All News

‘Beyond Boundaries: Feminine Forms’ reexamines femininity in upcoming dual-site exhibition at BMC and PAFA

September 12, 2017
‘Beyond Boundaries: Feminine Forms’
Mary Nomecos, Swan, 1991

Beyond Boundaries: Feminine Forms is a dual-sited exhibition of artworks from The William and Uytendale Scott Memorial Study Collection of Works by Women Artists at Bryn Mawr College and the Linda Lee Alter Collection of Art by Women at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The collaboration, conceived by graduate students in the History of Art Mechella Yezernitskaya and Laurel McLaughlin, brings together two institutions, collections, and professional curatorial teams for an exhibition that highlights and reexamines each institution's inclusive efforts to collect artworks by women.

While considering the historical stakes of such strategic essentialism, the exhibition queries its rationale and continued relevance by recuperating its "feminine" gender criteria as a set of artistic strategies that refuse the gendered stereotypes to which art by women has been subjected. To do so, the curators propose 7 thematic constellations for subverting and reclaiming the "feminine" beyond biological, aesthetic, and social boundaries. 

The sister-sited exhibition features over 80 works on paper, paintings, and sculptures by 72 artists, including Kara Walker, Lesley Dill, Betye Saar, Edna Andrade, Eleanor Heller, Nancy Spero, Joan Mitchell, and Kay Walkingstick. The two sites will be joined by programming and an exhibition catalogue available only at Bryn Mawr College. 

Exhibitions and public programming are sponsored by the Friends of the Bryn Mawr College Library.

At Bryn Mawr, the exhibition opens Thursday, September 28, with a reception from 4:30-6pm, and runs through January 28, 2018. Open daily from 11 am - 4:30 pm in the Class of 1912 Rare Book Room, Canaday Library.

The exhibition is also on view at PAFA in the Historic Landmark Building, with an opening reception on Friday, September 15 from 6-7:30pm, preceded by a public conversation with the curators and collector Bill Scott at 5:30pm. The show will be on view at PAFA through March 18, 2018.

Related Links