As we close our exhibition Independent Visions: Helene Schjerfbeck and Her Contemporaries From the Collection of Ateneum Finnish National Gallery, please join us for an exciting panel discussion, featuring: radical artist activists the Guerrilla Girls; Dr. Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, Chief Curator, Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery; and artist and theorist Laura Cottingham. On the 100th anniversary of Finland’s independence from Russia, this panel will discuss the cultural and social influences that enabled these Finnish female artists to flourish, despite the tumultuous years of the early 20th century, and will examine how such experiences can be applied to current conversations on female visibility and cultural representation in contemporary art.
Join us afterward for a wine and cheese reception, and for a final viewing of the exhibition. Independent Visions: Helen Schjerfbeck and Her Contemporaries from the Collection of Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, an exhibition presenting fifty-five works by four celebrated Finnish artists, highlights the pioneering role of these artists at the end of the 19th century and in the early decades of the 20th: Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946), Sigrid Schauman (1877–1979), Ellen Thesleff (1869–1954), and Elga Sesemann (1922–2007).
Admission to this event has been reduced and is now $5, general admission, free for students, seniors, and ASF members.
Biographies
Dr. Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, Chief Curator, Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki has achieved international excellence and distinction for her publications and curated scholarly exhibitions in Finnish and international modern art and design. She is a leading international authority on modern color theory and painting; visual cultures of landscape and space; identities of ‘nation’ in art, design and architecture; interiors and transnational capitals of art. Dr von Bonsdorff’s most recent works include her 2016 published Japanomania in the Nordic Countries 1875–1918 and Schjerfbeck – Timelessness and Immateriality, the outcome of her international research collaboration with Tokyo University of the Arts (Japan: 2015). She is currently leading three international collaborations, including with museums in Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Tokyo, Copenhagen and Edinburgh.
Laura Cottingham is a writer, artist, and filmmaker based in New York. Her books include Seeing Through the Seventies (1999), a collection of Cottingham’s essays on feminist art; Lesbians Are So Chic… (1996), her polemic on lesbian culture as constituted through mainstream media; and her book for BFI’s film classics series on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Fear Eats The Soul (2005). She has contributed to many art publications and exhibition catalogues, including on the work of Hannah Wilke, Mona Hatoum, Lorraine O’Grady, and Claude Cahun. Cottingham has curated two museum surveys in Europe devoted to feminist issues and history: Incandescent for NowHere at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (1996); and Vraiment feminisme et art at Le Magasin Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble, France (1997). Cottingham taught contemporary art issues in the College of Art at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art for more than a decade.
The Guerrilla Girls are feminist activist artists. We wear gorilla masks in public and use facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose gender and ethnic bias as well as corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture. Our anonymity keeps the focus on the issues, and away from who we might be: we could be anyone and we are everywhere. We believe in an intersectional feminism that fights discrimination and supports human rights for all people and all genders. We undermine the idea of a mainstream narrative by revealing the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. We have done hundreds of projects (posters, actions, books, videos, stickers) all over the world, including Bilbao, Iceland, Istanbul, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Rotterdam, Sao Paolo, and Shanghai. In 2017 we have new projects and exhibitions at MASP, Sao Paolo; the Frestas Triennial, Sorocaba; the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; the Museum of Military History, Dresden; and many other places. What’s next: more creative complaining!! More interventions!! More resistance!!
October 7, 2017
October 7, 2017
Top, Left to Right: Helen Schjerfbeck, Self-Portrait, Black Background, 1915 (detail); Elga Sesemann, Self-Portrait, 1946 (detail); Guerrilla Girls. Bottom, Left to Right: Ellen Thesleff, Self-Portrait with Hat, 1935; Laura Cottingham; Helene Schjerfbeck; Dr. Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff; Sigrid Schauman, Self Portrait, n.d.
SAT—10-7-2017—4-5:30 PM
$5 General Admission
Students, Seniors, and ASF Members, free
Gallery will be open until 7 PM