Deeds Not Words: Women Working for Change — A BIG IDEA project of Sun Valley Museum of Art

Deeds Not Words: Women Working for Change JANUARY 8–APRIL 16, 2021 A BIG IDEA PROJECT

THE MUSEUM 191 Fifth Street East, Ketchum, Idaho Mon–Fri, 10am–5pm Sats in Feb & Mar, 11am–5pm HAILEY CLASSROOM 314 Second Ave South, Hailey, Idaho Scheduled Class Times LIBERTY THEATRE 110 N. Main Street, Hailey, Idaho 208.578.9122 SUN VALLEY MUSEUM OF ART P.O. Box 656, Sun Valley, ID 83353 208.726.9491 • svmoa.org

COVER: Angela Ellsworth, Pantaloncini: Group IV, The Ten Largest No. 6, Ahead (Hilma), 2020, 40,180 pearl corsage pins, colored dress pins, fabric, steel, courtesy the artist INTRODUCTION PANELS, TOP TO BOTTOM, LEFT TO RIGHT: Kim Stringfellow, Grain Silo, Llano del Rio Socialist Colony, Llano, CA, 2017, inkjet print, courtesy the artist Meyer Elkins, group viewing Alice Constance Austin’s architectural model, ca. 1917.

Paul Kagan Utopian C ­ ommunities Collection.

Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Maypole Festivities, Llano del Rio, n.d.

Paul Kagan Utopian Communities Collection.

Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

BACK PANEL: Elena del Rivero, Domestic Landscape #36, 2019, gouache, thread and graphite on collaged vintage graph paper with coffee, courtesy the artist and Henrique Faria Fine Art, New York INTERIOR, TOP TO BOTTOM: Elena del Rivero, Suffrage Flag (installation view), 2020, nylon flag, courtesy the artist and Henrique Faria Fine Art, New York Lava Thomas, Harriet Tubman, 2019, graphite and conte pencil on paper, collection of Brook Hartzell & Tad Freese, image courtesy Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco Pat Boas, Sentinels (banner), 2020, acrylic on linen over panel, courtesy the artist and Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland

Alice Constance Austin, architectural drawing for Llano del Rio, ca. 1917.

Paul Kagan Utopian Communities ­Collection.

Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

oinciding with the centennial of ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Deeds Not Words celebrates the many ways—both seen and unseen—that women have worked for social change. The project takes its title from the slogan of British suffragettes who, like many suffragists in America, decided that direct action rather than rhetoric alone was necessary to secure women’s suffrage. The project looks back at some surprising history (including Idaho's decision to grant women suffrage in 1896) and explores the way women give voice to power today.

Deeds Not Words: Women Working for Change JANUARY 8–APRIL 16, 2021 A BIG IDEA PROJECT MUSEUM EXHIBITION

LECTURE

Five artists consider the history of women activating for social change. The exhibition examines how ­women have used their voices and their bodies to fight for suffrage, dress reform, civil rights and economic equality.

SVMoA has commissioned Pat Boas to create an installation in response to the history of women’s ­suffrage with a focus on Idaho and the American West. It includes new paintings, artist-designed wallpaper and a poster featuring excerpts from a speech by s­ uffragist Abigail Scott Duniway that visitors may take with them.

The exhibition features two sculptures from Angela Ellsworth’s series Pantaloncini. Inspired by bloomers, Ellsworth crafts these works with fabric, steel and thousands of corsage pins and colored dress pins. The sculptures allude to the power of the female body and the history of dress reform, which freed women from confining garments like corsets. They also refer to the early modernist works of spiritualist Emma Kunz and Hilma af Klint, innovative artists who received little attention in their lifetimes.

With support from a Guggenheim Fellowship, Elena del Rivero has produced a set of suffrage flags celebrating the centennial of the 19th Amendment.

SVMoA joins institutions around the country in flying these flags, which are modeled on dishtowels and refer to the public work women undertook in pursuit of suffrage as well as their private activism within the domestic sphere. The exhibition also includes ­Domestic Landscapes, works on ledger paper made with gouache, thread and other materials of daily life.

For several years, Lava Thomas has been making large drawings of women who have worked for racial justice. The exhibition includes Thomas’s portrait of the abolitionist Harriet Tubman and two portraits made from the mugshots of women who participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the 1950s. Thomas’s portraits honor women who risked criminal prosecution, imprisonment or worse while advocating for the rights of Black Americans.

Also included are reproductions of drawings that the architect Alice Constance Austin made in the early 20th century as a member of Llano del Rio, a socialist intentional community in California. Austin believed architecture could activate social change, and she envisioned Llano del Rio as an egalitarian city of kitchenless houses that would free women from the home and allow them to pursue any profession they chose. Alongside Austin’s drawings are photographs of daily life at Llano del Rio and a selection of Kim Stringfellow’s photographs of what remains of the failed community today.

FEATURED SPEAKER: A LIVESTREAM CONVERSATION WITH AZAR NAFISI

EVENING EXHIBITION TOURS

Wed, Feb 17, 6pm Online, livestreamed via Crowdcast $10 / $12 nonmember, pre-registration required Join SVMoA’s Artistic Director, Kristin Poole, for a discussion of the ways many women artists working in the U.S. in the latter part of the 20th century used their artistic practices as platforms for social change.

Elizabeth Catlett and Faith Ringgold amplified the African American experience and drew attention to systemic racism. Agnes Denes, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Maya Lin have explored issues of land use and environmental destruction. Nancy Spero worked to expose abuse of power and elevate female voices.

Poole will explore the ways these artists and others were motivated to push back on tradition and society for meaningful reform.

Thu, Jan 14, Feb 11 & Mar 11, 4:30pm & 5:30pm The Museum, Ketchum FREE, pre-registration required Join us for a glass of wine as your tour the exhibition with SVMoA’s curators. Participants must register in advance. Each session is limited to 8 participants.

PRIVATE TOURS If you’d like to learn more about the exhibition, SVMoA’s curatorial staff offer free exhibition tours to families and small groups. Please contact The Museum to schedule your tour. Para arreglar visitas guiadas en español, favor de llamar al Museo.

ARTIST TALK WITH PAT BOAS Mon, Jan 11, 6pm Online, livestreamed via Crowdcast FREE, pre-registration required Join SVMoA's Curator of Visual Arts, Courtney Gilbert, for a c­ onversation with Pat Boas about her instllation project. Boas will discuss research she did on the push for suffrage in Idaho, where women gained the right to vote in 1896, and how it informed her artwork.

Thu, Feb 4, 7pm FREE Online, livestreamed Join Azar Nafisi for a conversation about her work as a writer and issues of contemporary social change in Iran.

Azar Nafisi is best known as the author of the national bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which electrified its readers with a compassionate and often harrowing portrait of the Islamic revolution in Iran and how it affected one university professor and her students. She has lectured and written extensively on the political implications of literature and culture as well as the human rights of the Iranian women and girls. Nafisi was recently named a Georgetown University/Walsh School of Foreign Service 2018–2019 Centennial Fellow.

This lecture is presented in partnership with

and has been ­generously ­sponsored by Jane P. Watkins with additional support from Marcia and Don Liebich.

ADULT CLASSES LIVESTREAM ART HISTORY LECTURE: MAKING ART, MAKING CHANGE: ­WOMEN ARTISTS IN LATIN AMERICA WITH COURTNEY GILBERT Wed, Jan 27, 6pm Online, livestreamed via Crowdcast $10 / $12 nonmember, pre-registration required Join SVMoA’s Curator of Visual Arts, Courtney Gilbert, for an examination of different ways 20th-century women artists across Latin America used their practices to push for change. The talk will consider artists María Izquierdo and Frida Kahlo in Mexico, Tarsila do Amaral, Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape in Brazil, and contemporary artist Cecilia Vicuña in Chile, among others. How did these women use artistic techniques such as surrealism, geometric abstraction, performance and more to advocate for the change they hoped to see in the world?

LIVESTREAM ART HISTORY LECTURE: BREAKING TRADITIONS: M ­ ODERNIST AND POSTMODERNIST ARTISTS AS ­ACTIVISTS WITH KRISTIN POOLE

LIVESTREAM ART HISTORY LECTURE: TWO WOMEN ARTISTS OF THE BAROQUE ERA WITH ELAINE FRENCH Wed, Feb 24, 6pm Online, livestreamed via Crowdcast $10 / $12 nonmember, pre-registration required Art Historian Elaine French illuminates the stories of two strong women painters, Judith Leyster (1609–60) and Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653). Leyster was part of the Dutch Golden Age of painting; Gentileschi represents the era of the Italian Baroque.

Highly regarded during her lifetime, Leyster’s name faded into obscurity as her paintings were attributed either to her husband or to Frans Hals until late in the 19th century. Like Leyster, Gentileschi was well regarded, and she traveled widely on commission during her lifetime. But her fame in later years became overshadowed by her rape by one of her colleagues and her unusual participation in his trial.

This lecture examines similarities and differences in the paintings of these two artists. What are the shared Baroque elements? What aspects of their paintings are attributable to their gender? And how did gender impact their career paths?

A THOUSAND WORDS: GUIDED WRITING ABOUT THE ART YOU SEE WITH SARAH SENTILLES Tue, Feb 23, 6–7:30pm The Museum, Ketchum $10 / $12 nonmember Art inspires, captures, escapes, disrupts, disturbs, conceals and reveals. It also helps us learn to look more carefully, reminding us that what we think we see is not all there is. In this time of mis-seeing and misunderstanding, careful looking is ethical and urgent work. Join us for generative writing exercises based on the current exhibition. Experiment with new ways to view art and play with language. The workshop is open to all levels.

Sarah Sentilles is a writer, teacher, scholar of ­religion and author of many books, including Draw Your Weapons, which won the 2018 PEN Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Oprah Magazine, Ms. and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications.

FILMS BEYOND THE VISIBLE: HILMA AF KLINT Thu, Jan 14, 4pm & 7pm Magic Lantern Cinemas, Ketchum $10 / $12 nonmember Hilma af Klint was an abstract artist before the term existed: a visionary, trailblazing figure who, inspired by spiritualism, modern science, and the riches of the natural world around her, began in 1906 to reel out a series of huge, colorful, sensual, strange works without precedent in painting.

FOR SAMA Thu, Jan 21, 4pm & 7pm Magic Lantern Cinemas, Ketchum $10 / $12 nonmember FOR SAMA is an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war. The film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria, as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama.

TONI MORRISON: THE PIECES I AM Thu, Feb 18, 4pm & 7pm Magic Lantern Cinemas, Ketchum $10 / $12 nonmember An intimate meditation on the life and works of the legendary storyteller and Nobel prize-winner.

MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A. Thu, Jan 28, 4pm & 7pm Magic Lantern Cinemas, Ketchum $10 / $12 nonmember Drawn from a cache of personal video recordings from the past 22 years, director Steve Loveridge’s Sundance award-winning film is a startlingly personal profile of the critically acclaimed artist, chronicling her journey from refugee immigrant to pop star.

93QUEEN Thu, Feb 11, 4pm & 7pm Magic Lantern Cinemas, Ketchum $10 / $12 nonmember 93Queen follows Rachel “Ruchie” Freier, a nononsense Hasidic lawyer and mother of six who is determined to shake up the “boys club” in her Hasidic community by creating Ezras Nashim, the first allfemale ambulance corps in NYC.

This project was made possible in part through generous support from The Ford Family Foundation and Jeri L. Wolfson.

BILLIE Thu, Feb 25, 4pm & 7pm Magic Lantern Cinemas, Ketchum $10 / $12 nonmember Billie Holiday, one of the greatest voices of all time, changed the face of American music. Singing “Strange Fruit” exposed the realities of Black life in America and earned her powerful enemies.

FAMILY PROGRAM AFTERNOON ART (for families with kids ages 5–12) Fri, Feb 19, Feb 26 & Mar 5, 2:30–3:20pm & 3:30–4:20pm The Museum, Ketchum FREE, pre-registration required Families will make art, explore The Museum’s Art Lab and view the exhibition together. Projects will change on a weekly basis and always connect to the artwork in the exhibition. Participants must register in advance. Limited to 4 families per session.