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Rebecca McNamara

Rebecca McNamara

Arts & design curator & scholar

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WIDOWS UNVEILED: FASHIONABLE MOURNING IN LATE VICTORIAN NEW YORK

Publisher: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum/Parsons, DesignFile e-book series
Publication date: 2016

Press release
Cooper Hewitt book page
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One year ago, March 5, 2020, I was rounding out #ArmoryWeek2020 with a visit to Gina Adams’s exhibition at @accolagriefen—where I first saw this work—and participating in a letter-cutting session. We had mostly stopped shaking hands by then, but we were still going to crowded gallery parties and sardining into subway cars and, that day, sitting elbow-to-elbow with strangers around a small table, no masks in sight. I had been following Gina’s work for awhile and was eager to assist in one of her future Broken Treaty Quilts through the small, simple gesture of cutting letters out of calico. It was everything a sewing circle should be: friends and strangers, sharing stories, learning histories. I met a few fiber-art enthusiasts and made plans to stay in touch (we didn’t) and to attend an art performance that one of them was planning for that summer (I assumed it had been canceled or indefinitely postponed). Maybe without a pandemic, we would have indeed kept in touch, but either way, I’m glad my “last event before the shutdown” story is one of art and community.
Spreading the #WomenHistoryMonth love beyond singular women artists and female-specific groups and into two activists collectives that include women: @wideawakes (poster) and @the_freeradicals (banner). These organizations use the power of visual media to fight for justice and inspire others to join hands with them to do so (only metaphorically; we’re in a pandemic after all). This photo is an install shot from the exhibition “Enlivened, Aware, Awake,” which takes its title from the powerful words of Wide Awake member and inspiring woman @rjkhckly. Curated by @skidmorecollege senior @jane.cole at the Tang, the exhibition brings together the Black power fist, the Wide Awakes eye, and the Rainbow flag to explore their role in social justice movements historically and today. Check it out on the @tangteachingmuseum website!
“Glass Castles” by Deborah Roberts is one of the true gems of the Tang collection, regularly experienced in @skidmorecollege class visits, by K-12 groups, and in exhibitions. I was thrilled to include it in my 2018 exhibition, “Give a damn.” Deborah is an artist who really gives a damn about justice and uses her art to elicit empathy and understanding and to encourage you, too, in the moments when it really matters, to please just give a damn. It’s currently in the exhibition “Never Done: 100 Years of Women in Politics and Beyond,” curated by @r_c_seligman and @minitasanghvi, where, for me, it serves as a reminder of all the work we have left to do in our fight for gender and racial equality and equity, as well as the reason why we fight—for the well-being of the next generation. All of which makes “Glass Castles” an easy choice to share with you this #WomensHistoryMonth.
Day 2 of #WomensHistoryMonth features a revamped classic from the Guerrilla Girls: “Dear Art Collector English,” from the #TangCollection. This 2007 print plays off a 1986 original, made just a year after the feminist activist art collective was founded. Guerrilla Girls was born out of the frustrations of seeing so little representation of women artists in museums and galleries. As they say, “CREATIVE COMPLAINING WORKS!” (though we still have a ton of work left to do).

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