June was a rather fruitful month for programs in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art! On Target First Saturday we listened to Ghada Amer talk about her work from the exhibition Ghada Amer: Love Has No End, which is currently up in the main galleries of the Center for Feminist Art through October 19th.
That same evening the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective board members Mareena Dareida and Sadia Rehman, along with artists Sara Rahbar, Samira Abbassy, and poet Sarah Husain gave us a sampling of their work during a panel discussion moderated by artist Miriam Ghani.
As if that weren’t enough, on the twenty-first, Dr. Kay Sloan shared her film Suffragettes in Silent Cinema in conjunction with the Votes for Women, the exhibition in the Herstory gallery that is up through November 30th. Included in the footage from the documentary were some hilarious portrayals of women activists as aggressive homewreckers or child-like in comparison to their more mature and virtuous husbands. Writer and television producer Coline Jenkins gave a resounding presentation on her great-great-grandmother, the pioneering suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and her own dedication to uphold the legacy of her famous relative’s activism, while working to ensure that women everywhere realize “the full potential” of the Amendment that early suffragists fought so hard for in their lifetimes.
Highlighted in the discussion following the film and Jenkins’ presentation was the implication that many of the same prejudices and discriminations present at the turn of the century are still alive in representations of women in the media today.
Stay tuned for more coverage of programs in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art throughout the summer!
Sarah Giovanniello is the former Research Assistant at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she assists the Curator of the Center with exhibitions, a growing permanent collection that includes The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, public programs, and projects related to feminism, feminist art, and the collection. Since 2008, she has worked on numerous exhibitions, including Kiki Smith: Sojourn, Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864, Ghada Amer: Love Has No End, Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video, and Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968. In 2009, she organized the mounting of Jen DeNike's TWIRL at the Museum for PERFORMA09. She has worked on numerous public programs, her favorites of which include making ourselves visible: a project in feminist space making with artists Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy, and the 2008 Emerging Scholars Feminist Art Symposium, Feminism NOW. As Research Assistant, she manages the Feminist Art Base and posts to the Brooklyn Museum blog on topics related to the Center's programs, projects, and exhibitions. Sarah holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU and a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College.