The Museum of Modern Art, New York
2010–2011
May 7, 2010–April 18, 2011
Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography (2011) presents a selection of outstanding photographs by women artists, charting the medium’s history from the dawn of the modern period to the present. Curated by Roxana Marcoci, Sarah Meister, and Eva Respini, the exhibition is comprised of over two hundred works, featuring celebrated masterworks by such figures as Diane Arbus, Berenice Abbott, Claude Cahun, Imogen Cunningham, Rineke Dijkstra, Florence Henri, Roni Horn, Nan Goldin, Sherrie Levine, Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, Lucia Moholy, Tina Modotti, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems, among many others. The exhibition also highlights works drawn from various curatorial departments, including Bottoms, a large-scale Fluxus wallpaper by Yoko Ono.
The exhibition’s accompanying publication, Modern Women: Women Artists At The Museum Of Modern Art, examines MoMA's collection by highlighting the work of modern and contemporary women artists whose diversity of practices and contributions to the avant-garde movements of the twentieth century have been enormous, if often underrecognized. Featuring fifty illustrated essays by many of the strongest voices in current research on art and gender, Modern Women presents a variety of generational and cultural perspectives and examines both canonical figures and lesser-known artists. Prefaced by three introductory essays, the book is organized chronologically into three sections, Early Modernism, Mid-Century, and Contemporary to emphasize new research on women artists within these historical time periods. Richly illustrated with works from the collection, Modern Women offers a lively discourse around gender and the production of meaning in art, one absolutely necessary for a more complex understanding of the art of our time.
Learn more at The Museum of Modern Art.