Online ARTalk - 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone with Curators Amy Smith-Stewart and Alexandra Schwartz

This exciting program organized in connection with the group exhibition 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone which celebrates the fifty-first anniversary of the historic exhibition Twenty-Six Contemporary Women Artists, curated by Lucy R. Lippard and presented at The Aldrich in 1971. The exhibition will showcase work by the artists included in the original 1971 exhibition, alongside a new roster of twenty-six female identifying or nonbinary emerging artists, tracking the evolution of feminist art practices over the past five decades. 52 Artists will encompass the entirety of the Museum—the first exhibition to do so in The Aldrich’s new building which was inaugurated in 2004.

52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone is on view from June 6, 2022 through January 8, 2023. The exhibition is organized by Aldrich Senior Curator Amy Smith-Stewart and independent curator Alexandra Schwartz with Aldrich Curatorial Assistant and Publications Manager Caitlin Monachino. Smith-Stewart and Schwartz will share an inside view of their curatorial process.

Amy Smith-Stewart Biography

Amy Smith-Stewart, Senior Curator at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, has organized thirty-six exhibitions and projects at the Museum since 2013. Smith-Stewart’s unique perspective has brought artists to The Aldrich during seminal stages of their careers. Smith-Stewart has organized more than sixty exhibitions in museums, collections, galleries, and temporary spaces. She began her career as a curator at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1). She has served on the faculty at the School of the Visual Arts, MFA Fine Arts department and the Sotheby’s Institute of Art's MA Contemporary Art program. Future curatorial projects at The Aldrich include the first-time solo museum exhibitions of Karla Knight and Milano Chow and 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone, an exhibition celebrating the anniversary of the historic exhibition Twenty-Six Contemporary Women Artists, curated by Lucy R. Lippard at The Aldrich in 1971.

Dr. Alexandra Schwartz Biography

Dr.Alexandra Schwartz is a New York-based art historian and curator and Adjunct Professor at SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology. Her upcoming and recent exhibitions include Garmenting: Costume as Contemporary Art at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2022), Ed Ruscha: OKLA at the Oklahoma Contemporary (2021), and As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler Paintings at the Clark Art Institute, with a catalogue from Yale University Press (2017). She is the author of Come as You Are: Art of the 1990s (University of California Press, 2015), Ed Ruscha’s Los Angeles (MIT Press, 2010), the co-editor of Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, 2010), and the editor of Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages by Ed Ruscha (MIT Press, 2002). Her catalogues have twice won Awards for Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators. Schwartz has taught at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, MoMA, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among other institutions.

The Library's ARTalk series is dedicated to exploring the creative process through lectures, films, and workshops that focus on art, architecture, and design. This ARTalks series is co-sponsored by the Ridgefield Library, Ridgefield Guild of Artists and, in part, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and also in partnership with the Kunhardt Film Foundation.

Image credit: Tourmaline, Violet Copper, 2020-2021, Dye sublimation print, Edition of 3 plus II A, Courtesy of the artist and Chapter NY, New York 

Please register below to receive the Zoom link for this program. To see and register for upcoming ARTalks click here and scroll down.