News: MoMA Announces 2015 Focus on Women Artists
by ArtSlant Team
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MoMA Plans Only Female Art for 2015

[http://dbprng00ikc2j.cloudfront.net/userimages/684523/tcd3/20140401152212
-Archive-as-Impetus.jpg]

An Archive as Impetus performance in MoMA¹s Agnes Gund Garden Lobby,
2013, where artist Xaviera Simmons read a list of demands, including to
"erase sexism at MoMA" clearly made an impression on the Museum
leadership. Photograph courtesy of Xaviera Simmons.

To mark the 30 year anniversary of the first Guerrilla Girls protest at
MoMA, Director Glenn D. Lowry announced yesterday plans to give the
museum over exclusively to women artists for the entire year of 2015. Ann
Temkin, curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA, when reached for
comment said, "Though devoting one year to the works of women artists
will in no way make up for MoMA's historically unequal representation,
we're hoping that this unprecedented gesture will be an eye-opener to
institutions everywhere. This is why we're not only presenting temporary
exhibitions featuring only women artists, but changing out the permanent
collection as well, which has been a real challenge." MoMA's 4th and 5th
floors of chronologically organized modern and contemporary works will be
completely changed out to highlight the Museum's collection of women
artists, which represents about 13% of their painting and sculpture
departments. "Finding a way to tell the history of art through only women
artists is a formidable exercise," Temkin remarked.


Major challenges will include moving José Clemente Orozco's 9 foot tall,
18 foot wide portable frescoDive Bomber and Tank (1940), which weighs
nearly 3 tons, from the 5th floor entrance, to be replaced by a more
diminutive Frida Kahlo painting. Plans are in motion for a retrospective
of Faith Ringgold, an exhibition of 20th century painting, including Lee
Bontecou, Hilma af Klint, Lee Krasner, Agnes Martin and others, and an
expansive show of female photographers from Julia Margaret Cameron to
contemporary artists like Rineke Dijkstra.