Original Visions: Shifting the Paradigm, Women's Art 1970–1996

January 26–May 18, 1997

E-book

In collaboration with the Boston College Women's Studies Program, this exhibition examines the stylistically diverse concerns of six women artists with careers spanning the last twenty-five years: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Mary Beth Edelson, Janet Fish, Agnes Martin, Pat Steir, and Carrie Mae Weems. Works are drawn from the nineteen seventies, eighties, and nineties. The exhibition will explore the development of each artist within the larger historical context of the major movements of the period, in relation to the other work in the exhibition, and to the women's movement. For students, members of the university and the general public, this exhibition is an introduction to the variety of forms that women have chosen to express different visual concerns, and an example of how artists' works develop and change over an extended period.

The catalogue of the exhibition includes a historical essay by Alston Conley, Curator, McMullen Museum and Katherine Nahum, Adjunct Professor in the Fine Arts Department and interviews with the artists by Alston Conley, Mary Armstrong, Adjunct Professor in the Fine Arts Department, Lisa Cuklanz, Assistant Professor in the Communications and Theater Department, Marianne LaFrance, Professor in the Psychology Department, and Jennifer Grinnell, Exhibition and Publication Manager. The interviews provide primary source material to accompany the objects on exhibition, fulfilling the educational mission of the Museum the exhibition and catalogue contribute to the understanding of women in the visual arts and their role in recent art history.