Modern Women

Edited by Cornelia Butler, Alexandra Schwartz. Introductions by Cornelia Butler, Griselda Pollock, Aruna D'Souza.

Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York

This landmark survey represents the first effort by a major North American museum to examine its collection by highlighting the production of modern and contemporary women artists. Featuring essays by nearly 50 writers, including both MoMA curators and outside scholars, among them many of the strongest voices in current research on art and gender, this groundbreaking publication presents a variety of generational and cultural perspectives. Modern Women focuses on a diverse range of artists active from the late nineteenth century to the present whose works span the spectrum of mediums and genres in the Museum's collection. Organized chronologically into three sections—“Early Modernism,” “Mid-Century” and “Contemporary”—the book comprises both long and short essays emphasizing new research on women artists within these historical time periods. Subjects include women at the Bauhaus, design collaborations, photographers between the wars, the legacy of Maya Deren, Latin American artists, performance art, architecture, land art, “Riot Grrrls,” African American artists, collage and assemblage in contemporary portraiture as well as essays on individual artists such as Lillian Gish, Sybil Andrews, Diane Arbus, Ida Lupino, Hanne Darboven, Bridget Riley, Ana Mendieta, Louise Bourgeois, Adrian Piper, Nan Goldin, Zaha Hadid, Janet Cardiff and Lin Tianmiao. Heavily illustrated with works from the collection, Modern Women constructs a conversation between past considerations of MoMA's collection and current feminist narratives of art history, putting these varied modes of exploration in productive dialogue.