Did you know that the Brooklyn Museum brings in new acquisitions for our renowned collection from many of our canon-expanding exhibitions? In 2016-17, we honored the 10th anniversary of our Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art through groundbreaking exhibitions during A Year of Yes: Reimagining Feminism at the Brooklyn Museum. And we proclaimed an unequivocal YES! for forward-thinking acquisitions from our YOY exhibitions.

Two rare, iconic works came to Brooklyn from our critically acclaimed exhibit We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-85. The first is Flower Sniffer (1966), a rare major painting from the 1960s by Emma Amos, the only female member of Spiral, a short-lived but influential group of African American artists that included Romare Bearden and Norman Lewis. It’s joined by the 1973 work by Betye Saar, Liberation of Aunt Jemima: Cocktail, a powerful example of Saar’s mixed-media assemblages that combines the iconography of the Black Power Movement, political violence, and aspirational middle-class American culture.

We also brought to Brooklyn works from two canon-expanding retrospectives organized for the YOY. From the renowned and trailblazing Marilyn Minter, celebrated in Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty, we acquired the video Smash (2014), one of her best-known forays in video art. It features one of Minter’s most recognizable motifs, the high-heeled shoe, explored in paintings, photographs, and public art for years prior to Smash. The video was originally commissioned by the Museum for its 2014–15 exhibition Killer Heels: The Art of the High Heeled Shoe, when a small group of contemporary artists were invited to riff on the high heeled shoe’s enduring place in the public imagination. We also organized a breakthrough survey of Beverly Buchanan, Beverly Buchanan—Rituals and Ruins, from which we acquired the paradigmatic cast concrete Untitled (Frustula Series) from c. 1978 [not pictured].

For our renowned Egyptian art collection, we “re-acquired” significant works through conservation and restoration of collection works in storage for the revelatory YOY exhibition A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt, which featured new research inspired in part by feminist scholarship about the differences between male and female access to the afterlife. Rediscovery of collection works through conservation is a primary way for the museum to “acquire” Egyptian works, in part due to the difficulty of purchasing Egyptian works because of changes in worldwide antiquity laws and still-evolving ethical considerations. For the exhibition we re-acquired five works, including a striking linen cartonnage from the late Ptolemaic Period to early Roman Period and dated ca. 1st-century B.C.E.

The collection also grew from the 107 drawings acquired from Iggy Pop Life Class, which resulted from a one-day performative event created by artist Jeremy Deller. The drawings are by 22 artists from across New York City’s diverse communities and used iconic rock star Iggy Pop as model and subject. They also use the traditional life drawing class as a means to examine what has constituted culture’s idea of an iconic male body through the ages and ask multiple questions about identity, ability and creativity. The drawings reveal the complex relationship between artist, model and spectator while also recreating the mystery that lies behind the closed studio door. 

We rounded out the Year of Yes, appropriately, with the addition of Judy Chicago’s mesmerizing 1975 Prismacolor on paper, Study for Elizabeth R. from ‘The Dinner Party’, featured in the acclaimed exhibition, Roots of “The Dinner Party": History in the Making the concluding show of the season. The Dinner Party (1974–79) is one of the Museum’s most beloved object, an icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in 20th-century art, as well as the foundational work of the Sackler Center. “Elizabeth R.,” or Queen Elizabeth I, is one of the best-known women honored among the largely unsung histories recorded on The Dinner Party. A bold ruler who brought stability and prosperity to an economically and spiritually ravaged England from 1558–1603, Queen Elizabeth redefined international expectations of female leadership in her era.

Posted by Susan Fisher

She signed herself “The Lady editor”. The first woman editor in the country, she wrote over two dozen books and hundreds of poems – including the classic “Mary had a little lamb”. She also basically invented Thanksgiving.

Her name was Sarah Josepha Hale. Her editorial career began with the Ladies' Magazine in 1828. In 1837 Hale began working as chief editor of Godey’s Lady’s book. These publications were among the first in America created for an exclusively female audience. Then as now, women’s magazines were filled with traditional feminine topics. From the start, however, Hale ran stories on serious issues alongside articles on fashion and other more frivolous fares.

Hale advocated for higher education for women, helping to found Vassar College. She founded the first society for the advancement of women’s wages, started the first-day nursery for working women and coined the term “domestic science” to give the dignity to work within the home.

The Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives own a rare run of early Godey’s Lady’s books. Hand-tinted fashion plates appear at the start of each issue along with engravings and illustrations of domestic life. Godey’s included contributions by such well-known writers of the day as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Washington Irving and Frances Hodgson Burnett.

For serious students of women’s history, these early publications are invaluable. Check out Godey’s and other early women’s publications at the Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives including: Lady’s Monthly Museum; the Lady’s friend and Journal des dames et des modes.

We warned you, the BKM Staff loves their Art Memes. Thus, Art Meme Mondays.

Join in by browsing our digital collections and memeing one of your own—and don’t forget to tag us @brooklynmuseum !

In ancient Egypt, a tomb was not simply a place for the burial of remains, but rather the site of quite literal rebirth. Here, the individual’s soul was born again, into the afterlife. But surprisingly, the ancient Egyptians believed that to make this rebirth possible for a woman, it was necessary that she briefly turn into a man, in order to conceive the fetus of her reborn self. Guided by new research inspired in part by feminist scholarship, our collection exhibition A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt explores how this process was thought to take place.

The term paddle doll dates to archaeologists’ first discovery of such objects in the early twentieth century. Today, Egyptologists understand these objects not as dolls, but as representations of musicians who doubled as midwives. The necklaces they wear represent a musical instrument called a menat in Egyptian. The Egyptians considered music to be a therapeutic or even magical element aiding childbirth. When these images were included in the tomb, they could help ease the pain of rebirth into the next life.

Georgia O’Keeffe always maintained a strong following among art lovers, and her stature as one of the country’s first and most significant modernists was secure. But in the late 1960s and 1970s her audience expanded and she became a celebrity, occupying a special place in the popular imagination. Feminists embraced her as a role model for women who wanted satisfying careers; to a youthful counterculture she became known not only as an artist, but also for her face, dress, and independent lifestyle. She embodied a quintessential American toughness, plainness, and individualism, tempered by age into a state of grace. When she died in 1986, at the age of ninety-nine, she had become an American icon.

Only one more week to explore O'Keeffe's self-crafted public persona through her art, wardrobe, and image. Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern closes Sunday, July 23.

Georgia O’Keeffe was passionate about materials and craft. She brought a measured, fastidious approach to everything she did – from creating hand sewn garments to making paintings and works on paper. From the beginning, she had strong feelings about how her artwork should be displayed, handled, and preserved to the best effect. In 1946, she met her match in Caroline Keck, who at the time was a paintings conservator at the Brooklyn Museum. Keck was every bit as careful and methodical in her approach to conservation as O’Keeffe was to painting. The two women developed a close bond, corresponding over a nearly forty-year period during which Keck served as O’Keeffe’s personal conservator, trusted advisor, and friend.

To learn more about this fascinating story, join me at the Museum Friday, July 14th for the lecture, Taking Care of Her Work: On Georgia O'Keeffe and Caroline Keck where I’ll discuss the artist-conservator relationship in the context of recent technical findings made during a close examination of the eight O’Keeffe paintings in the Brooklyn Museum collection. These paintings have been preserved in excellent condition and many retain original features such as O’Keeffe’s signature cardboard backing (seen above) or their artist-designed frames. These elements provide fascinating insights into O’Keeffe’s working methods and desired aesthetic. Get your tickets today!

There’s an incredible story waiting to be told in the Records of the Department of Photography! In 1940 Herman DeWetter, then Staff Photographer, proposed that the museum start including photography in the collection since he did “not know of any institution of the calibre of the Brooklyn Museum which is making a permanent collection of fine photographic prints.” Did the Brooklyn Museum really have the first permanent photography collection? In the 1930s and 1940s the department was in charge of photographing objects in the collection, teaching photography classes to the public, staging exhibitions of photography, judging open call competitions, and advocating for other institutions to have robust photography programs. They also contributed to our incredible lantern slide collection. Historians of photography like to point out that the field was inclusive of women from its early days, and the department was no different in that it had many employees who were women. Several of the employees were funded by the Works Progress Administration.