National Museum of Women in the Arts

Wednesday, February 15, 2:30 p.m. National Museum of Women in the Arts renovation project: Great Hall; Rendering by Sandra Vicchio & Associates, LLC, with Marshall Craft Associates, Inc. Director Susan Fisher Sterling of the National Museum of Women in the Arts invites you to a private HARD HAT PRESS TOUR of the museum’s renovation, ahead of fall 2023 reopening Wednesday, February 15, 2:30 p.m. National Museum of Women in the Arts 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20005 Please RSVP by Friday, February 10: https://forms.gle/TEyQEeDrmssLLJgHA Invitation is non-transferable. RSVP required. Spaces are limited Closed since August 2021, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is currently undergoing a top-to-bottom, $67.5 million major renovation. Join NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling, architect Sandra Vicchio and members of the NMWA building project team to experience the transformation underway at the museum, hear about exhibitions and artworks that will be on view and learn about the public grand opening in fall 2023. The grand reopening date will be announced at the tour.  About the Project NMWA is located in a 1908 Classical Revival structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The historic building’s first full renovation since NMWA opened in 1987, the project honors its legacy while improving its interior spaces, façade and infrastructure. Designed by Baltimore-based architectural firm Sandra Vicchio & Associates, updates include gallery spaces enlarged by more than 20% to showcase historic and contemporary artworks and installations; a new Learning Commons, featuring an Education and Public Programs Studio for hands-on workshops and improved research library; an updated, state-of-the-art Performance Hall; and more efficiently designed museum collections storage and conservation areas.  For further information on the renovation project, go to nmwa.org/renovation. #nationamuseumofwomeninthearts#fineartmagazinee#fienaartfun

National Museum of Women in the Arts ! Soyna Clark March 3, 2021. Time flies when you're having art fun!

National Museum of Women in the Arts 

First survey of artist Sonya Clark’s 25-year career features nearly 100 works that address race, visibility and Blackness  

 

WASHINGTON—Beginning March 3, 2021, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) presents Sonya Clark: Tatter, Bristle, and Mend, a mid-career survey exhibition of works by textile and social practice artist Sonya Clark. Throughout her 25-year career, Clark has become renowned for her application of fiber art techniques to human hair, combs, currency, hair salon chairs and other everyday materials to explore the social and cultural impacts of the African Diaspora. The exhibition features nearly 100 works that reflect the breadth and depth of the artist’s practice. Illuminating the central themes of Clark’s art—including heritage, labor, language and visibility—the show aims to reveal Clark’s radical ability to combine an intensity of handwork and subject matter with an economy of form. Sonya Clark: Tatter, Bristle, and Mend is open through May 31, 2021.

“This timely exhibition affirms Clark’s prowess as both maker and visionary,” said NMWA Deputy Director for Art, Programs and Public Engagement/Chief Curator Kathryn Wat. “She uses concept, process and participation rather than didactic imagery to reflect questions and truths back to us.”

Clark describes “mining” common objects, particularly those bound to identity and power, because “they have the mysterious ability to reflect or absorb us.” The artist transmutes these objects through the application of a vast range of fiber-based processes: weaving, folding, braiding, trimming, pulling, rubbing, twisting, pressing, snipping, dyeing, tying or stacking her diverse source materials. By stitching black thread cornrows and Bantu knots onto flags, rolling human hair into necklaces, or stringing a violin bow with a dreadlock, she reasserts the Black presence in histories from which it has been pointedly omitted. 

For example, Clark’s Afro Abe II (2010)—a five-dollar bill embellished with black threads that form an Afro for President Abraham Lincoln—is witty, poignant and provocative. The stitched intervention induces a sharp, penetrating moment of recognition and connection and infuses the currency with new, layered meaning. Clark’s use of currency-as-canvas evokes personal, cultural and historical associations with money, including freedom, self-determination and property ownership. As Clark observes, “It’s crowning the emancipator with the hair most associated with Black liberation and black power,” simultaneously embodying the historical absence of Black political agency as well as the promise of it. That liminality—the creation of objects that simultaneously denote humankind’s capacity to suppress as well as persevere—is the formidable essence of Clark’s practice.

#sonyaclark#fineartmagazine#artfun