happens to be Community Day so admission is free and you could even join my tour if you're so inclined. I've shared a few of my favorites here to get you started. If you live in the DMV, you have lots of options: NMWA, the Portrait Gallery, American Art, the Hirshhorn, the National Gallery of Art, and the Phillips Collection just to name a few. If you don't live here, find a museum or gallery in your city and play tourist and art fan. I promise it'll be fun.

Mickalene Thomas, A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Y

Amy Sherald, It Made Sense...Mostly In Her Mind

Next week: My mom and I journey to Detroit Rock City for a bridal shower and some other stuff that one does while visiting Michigan. 

Photos by me