The Prisoners by Käthe Kollwitz
In New York City, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is the home for art created from the 1880’s through today. Its permanent collection and the temporary exhibits cover a wide range of genres and styles. Currently, there are three special exhibitions, all featuring female artists. They span over 100 years of art history, yet all offer a view of the world through a woman’s struggles.
Joan Jonas—Good Night Good Morning
Joan Jonas (b. 1936) has been a pioneer of performance and video art for close to sixty years. She originally trained as a sculptor, but living on the lower East Side of New York City brought her into the avant-garde art movement in the 1960’s. Her first foray into performance art was a series of dance exhibitions titled Mirror Pieces. Dancers performed in spaces while holding large mirrors. The mirrors were moved so that they shifted between reflections of the dancers and the audience.
Mirror Pieces by Joan JonasShortly after this, Jonas used several square blocks on Manhattan’s lower West Side as the stage for Delay Delay. Most of the buildings in this area had been torn down, and the dancers moved through the empty lots, banging bricks together and dancing, while the audience sat on the roof of one of the remaining structures to watch. The name came in part from the lag between the audience seeing actions, and hearing the noise created.
Delay Delay by Joan Jonas (Photos by Gianfranco Gorgoni)
Jones Beach Dance by Joan Jonas (photos by Richard Landry)
By the 1980’s, Jonas had moved to installations often including video components.
The Juniper TreeThis exhibition will be on display until July 6, 2024.
Latoya Ruby Frazier – Monuments of Solidarity
Latoya Ruby Frazier (b. 1982) is a contemporary photographer, whose work consists of collections of photographs focused around struggles and lives of working people. She was born in the town of Braddock, PA. Braddock is southeast of Pittsburgh, sitting along the Monongahela River. It is one of many towns in the area that served as home to plants owned by U.S. Steel. By the 1980’s these plants were being closed, with devastating effect on the communities.
U.S. Steel Edgar Thompson Steel Works and Monongahela River
Frazier’s work documents the effects of the de-industrialization of the United States over the past 20 or so years. Her first collection was a series of intimate photographs of her mother and grandmother.
Momma (Shadow)
Grandama Ruby and me
She then began to take pictures of the growing movement in Braddock that sprang up when the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center closed the hospital there, stating that it was no longer profitable.
Photos depicting the destruction of UPMC Hospital
Next, Frazier went to Flint, Michigan, when news of the lead in the water crisis there broke. She spent several years working with local activists and families, capturing how their lives had been changed by this preventable, man-made disaster.
Mr. Smiley Standing with his daughter Shea and his Granddaughter Zion
Moses West distributing water collected from the air
by his condensation machine
Children playing in clean water sprayed by Moses West
The final collection on display at the museum is a collection of photos and interview done at the time of the closing of the Lordstown, Ohio, General Motors auto plant, where the Chevy Cruze had been produced. In 2017, then-president Trump came to Lordstown and promised that he would personally make sure that the plant would never close. In 2019, it did.
Pamela Brown with her Great Granddaughter
Members of UAW Local 1112, Lordstown, Ohio
This exhibition will run through Sept. 7, 2024
Käthe Kollwitz
Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) was a German artist who produced work from the 1880’s until her death in 1945. Her work concentrated on the lives of working people, focused through the lens of the lives of women. Her pieces fall mostly in the the genre of expressionism, working to bring forth the emotions of a scene, rather than a realistic portrayal.
Self-Portrait
Home Worker, Asleep At The Table
Early in her career she produced several series of drawings taken from historic movements by the poor against the aristocracy. One was The Weaver’s Revolt. Between 1844 and 1845, cotton weavers in the Silesia area of Prussia were on the verge of starvation. Their pay had been lowered because the merchants could not compete with the modern British industry. The weavers rebelled and stormed the estate of their contractor, who called in the Prussian army. The Army brutally suppressed the rebellion.
March of the Weavers
Storming the Gate—AttackThe second series presented here is The Peasants’ War. In 1524, there was a widespread rebellion by farm workers in several German-speaking areas of Europe. This rebellion was violently put down, resulting in the deaths of between 100,000 and 300,000 peasants.
ChargeKollwitz’s work focused on the lives and role of women in these series and in later pieces. One common theme was mothers mourning for children who had died, either from starvation, illness or in war.
Woman with Dead Child
Between World War I and World War II, Kollwitz also produced posters for political movements she supported. The most famous of these is probably “Never Again War” made in 1924.
And remember a trip to MoMA always offers great things to look at, even when one watches the crowd instead of the art.
Thank you for sharing this exhibition with us!